THE MACCABEES
BULLYING
BUSA KNOCKOUT ACTION
THE SCENE
P13
P42
> MUSIC
> SPORT
> FEATURES
ISSUE 177
NUS SMALL-BUDGET PUBLICATION OF THE YEAR
www.yorkvision.co.uk
Tuesday February 27, 2007
EXCLUSIVE BY ADAM QUIGLEY The university last week lost a radioactive chemical, radium 226, sparking a major university and police investigation as to its whereabouts. The radioactive substance which, if ingested, would have serious health implications, was being used in the Biology department. After a wide scale search it was eventually found last Wednesday at a local stainless steel reprocessing plant. The substance, which was supposed
to be transported to an external company for disposal, was reported missing on Friday. Officials at the company opened the lead storage container within which the radium was meant to be kept, only to find that it was in fact empty. The radium was being used to calibrate a machine within the Biology department - a Rack Beta machine used to measure radioactivity in biological materials.
FULL STORY PAGE 3
' CANCER CAUSING DRUG 'LOST 5 DAY POLICE SEARCH INVESTIGATION LAUNCHED
PLUS: WE EXPOSE RACIST AND SEXUAL HARRASSMENT OF WORKERS
Below: Head of Biology Dale Sanders
MELTDOWN UNI LOSE RADIOACTIVE CHEMICAL
2NEWS
YORK VISION
Tuesday February 27, 2007
your week
NEWS AT A GLANCE investigation reveals GOOD WEEK P2 Vision harrassment among university staff.
P3
We expose how Biology department 'lost' a radioactive chemical.
P4-5
ABUSED
VISION INVESTIGATION EXPOSES THE SECRET WORLD OF INTIMIDATION AT UNIVERSITY
> RACIAL AND SEXUAL HARRASSMENT SUFFERED BY WORKERS
Students chain themselves in a human picket line in porters protest.
unveil their P6 Vanbrugh Porno-V event.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK Uni Vice Chancellor Brian Cantor gives his thoughts on the portering crisis:
" "
Cat got your tongue, Brian?
GOOD WEEK bad week GOOD WEEK rag
Rag week was one of the most successful ever, putting them on course for a record total.
bad WEEK Ben Wardle Goodricke JCRC chair oversaw a £600 loss as his rebranded event flopped.
the number cruncher 600 11 57 5
Pounds LOST by Goodricke as they ditched their Playboy Mansion brand. Thousands of pounds paid by admin after a staff member was racially abused. Percent of people who say they have been bullied at Uni. Number of media outlets that run stories on the porters picket.
BY ADAM QUIGLEY Documents released to Vision detail how the university has paid out more than £21,000 to university employees in out of court settlements in order to avoid them taking their claims to an employment tribunal.
One member of staff complained of racial discrimination during the recruitment process and submitted a case to an employment tribunal. However, the university rather than face the negative publicity paid the employee £11,000. This included payment in lieu of notice and out-
standing leave. Other cases revealed in the dossier detail how one employee raised a grievance of sexual harassment against a co-worker. Following investigation the coworker was found guilty of harassment and formal disciplinary action was taken against them. In another similar case where an employee raised grievances against colleagues and management, they too were paid after it was agreed they would resign – this time they were paid £10,000. An employee submitted a claim
to an Employment Tribunal complaining that termination of their fixed-term contract breached their rights under the EU Directive on Fixed Term working. The employee was redeployed elsewhere within the university and withdrew the case. In another instance an employee complained of bullying by co-workers and disability discrimination by another employee within the university – although the complaint was not upheld, specialist Equal Opportunities training was introduced for all those involved.
>Plus we investigate Bullying of students.
P13
YORK VISION Tuesday February 27, 2007
Ben Matthews Laurie Allsopp Mark Griffin Katie Jacobs Managing Editor: Emily Walton Tobe Scalisbrick Head of IT: Nick Evans News Editors: Lucy Taylor Adam Thorn Deputy News: Lizzy Dale Anna Bevan Comment Editors: Sophie Wright Editor: Deputy Editors:
Richard Byrne-Smith Cartoonist: John Sharp Features Editor: Iain Withers Deputy Features: Claudia Stern Emma Barrow 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: Deputy Sports: Proof Readers:
Photo Editor: Deputy Photo: Social Sec:
Darius Austin Lauren Cockbill 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.
YORK VISION
NEWS
Tuesday February 27, 2007
CAMPUS LOTTERY SET TO LAUNCH
OOOPS.....INVESTIGATION LAUNCHED AFTER BIOLOGY LOSE DEADLY SUBSTANCE
RADIOACTIVE CHEMICAL GOES 'MISSING'
BY ADAM THORN
Second year management students are setting up the UK’s first student lottery, promising huge cash jackpots and charity donations.
Your:Lottery is set to be launched next term and will cost students £1 to enter with potential jackpots of up to £500. The students plan to turn their project into an independent charity, separate from both the university and the students union. Your:Lottery told Vision: “We guarantee three students cash prizes of up to £1000 twice a term and a donation of as much to a selected charity. Ideas for donation so far are YUSU, RAG, external charities, save the porters, perhaps even rotating donations between different colleges.” They added: "Money means a lot more to students than a random member of the public in the ‘real world’ and so increasing the chances of winning from a 1:14Million chance in the National Lottery means that students are far more likely to win our lottery. For example if 1500 people play Your:Lottery the chances of winning are 1:500 and the cash prize would be £250 for each of the three winners."
> Radium 226 disappears for 5 days
EXCLUSIVE BY ADAM QUIGLEY Professor Dale Sanders, Head of Biology and one of the UK’s top scientists, told Vision that the machine was due to be dismantled. “As part of the decommissioning we wanted to dispose of the isotope [the radium] before the rest of the machine was disposed of,” he said. The chemical, which has been cited as a cause of serious medical conditions such as anaemia and bone cancer, was supposed to be transported in a lead container to the disposal company. However it was reported
missing at 3.30pm last Friday when the university received a call from the disposal company to report that there was nothing inside the container. Prof Sanders continued: “I was informed about 4pm and the university swung into action. The relevant agencies were notified; the Health and Safety Executive and the Environment Agency, as well as the police.” “We swept the department with a monitor to determine whether
Photo by Laurie Allsopp the chemical was still within the department, and we employed some independent radioactive waste monitoring agents to determine whether it had entered the Council waste stream. They drew a blank.” In the meantime, the university issued a statement to the press and publicised information on their website and York Extra whilst the search of the department and the surrounding area continued. Prof Sanders told Vision how the radium was eventually found “complete and intact” at a stainless steel reprocessing plant - but declined to comment as to how it made it there or how it managed to go astray from its container.
PORNO V ‘Planet V’ may temporarily be deemed ‘Porno V’ next term, in a bid by Vanbrugh College to promote safe sex amongst students at one of their events.
The idea was recently suggested by Vanbrugh Ents reps and has already gained the approval of the YUSU welfare committee. Suggested entertainment currently includes the possibility of hiring “a bucking willy”, to be ridden with a condom-decorated hat, a drag act and free condoms given out as students leave.
LIBRARY FINES HIT £75,000 BY RICHARD BYRNE SMITH
VANBRUGH EVENT SET TO BECOME:
BY ANNA BEVAN
“A full university investigation has begun which is being conducted by Keith Lilley, Director of Facilities Management - the report of which will be sent to the Health and Safety Executive. How it got to the reprocessing plant is the subject of the investigation,” said Prof Sanders. He added that at this stage the Health and Safety Executive were not conducting their own investigation. In a statement the university said: “The level of radiation from the capsule is extremely low and represents little or no danger to human health. If crushed or broken, the capsule contents would be dangerous only if inhaled or ingested in significant quantities”.
College Chair Ryan Bennett admitted to Vision: “it’s a controversial thing and if we did something like it then we’d have to make sure it’s ok with everyone first, however no-one’s come forward with complaints about it yet.” Although the campus event is still in the early stages of planning it has proved to be a popular pro-
Photo by Laurie Allsopp
> CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
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posal aimed at not just advocating ‘safe sex’, but ‘safe thinking’ too. Similar themed nights elsewhere in the country, such as Exeter University’s ‘Safer Sex Ball’, are hugely successful amongst students. However, their popularity could simply be put down to an opportunity to celebrate sex, rather than contraception.
The University made £76,010 last year from library fines alone and is now planning to start charging students for all inter-library loan requests.
Despite the extortionate profit already made on overdue books and journals, the library committee is keen to change the current system which entitles students to 10 free requests each year. The new charges mean that students may not be able to afford to request items in the future. The changes, which have been proposed as part of the library’s ongoing budget review, may be implemented as soon as October 2007. The library’s Head of Content and Customer Services, Elizabeth Harbord, was keen to point out that the annual spend on inter-library loans is currently “high”, with “about a third” of the budget set aside for buying new books. Harbord emphasised that departmental consultations were “underway”, and that no final decisions had yet been taken. “The results of all the consultations will be considered when the issue is discussed again at Library Committee next term.”
4NEWS
YORK VISION
Tuesday February 27, 2007
student UNIVERSITY REFUSE TO APOLOGISE.... press
BNP Death Threats The Oxford Student reports that SU officials recently had to step in and stop a radio interview with BNP leader Nick Griffin after the presenters of the show received death threats by email and post. Student activists were set to storm the studio in protest against the far right spokesman from appearing on their show.
Rapping Up Chaucer Cambridge University was treated to “Chaucer for the MTV generation” when a Canadian rapper delivered his medieval lyrics to students and scholars alike, writes the Cambridge Student. Comparing the protagonist of ‘The Pardoner’s Tale’ to Kid Rock, Brinkman addressed the crowd with rhymes such as “Married a young filly he couldn’t satisfy/ In the sack this guy was on disability”. The rapper also went on to solve the age old question of ‘what women want’, which features in "The Wife of Bath", by revealing, “What’s really required to keep people sane/ Is for men to give women free reign.”
Death by Degrees A ‘Degree in Death’ is the first of its kind now being offered at Bath University, according to Cardiff student newspaper Gair Rhydd. The two year course is designed to teach funeral directors how to deal with issues such as coping with bereavement, disposing of bodies and operating good customer service during funerals. Together with its unique Centre for Death and Society (CDAS), Bath must be one of the most morbid universities around.
SORRY
SEEMS TO BE THE HARDEST WORD CANTOMETER
> ACCOMMODATION OFFICERS SIGN STATEMENT IN PROTEST AT THE CRISIS
72 DAYS AND COUNTING...
Student hit by train
She looks like a Business Fishycow right
Students at Exeter University have discovered that female fish become sexually mature a lot faster if they see attractive male fish with long tails, reports student newspaper Exeposé. The research indicates that physical decoration of the opposite sex determines when an individual is ready to mate.
Not quite the Micklegate Run Carnage UK, the ‘Number One Student Bar Crawl’, which takes place in Leeds, has been inundated with complaints following their last event. The Leeds Student report that three ambulances were called, one student stopped breathing twice and another woke up to discover that she had broken her leg as a result of the previous night’s escapades. Whilst most students describe Carnage as “a binge drinking event”, their website still maintains that they wish to promote [only] responsible drinking.
...SINCE OUR VC BRIAN CANTOR SPOKE OUT ABOUT THE PORTERS' CRISIS.
BY LUCY TAYLOR University administration bosses refused to apologise to students and staff this week for the complications caused by the lack of portering staff around campus. Vice Chancellor Brian Cantor maintained his silence despite calls from staff at all levels of the university to explain how employment levels were allowed to drop to a point at which half the porters lodges on campus have had to be closed for more than three months. In January, a shortage of porters led to the merging of Vanbrugh and Derwent porters into Langwith and Wentworth with Goodricke and James. The university claims that due to the length of the recruitment and training process it will not be possible to reinstate the missing porters until the end of April. Vision met with staff representatives from all eight colleges to hear their concerns that
requests for more support from the university were being ignored. In a statement to Vision signed by the eight college administrators, who at ground level are the most senior leaders of each college, they expressed anxiety that the increased workload that has fallen on the remaining porters is affecting morale within the college structure and constitutes a threat to student and staff welfare. “The college Porter plays a key role in the college team – where he or she goes, we all suffer,” they stated. “We are not cogs in a machine. It doesn’t work like that – as the current situation proves.” A lack of response from the VC means that it has been left to Head of Security Services Ken Batten and Head of Facilities Management Keith Lilley to deal with complaints. Both deny that the simultaneous resignation of 11 porters and the redeployment of three more are a direct consequence of a new working agreement introduced just after Christmas, and call the
current situation “unforeseeable”, despite repeated written warnings from porters last term that if the changes were pushed through they would resign. Ex-Internal Officer, Richard Davis, called the way the university bosses were handling the porters situation “unacceptable” and questioned the university’s commitment to staff welfare. “The bosses insist on running the university like a business when it suits them,” he said. “We have budgets cut in every possible area, bars hardly ever open because they aren’t making enough profit to satisfy the accountants and students are consistently put last. “But if a business manager in any other industry had made this sort of error of judgement and shown such a lack of connection to his own staff, they would be held accountable for their mistakes. “We are suffering from deadweight management completely distinct from the realities of running a university.”
NEWS
YORK VISION
Tuesday February 27, 2007
...AS STUDENTS HOLD CHAIN PROTEST
REBELS TELL ADMIN: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
CLUB D TO CLOSE EARLY
5
Club D will be forced to close at 12:30 throughout next term, due to a ruling from university officials that the Derwent venue is too close to college study rooms to hold late events. The rule is intended to protect third-years revising for final exams in the study areas, which are open 24 hours for quiet work. "We will be reducing the ticket prices to compensate," said Jamie Tyler, Derwent Chair. "This happened last year too, so I hope it won't put people off too much." Big D, the last Derwent event of the year and York's signature summer celebration, will be exempt from the ruling and allowed to stay open until the usual time of 1:15am or later.
MAKING SOUNDS A music CD created entirely by York students was released last week to raise money for charity projects in Nairobi.
"Making Sounds" features Battle of the Bands finalists Make it Better Later and semifinalists Tigernaut, along with a selection of nineteen other campus musicians. "There is a lot of talent at the university and this provides a platform to promote it on a wider scale than may be individually possible," said Chris Pike, organising this year's project. "At the same time, we are raising considerable amounts of money for a good cause." The CD has already sold more than 100 copies and raised enough money to cover its production costs. All further proceeds will go to the Slum Rise Campaign in Nairobi. Making Sounds is available at Track Records in York and at www.makingsounds.co.uk.
BY LUCY TAYLOR Students demonstrated their anger at the porters crisis last week with a radical 9-hour protest designed to embarrass the university officials responsible for the current situation. A breakaway group of campaigners chained themselves across Vanbrugh walkway in an attempt to represent student discontent at the way the situation has been handled and bring the issue to the attention of the city and regional press. “It was a reactionary protest to show the amount of anger amongst students at the temporary loss of porters again,” said Daniel Ashby, one of the organisers of the demonstration. “This isn’t the first time students have suffered as a result of poor management on the part of the university administration and it won’t be the last. We have to generate an
atmosphere that shows that the closure of the porters lodges is a no-go area for the university – that they should bear the cost of their mismanagement and not us.” The grassroots campaigners support a wider protest organised officially by YUSU against the loss of porters around campus. More than 860 signatures were collected from supporters passing the picket line in the one day demonstration, with 35 from members of staff including lecturers and senior academics. “Some passers-by were annoyed by our protest but the majority came out in favour of the action even though we were causing them inconvenience by blocking the pathway,” said Ashby. “Ironically, I think causing aggravation at times got people to notice us, and got us a lot of signatures in a short amount of time. At the end of the day, we wouldn’t have got the coverage we did from the BBC and
the York Press newspaper by sitting down quietly saying ‘hello’ to everyone, would we?” Other independent student campaigns have been organised separately around campus to highlight the growing impatience with the lack of porters. Two weeks ago a group of students in Derwent College removed all the chairs from Derwent bar and dining hall during the night and hid them away in a nearby study room, to draw attention to the inadequate security provided by one porter covering three different colleges. Another first-year student collected more than 200 signatures in an independent petition on one afternoon in Vanbrugh bar. “I feel that it’s really important to do something to register our concern,” said the student, who preferred to remain anonymous. “Having so few porters around campus has serious implications for student
security and welfare. This shouldn’t have been allowed to happen.” The rebel protestors are in talks to decide what further action will be taken over the coming weeks. “The protest was really reactionary, but we’ve also held some pro-active demands for a public apology,” said Ashby. “We also want a guarantee that this won’t happen again and a written pledge that the Heslington East campus expansion will have 24-hour portering." “The university can’t continue to claim that they didn’t see this crisis coming. Everything we are hearing from the porters reveals a case of terrible mismanagement. How out of touch is a manager who cannot anticipate 14 porters all resigning at once?” The group have not ruled out further protest if the situation is not resolved soon.
>VISION COMMENT PAGES 8 AND 9
CAR STOLEN AND SMASHED IN ONE DAY
BY LIZZY DALE An Alcuin student was left distraught after discovering her car had been stolen and burnt out. The first-year Sociology student, Natalie Hodges, had parked her car on Genesis Way in the Science Park near Alcuin College and on her return found the car to be missing. ‘The Alcuin porters were fantastic, I went to them immediately to report the incident and they contacted the Police, who then logged an official report" said Hodges. "The Porters checked all CCTV footage for me to see if they could see anyone breaking into my car." Police later found the Metro had been crashed and burnt out on Windmill Lane; a few hours after the car had been stolen.
6NEWS
YORK VISION
Tuesday February 27, 2007
Oops...they did it again
OUR MAN ON THE INSIDE TELLS YOU
NEW GOODRICKE EVENT LOSES £600 BY LUCY TAYLOR Goodricke lost more than £600 last week after an event to mark the launch of the new “GoodShack” events brand name was attended by just 100 people.
The loss means that next term Goodricke will only be able to afford two college events instead of the usual three in an attempt to break even. “It was a really stressful week, we had problems with the printers making the publicity posters for the event and we weren’t able to advertise it properly,” said Ben Wardle, college Chair. “Having an event in week 6 was never going to be ideal, it was just after Valentine’s Day and I think
our turnout suffered because of that.” The JCRC had voted unanimously to cancel after it emerged in an emergency meeting just 24 hours before the night that only 10 advance tickets had been sold. But YUSU Ents Officers forced the event to go ahead, claiming that it would be the first time in the university’s history that an event had been cancelled at such short notice. “I’m really frustrated at the way that YUSU intervened with our event,” said Wardle. “We had started the process of cancelling by the time they got involved, and they bullied us into reversing our decision. “The cost of putting the event on was somewhere in the region of 5-6
times more than if we had been allowed to cancel.” The incident is the latest in a series of scandals involving Goodricke events. Last term, the previous college committee caused outrage by spending more than £600 of Goodricke funds flying a David Hasselhoff look-a-like over from Ireland to perform at the JCRC election night party. But Wardle says the latest embarrassment highlights problems in the way university events are run. “The overhead costs of running a campus event are ridiculously high compared to other comparable businesses,” he said. “It costs us £900 each time we hold an event to hire YUSU equip-
FRESHERS SET TO LIVE ON
BUILDING SITE
the confession box
WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON AT YUSU
Favourite pulls out of SU presidential race
Former Alcuin chair Tom Stratton is set to pull out of race to become the most powerful student in York. Stratton, tipped for the top in Vision's 2006 Power List, is thought to not want the stress of the top job, according to close friends.
Toilet Trouble Which YUSU Sabb was thrown out of a campus event after being unable to ‘communicate’ the reasons for his presence in the girl’s toilets?
ment and facilites. YUSU actually banned other local companies from providing music equipment at a lower rate. “Colleges like Goodricke get a raw deal because we only have a small venue and even if we sell out we can only make £200. It means that when something like this happens it takes us a long time to make the money back again.” The “GoodShack” brand will replace last year’s “Playboy Mansion” tagline and will appear on all Goodricke event publicity. “It’s obviously disappointing to us that we got such a poor turnout,” said Wardle. “Goodricke is known for having great events and the first one of this term sold out completely. I don’t think this will damage our image too much.”
Students moving into the new Vanbrugh bleachfields site next autumn could be living on a building site after the university admitted that students will be rushed into the blocks before construction is completed. Freshers will be waking up to the sound of workers constructing half of the site and buildings as well as paths and gardens. Admin have also told students that the site will not have any porter’s lodges and that security will instead be boosted by a prison style perimeter fence. Chair Ryan Bennett told Vision:
“The main building work is due to be completed by the beginning of the spring term. Yet there appears to be no deadline on more ‘minor works’, such as paths, fencing, gardening, etc. This means that any students moving in during autumn will be living on what is essentially a building site, and may even affect those arriving later.” Students will also have to use the current porters lodge in the original Vanbrugh complex. Ryan added: “There will be no porters lodge, and students will be expected to use the Vanbrugh lodge, which will be open 24 hours. This is a great shame as the new students may not interact with
their porters as much as those in the other parts of Vanbrugh (as even Fairfax has its own) and simply leave them using the security office for most of their needs. The new buildings look set to feature blocked off corriders, but Chair Ryan Bennett is against this. He said: “I am hoping that students will be able to access flats on different floors within their blocks, as this is something which all us college chairs are pushing for across campus at the moment." "I believe that students would much rather live in a socially secure environment rather than somewhere more locked down than a government building.”
Derwent Chair Jamie Tyler pulled Amy Woods’ younger sister in Toffs on Viking Raid II - we’re sure Amy’s glad she organised it now!
Cooking Chaos Rich Croker took a turn to feed poor hungry students as he was made to cook for 23 people after volunteering to cook a meal in the RAG Week Blagathon.
YUM gets new president The York University Media Committee has a new boss. Daniel Ashby, 21, of Cheddar, is thought to want to create a rule stopping Nouse from joining with Vision.
B HENRYS TO BECOME
COCKTAIL BAR
BY ANNA BEVAN
BY ADAM THORN
Pulling Palava
B Henry’s may soon become a cocktail bar in an attempt to increase custom and stop the campus bar from running on a deficit.
The proposal, which is still to be confirmed by campus bar manager, Andy Summers, has gained the full support of Alcuin JCRC as well as proving to be a popular suggestion with the college’s students. Alcuin Chair, Louis Wihl, said that he is keen for the idea to go ahead, but has stressed the importance of differentiating from other campus bars by renaming the place “B Henry’s – The Cocktail Bar.” “We’ll continue to serve all drinks, but have more of a cocktail theme with a special cocktail menu,” said Wihl. Whilst cocktails are notorious for being more expensive than your
average alcoholic drink, Wihl recognizes that affordability is key “otherwise it will defeat the object” of re-launching the bar, as students will be put off by the prices. Despite the YUSU coordinated “Save Our Bars” campaign of last March, Alcuin College has been severely affected by the closures, remaining open for only two nights a week. It is hoped that if the proposal goes ahead then the college will start to meet running costs and may be able to open more regularly again. One argument against the proposal is that Halifax College’s bar JJ’s is already a cocktail bar, however this has done little to increase its revenue. Wihl claims that B Henry’s would be a more successful venue as,“It already has a similar layout to a cocktail bar” and says that the important thing is to push for a name change if the idea is to be successful.
YORK VISION
COMMENT
Tuesday February 27, 2007
7
V
COMMENT LETTERS>COMMENT>COLUMNS
LETTERS
Fitties at Fiesta Dear Vision, I would just like to say how fantastic the OSA’s Fiesta was this Saturday! It was a truly exceptional evening showing the many diverse cultures represented on campus. The food was great, the performances were fantastic, and it was refreshing to be at an event where you didn’t need to be drunk to have a good time! More events like this please!
Octo-push off!
are rarely flipper sizes bringing an n, e; tailor-mad Dear Visio along prepair of socks e York old th ng ri of ea r w be om vents fr As a mem le’ , I was suruncomfortab ‘insanely Octopush club ’ ew Vi ‘Inside flippers. prised by the rsonal note, peared in the On a more pe article that ap s A . on si ed to see Vi of as disappoint latest edition s never I w ticle was ha ar ho an (w r ch de the foun is that su it el fe on in the I y ), rl m ea published so been to Durha rd co e Octore e th of set th development important to a new sh. g pu to tin oc ar t St ou . ub straight ab er push cl at task, w g er in nd ng (u le Octopush ub is a chal cl to w t ne an that latively it is import hockey) is re it is and receive so d rs be an , em ty potential m the universi ry ve rticuat pa th s, rise rrect fact of little surp have the co that is t rk or Yo sp at a t le larly abou few peop Whilst octounknown. heard of it. nno a courage to be Therefore I en push is meant y ra st t you, gs w fe on a am t, s the curiou contact spor un what co ve en lie n ofte listen to be flippers are along e for not to e os m cl co o to to t tle bu tered a lit t is read, That efore it is no r yourselves. liking. Ther - and see fo ke Li . ed water left rt y ea an t-h is e in er fa for the e is, if th ers have swal want to ‘giv after two play wise, if you n u ee yo tw d te be es ol po sugg lowed the it a go’, it is . The ability to ! em th like the water , orkel however be able to sn the club (of In l. na die Davies is optio are post- Jo esident 16 4/ opush club pr ct O which only ay pl r ou of e graduates), on l. use a snorke ers does not t, en pm ui eq of On the topic
Yours multi-culturally, York’s only Belgian-Fijian P.S. to all the it, you missed hot hot hot!
girls who didn’t make out... all the guys were
We couldn't agree more! Fiesta was a triumphant celebration of York's cultural variety. More please! > Full Vision comment on page 9.
Vision fully appreciates the contribution DramaSoc makes to campus life, and would urge any student journalist to speak to all sides before writing any kind of article. Nevertheless, please remember that personal opinions, however critical, should be accepted as inevitable products of a free and impartial press. We have forwarded your letter to Bad Taste for their information. Vision apologises for some the technical innaccuracies in this article, which should have been more carefully researched. Of course, we would also urge interested parties not to be put off by our reporter's views, and try it themselves. This is indeed what we suggested in issue 173 in October, demonstrating Vision's variety of opinion
A Bad Taste of Campus M edia Dear Vision,
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CROSSWORD ACROSS 8. Inspiring amazement (7) 9. Cables (5) 10. Monotonous voice (5) 11. Religiously declare (7) 12. Cry of a goose (4) 13. Eugenie and Beatrice are examples of this (8) 16. Ooze moisture from skin (8) 19. Republic in West Africa (4) 22. Brown milk container (7) 23. Tightly coiled (5) 24. Martial art (5) 25. Alleviate (7) Answers from Issue 176:
DOWN >>>>>>>>> 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 14. 15. 17. 18. 20. 21. 22.
Severe toil (8) Scag (6) Cube-shaped recepticles (5) More than good (6) Shutting (7) Sketch-esque ridicule (6) Awkward in company (3) Superficial (4,4) Judgement (7) Disavow (6) Come back (6) Pleasantly occupies (6) Make one's abode (in) (5) Half burnt coal (4)
Across: 1.wordless, 5. band, 8. rink, 9. Shanghai, 10. hostile, 12. piece, 13. picket, 15. asleep, 17. repel, 18. pressup, 22. cobblers, 23. Gobi 24. sped, 25. notables. Down: 1. worship, 2. rents, 3. easel, 4. soap, 6. achieve, 7. drive, 11. ideal, 12. paste, 14. capable, 16. poppies, 17. rocks, 19. reset, 20. spool, 21. keen.
8COMMENT
YORK VISION
Tuesday February 27, 2007
>COMMENT NUS SMALL BUDGET PUBLICATION OF THE YEAR 2006
SAYS...
Chemical chaos is an absolute outrage
T
he shocking news this week that the University accidentally ‘lost’ dangerous chemical radium 226 is utterly despicable. The university may congratulate itself for the container's speedy recovery, but, in doing so, is completely missing the point: it is scandalous that this potentially cancerous substance was allowed to get anywhere near escaping its laboratory, let alone threatening the lives of thousands of students, staff and visitors to the campus. What's more, the university's flippant handling of the situation has been a disgrace; everybody should have been made fully aware of the chemical's release from the very beginning. Students must demand a full and throrough investigation to ensure that we are never again put at such grave risk.
A pay-off is not a solution
V
ision ’s investigation into the formal grievances instigated recently by several porters has uncovered more than it was meant to. Not only have we discovered that complaints have been lodged by porters in response to university pay and working conditions, but that the university’s iron-like grip over their contracts mean that an unhappy worker is left with little discussion or choice. Despite university denial, we believe that this is likely to have caused our recent porter shortages. Furthermore, our discovery that the university have been shamelessly paying off a number of staff this year in order to avoid Employment Tribunals is nothing short of scandalous. A payout does not solve anything: it merely serves to keep the dissenter quiet. The problems that caused the legal action still remain, and if the university thinks it can quietly sidestep them, then its moral priorities are seriously distorted.
Finish one job before you start another
Y
ou may have noticed that Vision’s popular arts magazine The Scene has been incorporated into the paper this issue. Quite simply, we cannot afford to produce it. Yet, the very same term, YUSU premieres its brand new campus magazine Bad Taste. Believe it or not, Vision is always pleased to have a little competition, but we can’t help but recognise the bitter irony in this unfortunate coincidence. How can YUSU justify pouring money into a new, expensive venture, when existing campus media outlets are so chronically under-funded? Vision does not need extortionate amounts of money to be the national award-winning paper it is, but with the election of a new YUM committe, YUSU’s budget allocation will hopefully be fairer.
University cutbacks: Throwing the baby out with the bathwater
COMMENT EDITOR
C
ampus is becoming increasingly eerie. Everything, it seems, is becoming a ghost of its former self. Porters’ lodges are now boarded up or empty. Bars are no longer open. Cleaners are rarely seen. And now, thanks to some enterprising Derwent students who a couple of weeks ago managed to swipe every stool and table from their closed bar in the absence of any porter authority, even the furniture is going missing. The reason for this spectral transformation? You don’t need a £3000 a year degree to figure out that the real answer is money. Snip, snip, snip goes the management budget; with cuts being made left, right and centre. But whilst most of us accept money-saving measures need to be made in every institution to cope with the ever-growing number of higher education students, it seems that our university is currently hacking away at its heart and soul. Take the recent controversy over the porters. Whilst management states that it did not make an official decision to cut the porter workforce, it is clear that they did not rush to offer material rewards for porters considering staying on. Instead, it appears that they did quite the opposite. And, when we recall that in 2002 management attempted to cut hours in porter’s lodges when recruitment was not so much of an issue, rumours that
Sophie WRIGHT
the University may have been calculating the long-term benefits of having a slightly reduced workforce when it handed over hefty severance packages to departing porters do not seem so far-fetched. But as this week’s protests have clearly shown, there are some corners that simply cannot be cut. As those chained to the Vanbrugh walkway will no doubt tell you, any threat to our twenty-four hour porter policy is a threat to the students and ethos of York University. Without twenty-four hour porters,
"Whilst most of us accept that moneysaving measures need to be made fact it seems that our university is currently hacking away at its York’s halls of residence may become an open target for potential criminals. Without twenty-four hour porters, the first person we call on in an emergency may no longer be there when we need them. Without twenty-four hour porters, students locked out of their rooms will continue to spend hours in porters lodges, deliberating over whether losing their key does in
fact constitute an scenario worthy of picking up the ominous looking red phone. Management must change its tactics, and fast. For whilst they might argue any changes affecting the everyday life of students are short-term measures, necessary to facilitate the glittering Heslington East filled York University of the future, they are in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Note that York University’s number one claim to fame, the first thing it mentions, now falsely, on the prospectus website, has always been that we are one of the top ten higher education institutions in the country. But that crown is slipping. The Times and Guardian University league tables have this year demoted York to number fifteen. Why? The results have nothing to do with our academic achievements. No, the one major change this year is that the surveys on which these tables are based have for the first time included student feedback. The wider world clearly thinks that if we are forced to become paying customers putting forward an average of £9000 over the course of our degrees, students can expect to see value for money. And with our cleaners, bars and porters on the decline, we have to question whether that is what we are now getting.
comment@vision.york.ac.uk
YORK VISION
COMMENT
Tuesday February 27, 2007
The farce-fest: Why campus events will never change
COMMENT EDITOR
C
ome on, let’s face it: campus events are awful. Does anybody actually enjoy them? Personally, I find getting plastered and prancing around a horrible dining room to absolute musical tat about as pleasurable as sticking a fork in my eye. And to make matters much, much worse, they are literally all we’ve got. Now, I could bang on about the lack of a central union venue, or the fact that the Roger Kirk Centre is a perfect potential nightclub, but to be frank, I don’t want to: we’ve heard it before. I think we probably all agree that the university’s priorities are catastrophically skewed against the very people it was established for (that’s the students by the way), but is that really why campus events are just so utterly dire? Earlier this term, prospective ents reps for Derwent JCRC were ‘RONned’ because, quite simply, they weren’t cheesey enough. Offer something other than the classic York farcefest of Baywatch, Bon Jovi and, dare I remind you, Bradley from S
Club, and you are eschewed. So York students enjoy the dreary campus norm? I would have thought so until recently. The early closure of Goodricke and Halifax events this term due to a severe lack
of custom provided me with a refreshing pang of optimism; maybe a scene change was on the horizon? Maybe, and much more likely, it wasn’t. It’s true that there have been some recent glimmers of hope; both D-Funked (alright, the oh-so-original school uniform thing letting it down a bit) and the OSA’s highly success-
Anti-social Secretary
FEATURES EDITOR
I
t's not something that adorns the outside of my house, or something emblazoned on my t-shirt as I leave the front door, but the art of rudeness etches itself across my mind fairly often during the day. It was a very proud day when I interviewed the creators of Modern Toss, whose series of ‘provocative’, nihilistic cartoons have proved quite a hit both on the net, on TV and in bookstores. Their efforts show us all that being rude is so much more than strapping a dildo to your head and parading around York train station. Rude has been taken away from ‘crass’ and placed in the Tate giftshop. There’s nothing more delightful than sticking two fingers up at the accepted undercurrents of the 9 to 5, of IKEA, of the commute, of advertising and so on – all in beautifully rude, incisive ways. Anyone who has sat in a seminar and realised that the only reason why they came in was so that they could notch their attendance, and now ‘bollocks’ feels like the only appropriate word, will know what I mean. But it’s not just the things you say. When pushing in in the Toffs queue, the stony faced guy who is all ‘f ’s and ‘blind’s and ‘no’s is a godsend. He’s the sort that has
Richard BYRNESMITH ful Fiesta took place this weekend, demonstrating just how good university events can be. However, I do wonder if attendance at these slightly alternative student ventures is in any way representative. Probably, it isn’t. Fine, the clichéd campus event has its place: occasionally, friends, booze, and bravery collide and you can have a great night. But isn’t it time we swapped the hackneyed old dining room for something more grown up and the naff chart-pap for music of a more diverse nature? Essentially, it’s up to us. If we are not careful, we will be played for fools – not given what we deserve. The planned ‘porno-V’, for example, is an assault on taste and decency. Clearly, I’m all for variety, but it is a prime example of organisers leeching off our popular stereotypes. However, at the end of the day, nothing will change if students continue to accept what they are being spoonfed. Remember: we are the customers, we have the money, and we must therefore set the agenda.
comment@vision.york.ac.uk
Iain WITHERS
absolutely no impulses whatsoever to chuck a few humouring words out there in the face of the (frankly, apologetic) belligerence of a slightly unbalanced me. A stone wall and a furrowed brow is all you get. But who cares? Rudeness in this sort of situation is quite simply blissful. Nothing at all goes down well. Poor jokes, bloody-mindedness; all are met by searching,
"Rude has been taken away from 'crass' and placed in the Tate giftshop. There's nothing more delightful than sticking two fingers up at the accepted undercurrents of the 9 to 5, of IKEA, of the commute." pausing sarcasm (the ‘high ground’, I think). It may not get you anywhere, but to me, it’s quite a lovely, almost timeless place. I’ve often walked through the
gap in the Goodricke cash queue and considered stopping and inhabiting the spot left for passers by so as to join the queue halfway down. What would be the reaction? I’m sure my housemates believe I’ll be nothing short of unhealthy and cantankerous the other side of graduating. I’d say that I lead a fairly normal emotional life beside the odd bout of insults, although it's true that my lenses dictate that, short of rubbing onions against my face, I’m rather unlikely to shed a tear. The cause of all this negativity is unclear. Nestlé’s decision to reduce the size of its Magnum Classic? (You should never tamper with a classic; I would have thought that goes without saying.) Economics, and how all its lecturers sound like bees, in a tin? A better bet is my housemates’ decision to lock out ITV Play so I can’t channel pointless negativity into it. Little do they realise that I will definitely have the last laugh. Once I’ve found out how to unlock ITV Play, unlocking The Mint will surely only be a stone’s throw away!
features@vision.york.ac.uk
Cantor: Stop being a coward and come out from behind the sofa.
9
NEWS EDITOR
Adam THORN
N
ow, the one thing that we Brits love is a good leader. Someone with a bit of passion, charisma and drive to get us all going. I’m thinking of Winston Churchill, Alf Ramsay, hell even David Beckham. The point is that we like to know that, when everything goes tits-up, we’ve got someone that can give us a good speech and let us know that everything is going to be all right. The fact is that this university has had a torrid time of it lately. Where do we start? Well: our bars have closed. Our lecturers have gone on strike (again). And now our porters have decided to resign on mass. And that’s not even mentioning us crashing down all the major university league tables. So what has our Vice Chancellor, Brian Cantor, said about any of this…nothing. Yup, not a single word. In fact Brain doesn’t really like talking to the media at all. In the last 5 years he’s not given a single interview to anyone in the media. In fact you’re more likely to get yourself a meeting with Bin Laden down his cave than a five minute chat with Brian Cantor. I think we must scare him a bit. But this is a man who earns more than the Prime Minister. For that sort of money you’d expect him to get off his arse and actually communicate to us students and staff. Show us that he cares and gives a shit about us - because at the moment I’ve got images of him lying on his comfy sofa throwing our money on his
fire. Maybe that’s a bit harsh. But the fact is that part and parcel of the job of a leader is to communicate with people. And that, for Brian, means actually talking to students. All we get about our porters striking is a university statement saying some nonsense about temporary situations and recruitment drives. It’s this attitude that creates a situation where staff and students feel unvalued. The university comes across as this big faceless organisation where all the people at the top live in some bunker in Heslington Hall doing nothing. It’s not rocket science why staff keep quitting and striking. The problem is that Brian is more than happy in hiding behind his two top henchmen, Ken Batten (head of security) and Keith Lilley (head of facilities management). And these two are hardly likely to pick up any gongs at the world charisma awards. But sooner or later he’s going to have to realise that the buck stops with him - and that he’s the only one that anyone really cares about hearing from.
"This is a man who earns more than the Prime Minister. For that sort of money you'd expect him to get off his arse and communicate to us students and staff. Show us that he cares and gives a shit about us"
So Brian, if you’re reading this, talk to us. Say something, anything even - before this university completely collapses.
news@vision.york.ac.uk
[Heslington Hall: Very pretty, but what exactly goes on in there?]
10 COMMENT
YORK VISION
Tuesday February 27, 2007
>COLUMNS Dita Von Teese: One, God: Nil.
DEPUTY EDITOR
Ruth MACLEAN I I n the Christian bookshop on Walmgate this week, in the window, is a book called God Made Snot, with green dripping words like snot no-one ever has, and probably wouldn’t be that disgusting if they did. To illustrate, a cartoon of this snot-god, who is half mad scientist, half class clown, with a purple and yellow checked shirt, green and white spotted bow tie, and magnifying glass (to complete the illusion, an otherwise superfluous piece of snot is magnified). Nothing like a genie. To a girl who this term has been mostly concerned with whether or not God exists (philosophy, don’t you know), this book is full of flummoxes. Is it intended to persuade small boys that God’s really cool: so cool that he created the coolest thing ever? Is snot such a complex concept that it seriously points to the existence of a creator? Are they suggesting that the problem of snot mirrors that of evil? A world without snot, perhaps, would be a world without sneezes, which are pure joy. To which end, I had my first life-drawing sneeze the other day. It was an intense experience: because it’s my job to do as much nothing as possible, including clothes, I was able to witness its entire generation, from its delicate sherbety beginnings to its volatile tickle, culminating in glorious abandonment. It was brilliant because I couldn’t do anything about it, and the class, which has a pretty high senile-old-man : notsenile-old-man ratio, were forced to experience it with me with only a cantankerous glower as retribution for not arranging my hand quite so elegantly as before. Ha! They have to put up with me, though, because apparently there is a shortage of models in York. Doesn’t that sound dramatic? “Good evening. This is Channel 4 News, I am Jon Snow, and these are tonight’s main stories. David Cameron’s latest ‘street’ strategy designed to ingratiate himself with today’s youth revealed: he simultaneously snorts a kilometre of coke and takes part in what he describes as a “mothafuckin’ drive-by”. Exciting new plans for London’s Olympics involve pulling down St. Paul’s Cathedral: “It’s for the greater good, innit”, a spokesperson said. And finally, in distant York - yes! That’s right! The North does still exist! - a famine of bodies to paint forces miserable artists to employ Crap Sneezing Model Ruth Maclean who, incidentally, I am completely in love with and would like to…”. Hang on. Dreams. Reality. Got it. Thus, I don’t get talked to very much at parties these days in case I start going down the persuadingfriends-to-strip-for-money route. One such friend, calling himself Big Poofy Robin and decked out in fishnet tights, trilby and little else at Saturday’s magnificent burlesque-themed party said he’d feel self-conscious. Dressed by Ms Summers in about three inches of white lace as I was, I reassured him that it was fine, as I too was really a very reticent person. Then we went outside to try and convince the Heslington Road traffic that Number 10 was that mysterious brothel.
have recently been engaged with the task of writing my CV for the first time. Shocking I know, but I have managed to avoid this thus far, and I assure you that it is much to my chagrin that I can’t just march out of university brandishing a selection of articles and demanding a job. In my infinite wisdom (i.e. my complete lack of knowledge), it seemed like a good idea to consult careers websites first. I learned what not to do to impress potential employers. Do not write your CV in eyeliner on the back of a takeaway menu. Don’t write it in blood either, but at least this would have the advantage of making you look dedicated. If your personal email address is alcoholic_crackaddled_ superslut69@hotmail.com, you should change it. Under ‘Other’, putting, “I love to read modernist authors, learn archaic Spanish and am currently in training for the marathon” is likely to impress more than, “Sleeping is my main hobby. That or drinking.” All duly noted, thanks Monster.com. I’m also supposed to tell potential employers what I have gained from my other jobs. I have thought long and hard about this and decided that two years as a waitress at Betty’s has taught me the following: that I can’t eat nearly as much cake as I think, or would like to; that I am scarily good at being charming (read: ‘fake’) to irritating customers and that I can definitely pull off a uniform. I can also list an impressive number of teas and
Katie JACOBS
Would you employ this? coffees, but somehow I think this is irrelevant to most other jobs. I should also harp on about what have I learnt from my degree. What has my time at this fine establishment taught me about life, myself, the universe and everything? Well frankly, as I approach final essays,
"If your personal email address is alcoholic_crackaddled_superslut69@ hotmail.com, you should change it for your CV" it has struck me that the only thing I’ve become truly excellent at is procrastinating. At school, I was a model pupil. I used to do all my homework the second I got home and sit around smugly for the rest of the evening. Three years of university however, and all that has changed. I’ve adopted the tried-and-tested, highly scientific ‘try not to think about the fact that I have to write 13,000 words over Easter and maybe it’ll disappear’ approach. Now it’s become almost a challenge to see how late you can leave that oh-so-important 5,000 word essay (for the record, still no title). Everyday I think of a new and innovative way to procrastinate. In fact, the methods I
have come up with in my time are so ingenious; I feel I should be able to put ‘ground-breaking procrastination techniques’ on my CV. After all, anyone can make 24 cups of tea; spend 6 hours stalking minor acquaintances/attractive boys/primary school enemies on Facebook; or decide they desperately need to go to the shops and buy cleaning products, but surely it takes some kind of genius (albeit a slightly deranged one, I grant you) to spend an hour when they should be reading, measuring various body parts and comparing the results with their equally work-shy housemates? In my mind, this showed initiative (two of my housemates cruelly suggested I had one leg shorter than the other and that I walk on a slant. Well, I sure showed them); math-
ematical skill (we worked out the area of our open mouths, an impressive piece of calculation. Mine was the smallest. It was maliciously implied this is why I don’t have a boyfriend.); and scientific curiosity (if Nancy is 4 inches taller than Katie and Ruth, how much larger should her hand span and nose length be?). With a mind fertile and creative enough to do that, surely they should be hammering down my door, contracts and large pots of money (I assume that’s how this real world thing works) in hand? I recently chained myself to Vanbrugh walkway and various other not-so-fragrant students for ten hours. The main purpose of this was of course to campaign against the lack of porters and general student welfare, but that was still ten hours of not doing any degree work whatsoever. Anyone would have to admit that that is quite impressive. And in the ultimate gesture of postmodernism, I have just spent the last hour writing about procrastination, rather than do anything remotely useful. And you just spent five minutes reading it. That’s time we’re never getting back. Congratulations. Now if you’ll please excuse me, I’m going to go and join all my moles together with a pen and see if I can discover some sort of mystical ‘Da Vinci’-esque code.
deputy.editor@vision.york.ac.uk
[Tea, aka the procrastinator's best friend]
Under-Aged Over-Achieving
EDITOR
Ben MATTHEWS es, yes - I know that all us third Y years seem to bang on about is CVs, interviews, internships, and for the lucky few, jobs (see above). Or for the even luckier few - a gap year. But for all you Freshers and Second Years, be warned - that whisper which says "What are you doing after uni?" will gradually get louder and louder until it is all you can hear (unless it is drowned by that other annoying voice which whispers "You should be doing your dissertation" whilst you are watching Hollyoaks). So, with haunting whisper in tow, I too started looking at my CV and the dreaded job hunt. Looking around the various graduate recruitment websites, I noticed that there was mounting pressure for graduates to prove what they had achieved not only in their university career, but their life in general. And this got me thinking - I think I've achieved a reasonable amount in my time on Planet Earth, measured against no standard scale or ideal or anything, but still worthy. I've done a fair
bit of travelling - Australia, North America, Inter-railing around Europe. I've done the odd bit of chairty work here and there. I've had a successful sporting career for the university's mens football first team (although some members of the club may disagree, and will probably let me know about it at training this week). But what about other more notable people? What have (or had) they achieved by their early twenties? Mozart wrote his first compositions, a “small” Andante and Allegro, in 1761 when he was just five years old. At five years old, I could barely play the triangle. Shirley Temple accumulated wealth exceeding $1 million (equivalent to $8,932,472 today) before she was 10. When I was 10, I was accumalating a healthy knowledge of football and The Simpsons. Before he turned 20, Jesus had probably learned how to turn water into wine and how to walk on water - something that not a lot of teenagers I know can do. Yet I realised that all of these early achievers were of different generations to me - generations without the many temptations of modern life. So I asked who are the significant early achievers of my generation? The most obvious place to look for successful early achievers is the glitzy and high powered (but mostly overpaid) world of professional football. Last weekend saw the Carling Cup final take place, with Chelsea beating Arsenal in a thrilling 2-1 victory. But in the TV coverage of the warm-up to the game, a sinking feeling came over me as the teams were announced. Arsenal included in their line-up 5 players who are younger than me - Theo
Walcott (17), Cesc Fabregas (19), Denilson (19), Phillipe Senderos (22), and Abou Diaby (20) - all born after me. And they were playing in a national cup final. And they are getting paid thousands of pounds a week. I play on pitches covered with duck excrement and earn £6 an hour by waiting tables. Chelsea provided some solace - not only did they beat the Gooners, but none of their players were younger than me (Not that I have any remotely realsitic chances of playing in any domestic cup final in my lifetime anyway). When the game kicks off, not only do Fabregas and Denilson dominate in the middle of the park, but Theo "can't kick a ball for England" Walcott goes and scores t h e
opening goal. My first thought is how could Chelsea let a pre-pubescent cherub score against them, and my second thought is how ironic it is that he can play in an event sponsored by a beer company, but won't be able to have a beer to celebrate his goal after the match - unless he gets his mentor Titi Henry to buy him a round. My attention then turned to Google and a search for "Young Geniuses", the results of which were terrifying. Take Erik Demaine, who has been named the youngest of this year’s MacArthur Fellows, a prestigious group of creative geniuses in America. Demaine was admitted to University at the age of 12, joined their faculty of mathematics at age 14 and left six years later with a PhD in computer science. At age 20, Demaine became the youngest professor ever hired at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he currently teaches computer science. If I went to MIT, I'd be being taught by someone younger than myself, and someone infinitely more clever. Scary stuff, but then I realised that all of these early achievers had got to where they were for a reason - they dedicated large parts of their childhood to developing their skills and abilities, losing out on 'normal' childhood experiences as a result. So I may not have been declared a genius at the age of 5, a la Mr. Mozart, or be playing in the Premiership like Mr. Walcott, but I am proud of what I've achieved in life so far and can have a guiltfree pint any time I like. And as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with that.
editor@vision.york.ac.uk
[Theo Walcott: pint-sized superstar]
YORK VISION
RUBBISH
UNIVERSITY PLANS TO AXE LECTURERS VISION EXCLUSIVE by Boyd Schidt The university plans to axe all lecturers by 2009, according to a controversial secret report leaked to Vision last night. It is thought that the document is the final step in the university's move from centre of academic excellence to useless conference park. Describing lecturers as "pointless" and "a waste of money", the report details a complex timescale for a gradual phasing-out of the university's ever-withering
educational side project. In a statement, university manager, Emma Roids, said: "It's true. We don't care. What are we supposed to do? We need to save money, and university rankings mean nothing to us. You students can stay as long as you carry on paying your tuition fees." When presented with the report, a YOU:SUE spokesperson, who would prefer not to be named, said: "I don't really give a shit. As long as I still get paid for sitting on my arse, playing on Facebook, I'm happy." It is is thought that VC Brian Can't-Score is set to use the money to give himself a bonus of £7 trillion.
STUDENTS IN LATE-NIGHT LAKE SCANDAL by Wayne Kerr
Two students caused campuswide controversy last week when caught during a steamy romp in the middle of the lake. The two students, who are both History of Art third years, were found floating on a double lilo near Central Hall. The university's only porter, Mike Ocksmall, who found the passionate pair said he was literally "paralysed with shock" when he spotted the couple "at it" through his enormous binoculars. "I have never seen anything like it. My wife's quite a one in bed, but these two... well, horny doesn't cover it." Connie Lingus, who was spied raunchily rogering
Hugh G. Rection, said she was "pleased" to have been caught. "To be honest, it's all part of the fun. We were out to be caught. It's a massive turn-on. All this talk of lost chemicals just made it even more exciting." University spokesman Dick Tater said that the students should be "wary" of university retribution. "We are losing lethal chemicals left, right and centre, and these two bloody fools take it upon themselves to disgrace our reputation even further. They should be very afraid: I can chuck people out of university you know." When asked if he was getting any, Tater replied: "Of course not. I am basically an overpaid, incompetent loser".
Draaaawing out the truth... Last
Transport Attention all poverty-stricken students! A transport revolution is waiting just around the corner! Last Transport plc. has extravagant plans to waste even more council money by creating a brand new spaceship transport route between the university and town centre. The new 'shp' will charge a flat rate of £150 for a single journey. Excitingly, there will be no human staff on board; instead we will install an extremely irritating machine on each vessel, which will only accept unused £50 notes and will give absolutely no change.
UNIVERSITY
OF
Best of all, you will have no choice due to our handy monopoly over almost the entire city! Lots of love, Rich Bastard EXECUTIVE
Starting salary £1 million per annum. There are 1000 positions available. Apply with C.V. to Drew Peacock as soon as possible.
ably u. prob o He's ting on y chea
I do love you Gary, but why are you wearing a necklace and a belt on your head?
Later that evening...
They're extremely liberating Miranda.
Two seconds later... Annie 'Get Your Gun' Oakley OH MY GOD!
y Formal Apolog
required to join our dynamic administration team.
Successful candidates will show that they have the ability to: • Ruthlessly cut costs when required. • Understand where priorities lie. • Enjoy wielding disproportionate amounts of power. • Ignore moral dilemmas in the face of financial gain. • Be completely useless busybodies. • Make everybody else's lives hell.
event alifax The H early and closed l not back til he's s
Campus Lookalike
PENPUSHER
We need someone else to join our team of utterly pointless admin staff.
THE DISCOVERY: Trouble looks on the cards as Deborah's friend, Tina, tells her to confront her love-rat boyfriend, Gary.
Hopefully, our new scheme will augment journey times, pollute the environment, and get on everyone's tits much more than even our recent shitty ideas.
YORKIE
The University of Yorkie is a vibrant conference venue and business investment centre set on a gloriously colourful site to the south of the city of Yorkie. Some people even come here to do academic study and research. We are currently pouring a lot of time and resources into a grand and exciting expansion plan. This will see our site growing to engulf the grotty fields to the east of the unattractive local village of Heslingtown.
VISION'S PHOTO CASEBOO K
The fleet will be policed by a team of killer robots, who will make it their job to be as rude and unhelpful as is humanely possible. Customer service will be a thing of the past!
Amy Woods
THE
11
THE SKETCH
terça-feira fevereiroi 27, 2007
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! Evil bitch
This is actually quite raunchy.
NEXT ISSUE: Who knows? Whatever we write here never happens anyway. Having said that, it will most likely involve a lesbian romp or an orgy of some kind. (both 'Miranda's' ideas).
12 FEATURES
YORK VISION
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Tuesday February 27, 2007
FEATURES
I broke the Harry exam cheat story, Sven's love triangle and Harry going to Iraq
20!
WALKING THE PICKET LINE
Student porter Andrew Blakeley is one of the many students taking up the slack in the wake of the portering chaos: he shares his unique perspective
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ave our porters!” we all cry, and quite rightly too. We all want our porters back where they belong and things back to normal as soon as possible. The porters certainly appreciate the students’ support. However, as a student porter, called in to help the university through the current portering situation, I enjoy a unique objectiveness and ability to view the recent changes from both perspectives. As a student, I too am disheartened with the University for closing so many lodges, but as a porter I can see why the changes have been made, and I can’t help but empathise with the great team of committed porters, trying their utmost to provide the best service possible for the students. The closure of the lodges has meant big changes for those still open that those outside don’t get to see. Langwith College, for example, has now absorbed the duties of
both Derwent and Vanbrugh. This not only means that the porters have to travel between the colleges throughout the day, but also that all of the keys, files and equipment, which would usually be stored
Porters are doing their best to make this work and we can all help in their respective colleges, are now packed into the small rooms behind the lodge. The amount of
letters and parcels has meant that the university has had to contract a worker from an outside security company to help me take the burden off the duty porter. Please bear all this in mind when you have a request: when you ask for a key don’t just say, “Cblock”. Be specific and say, “Vanbrugh C-block”. The porters are doing their best to make this work and we can all help make it easier for them as students by trying to be as clear as possible. Originally I worked as a student porter over the summer, and as such I spent the majority of the holiday with the porters discussing the proposed contract changes and the 90 days’ notice they were given. Some of the porters that I worked with during the summer and would have liked to work
WHO IS SUFFERING IN THE CRISIS? - porters Most have suffered a great deal of upheaval over the last few months with the changing contracts, shifts and having to be retrained to work in unfamiliar colleges each with its own procedures and small nuances that ensure the smooth day-to-day running for the students. Workers who have spent the best part of the last 10 years in a college they love have been moved and now face their final working years in a very different job. Whilst we all want the re-opening of the lodges, this may not be the best turn of events for the much messed about porters. If all the lodges were opened, it remains a possibility that staff shortages could lead to 24 hour portering being out of the question and abandoned. If this were the case, porters would stand to lose thousands of pounds a year.
They would lose both their variable shift pay allowance and their unsociable hours pay too.
- students Particularly those in the now unmanned colleges have been inconvenienced. Lock yourself out of your room when you go for a shower in Vanbrugh and you’ll have to squelch your way across to Langwith in your towel to get your spare keys. Need directions for your lecture? You’ll have to walk to a manned college and hope that a porter who is particularly familiar with where you want to be is on duty. I’d rather not discuss the disturbing possibilities of not having a first-aid trained porter stationed in each college at all times. Likewise, a porter in Derwent may well have
HIPPY SPECIAL Australia's 'Mardi Grass' festival and how to save the planet
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prevented the beating of Chris Wiggins by 4 men last week.
- dept. workers These haven’t suffered as much as others, but there have been complaints that they are now being constantly pestered by students needing directions or with questions more befitting of a porter.
- visitors Upon arrival at the university many visitors are greeted not by a happy, helping face, but rather by a large green poster where the porters used to be. Anyone who remembers their first year knows how difficult it can be to find your way around the campus. It makes a bad impression on visiting prospective students.
with again have now left as a result of the changes. Some were close to retirement and decided to jump ship; another was unable to work the new shifts because of an ill wife and so transferred to work in the mail room; others simply moved colleges. If reopening the lodges causes 24 hour portering to be out of the question, then some porters could lose thousands of pounds a year, the knock-on effect of which could see the loss of even more devoted, trained workers. Having been called in to help out during this period, my duties include opening Vanbrugh College in the mornings and preparing it for the day ahead, sorting, handing out and delivering mail, handing out keys, giving directions, setting up rooms, and simply being there to help anyone who requires it. This aside, I have received mixed reactions from students. Some are pleased that I am helping out and helping take some of the strain off the porters. Others have compared me to a scab in a strike: suggesting that my involvement will keep things ticking over and cause management to make changes later rather than sooner. These students have every right to feel this way, but this is not the case. I am merely a stopgap between now and a fullstrength portering team.
VISION'S 20TH
Come celebrate 20 years of tackling uni admin, brothels and toxic dust...
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by And
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The university is currently sifting through application forms and will be interviewing and hiring new porters as soon as possible with a view to reopening the lodges as quickly as possible. With the cur-
Some students have compared me to a scab in a strike rent level of staff, and with a large number on permanent sick leave (and thus irreplaceable), opening all of the lodges simply isn’t possible. Our voices have been heard, and Ken Batten has assured everyone that things will be back to normal by the 28th of April. What this normality is, only time will tell. In the meantime the porters and I are here to help.
TANK ON HES RD Hes Rd Horrors becomes that little bit more horrifying
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YORK VISION
FEATURES
BROKEN BY THEIR PEERS
Tuesday February 27, 2007
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As a survey reveals that 57% of York student respondents feel they have been bullied at university, Emma Barrow wonders if it's something we'll ever grow out of
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e’d all like to think that bullying is something we left behind in the playground, but then Jade Goody and this year’s Big Brother came along to prove us wrong. Even putting aside the much-hyped racism issue, the behaviour of Jade and her partners in crime, Jo O’Meara and Danielle Lloyd, towards Shilpa Shetty was uncomfortable to watch, as the three women adopted an intimidating pack mentality and bitched their way into the headlines for all the wrong reasons. They were branded bullies and ostracised. “Quite right too,” we said. But, as we sat on our sofas, tut-tutting along with the best of them, were some of us not being just a little hypocritical? Don’t get me wrong, I can’t stand Jade Goody, and anything that sends her back to Planet Nobody, where people who think ‘East Angular’ is abroad are not considered national treasures, is fine by me. The sad truth, though, is that her behaviour was hardly unusual. It goes on everywhere, including right here. A survey conducted by the Students’ Union last term revealed that 57% of students questioned at random in Vanbrugh during a lunch hour felt they had been bullied since arriving at York. Of the 106 students questioned, 11 had been the victims of physical violence, 33 had been verbally abused, 47 had been on the receiving end of jokes that went too far and 21 felt excluded by their housemates. Furthermore, 85% claimed to have witnessed bullying at some point during their time here. At first glance, these figures
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University is, after all, a bit like life in the Big Brother house
seem quite staggering, but should we really be that surprised? University is, after all, a bit like life in the Big Brother house. Being forced to live with a group of people you have never met before, and may or may not have anything in common with, is unlikely to be an entirely stress-free and harmonious experience, as one first year I spoke to explained. “Bullying and bitchiness seem to be everywhere in the first year of university life, to one degree
or another,” he said. “When people are forced to live together in groups with other people that they’ve never met before, all from a variety of backgrounds, differ-
I needed the university to hold my hand a little bit more ences are bound to occur. If there is a socially predominant group, say just a few people have bonded more closely than the rest, and one of those people has a minor personality clash with someone who is outside their group, the whole of the group can easily turn on the outsider, and encourage others to do the same, spreading stories about them, labelling them as weird or as a malicious person. When people are feeling vulnerable and alone, as they do at the start of uni, it feels comforting to have a common enemy, someone to focus your energy on and complain about to others.” But does this really qualify as bullying? The more admirable amongst you may be able to resist temptation but, let’s face it, most of us indulge in a good old bitching session every once in a while. Disliking someone isn’t a crime, after all. Nor is talking about them behind their back. It seems there is a thin line between being human and being downright nasty. “In both my personal experience, and from the experience of friends, bullying often isn’t active, but occurs just through exclusion by others, whether intentional or just as an accidental side effect of people not getting on,” continued the first year student. “When people around you do things together - cook together, go out together, plan to live together the next year - and you’re excluded, left to do everything alone, it can feel very isolating. It can feel just as bad as if you’re being actively bullied, even if those doing the bullying, or what feels like bullying, are unaware of the effects of their actions.” Students’ Union Academic and Welfare Officer, Amy Foxton, echoed these thoughts. “It’s not a crime to dislike someone," she said, “but I believe it is a form of bullying to make someone feel uncomfortable. Bullying isn’t just physical or verbal abuse, it can include spreading gossip about someone, excluding someone and making this exclusion very clear, giving someone the silent treat-
ment, staring, giggling, or laughing at someone, and mocking them. There’s a difference between not being friends with someone and treating them badly.” There are, of course, two sides to every story, but whatever the exact definition of bullying, there is no doubt that some people are made to feel like they don’t fit in when they first start at university. We arrive as adults, ready to stand on our own two feet, but it’s still a scary experience for even the most socially adept person and if you’re unlucky enough to find yourself living with people who you just don’t ‘click’ with, it can be a miserable one too. I spoke to another first-year girl who feels she was unfairly targeted by her housemates last term. “I was bullied at school and definitely felt I received the same, if not worse, treatment when I first came to uni,” she explained. “I know my flatmates would talk about me behind my back, and they made the fact that they didn’t like me very obvious by excluding me from nights out and communal meals. They teased me and played practical jokes that went that little bit too far as well. I wouldn’t have minded them doing those things if they were my actual friends, but they’re weren’t. Basically, I was just made to feel like an outsider.” So is the university aware of
the problem? And is enough being done to help students who find themselves in these sorts of situations? “When you first arrive you’re bombarded with information and phone numbers to ring, but I still felt really lost and alone,” she continued. “I saw everyone around me having an amazing time and wondered why I wasn't one of them. I know it sounds a bit pathetic, but I needed the university to hold my hand a little bit more I think. My flat’s ‘buddy’ seemed to just disappear after Freshers’ Week, and I wasn’t aware of any non-students at my college I could speak to, like you’d talk to a teacher if you were at school. If I hadn’t made friends through my course and societies I probably would have just quit.” Amy Foxton is now using the
results of last term’s survey to work with the university in increasing student awareness of help available to those who are being bullied or harassed. The hope is that it will stop bullying being seen as such a childish concept, something that just stops when you leave school, and make both bullies and the bullied sit up and take notice. “Bullying is an issue at the University of York, just as it is at school, at other universities and in the workplace,” said Foxton. “Unfortunately most students don’t realise that it is an issue and this can make people reluctant to seek help, but students who feel they are being bullied should talk to someone, whether it’s a university harassment advisor, Nightline, their college tutor, their supervisor or someone from the SU."
the welfare survey results 57% - Felt they had been bullied at York
85% - Claimed to have witnessed bullying
Being the odd one out isn't much fun
at York
Source - YUSU Welfare Survey
Photo by Tom Hole
14 FEATURES
YORK VISION
USE RESPONSIBLY
Tuesday February 27, 2007
What can students really do about Climate Change? Vision asks where the buck should stop
GREENFINGERS for the environment. For example, computer scientists are not usually seen as tree-huggers, but a passion for fitting together bits of old
Students should take advantage of the thousands of pounds available for green projects
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ne of the greatest privileges I had as a student was that I had so much free time on my hands. Now that I have a full-time job, my time is not my own in the same way as when I had only nine hours of lectures a week. So, what can students uniquely do to take responsibility towards the environment? I would say use your time. Compared to when you graduate, you’ve got ample time to inform yourself about the problems, time to think about and discuss what the solutions might be, and time to work towards those solutions. People often associate being green with ‘dull but worthy’ activities like separating waste for recycling, or giving up things you enjoy. However, wherever your passions or interests lie, there are opportunities to make a difference
Peter Sanderson, prospective Green Party candidate for Heslington, talks to Vision about going green while you’ve got the time computers and making them work has led to an excellent computer recycling service run by students on the campus. Many student houses have rubbish gardens. For about £30 a year, you can get a decent sized allotment, which can used for summer barbeques as well as growing fresh vegetables to cut down on the carbon emissions of flying food around the world. St Nicholas Fields in Tang Hall runs a nature park and environment centre, and collects kerbside recycling from thousands of households in York. It has plenty of opportunities for volunteers to do conservation work and to help organise activities. In short there so many ways to use your spare time to do something you find fulfilling but which also help create a greener world. Of course, people often say that they are doing their small bit
NOT MY PROBLEM
Iain Withers argues that the government should be picking up the pieces
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here’s something grating about the idea that an economist might save the world. The Stern report highlighted the economic reasons why global warming was a bad thing and finally the world seemed to sit up and take notice. The hippies can say what they want about how nice trees are and the like but the fact that the issue has been reframed in terms that consumers and businesses understand has got to be a good thing. Alan Davies, minutes into the New Year, laughed with Jools Holland and the illustrious Alan Carr about how the warmer weather would be a delirious boon. Morality aside, (after all, it was a party, it was New Year for god’s sake) the underwhelming exchange touched on something important on the verge of another important year for the planet. Whatever the extent of people’s concerns for the environment, wants are the consumer’s main regard. Warm weather; warm holidays – it’s the lifestyle, stupid. It’s hard to expect working people to restrict their lifestyles, cut down on holidays and so on. And this isn’t the only lifestyle dynamic at play when people consider their environmental obligations. When people are open to choose, acting green isn’t just an alternative to another lifestyle preference, it’s often seen as an active
lifestyle choice in itself. I can’t say I subscribe to the engineworshipping of Top Gear, but their ‘two fingers up at the environment’ attitude is instructive of the way greenery is perceived by a significant proportion of the country – as wishy-washy, boring, perhaps even as the preserve of the organic-shopping middle class. As the two Alan’s demonstrated, most people are not overly concerned with the natural impacts of global warming. It’s a shame that the polar bears are dying out, people say, but they are generally active consumers first, compassionate second; in the main, cynical, and concerned about taxes. To leave the environment open to choice is dangerous. Acting green is not usually the consumerist norm. Most people do not systematically check their lifestyles in order to be green and the problem is made even worse if acting green is seen as actively signing up to a lifestyle that isn’t your own. Say the word ‘green’ and its not just the desirable end you hear, its also the lifestyle choice – vegetarianism, anti-capitalism, hippy, Greenpeace. I’m not anti-Greenpeace. Environmental groups need to keep economists and politicians to account. Regardless of whether the kitchen sink green agenda is right or wrong, however, when it comes to
climate change, ‘green’ is much too important to be ‘Greenpeace’. Government needs to do much more to make green the norm, far away from the current dynamics of lifestyle, fashion, sacrifice and choice. Hopefully this change will come with the forthcoming Climate Change Bill (scheduled to be legislated for this year). Tony Blair has acknowledged that expecting consumers to take the lead in areas such as air travel is delusional. But is his belief that technology will save the day credible? This ‘hope’ cannot get in the way of real guts in drafting the Climate Change Bill. Excessive packaging should be made illegal – the amount of packaging being wasted down the aisles of your average supermarket is scandalous. Flights should be cut back. This needs to be government led. This is not to say that consumers don’t have any obligations as far as the environment is concerned, it is just to say that the government must accept that the most important choices now facing us, acting green, must be free of consumerist malaise and become the consumerist mainstream. They are the ones with the time and the obligation to act.
but it is ultimately government and big companies that need to act. This is true to an extent and, as a Green politician, my particular focus is to influence the political system to make it easier for people to be green – and particularly to ensure the system does not put obstacles in the way of being green. People volunteering for a community group or starting up a project to help the environment often find it very useful to have a local
representative sympathetic to what they’re doing. For example, the City Council gives away tens of thousands of pounds a year to be spent on community and environmental projects – but very few student groups think about trying to access any of this. And the more power and influence Green politicians have, the more meaningful green work opportunities there will be for graduates. In a few years, when you look back on your time as a student, you will be amazed and thankful for all the free time you had. And whether your interests tend to be creative or technical, or strategic, there are plenty of ways to use this time to combine your interests with creating a greener world.
DO YOUR BIT There’s plenty of research going on in the Chemistry and Biology departments that explores environmentally friendly solutions for the future but what can everyone else at York do to make the world a greener, cleaner, happier place? PEOPLE & PLANET are the most actively environmentalist and ethical group on campus. Here their top tips on how to save the environment in your everyday life... Refuse Plastic Bags and take your own to the shops: Topshop has even got in the act, giving out funky paper bags and with 8 billion bags being used a year in the UK it’s a vital step. Print on both sides of the paper : If you're printing off a draft or an article of from the web, there’s no reason not to tick the ‘print on both sides’ option given 350 million trees are chopped down in the UK each year. Don’t do Stand-by: The power wasted if you leave your TV or PC on stand-by now could provide electricity in 600,000 houses next year. Get on your bike: A bike-friendly campus like York still seems to have an alarmingly high amount of parking so don’t think that it’s so much quicker to hop into a car to do your shopping; peddling harder could save those toxic fuel emissions. Shop locally and ethically: See page 16 for one idea of where to go. Finally, don’t be afraid to get creative. Don’t let your books, mags and papers just get pulped sell them, swap them, pass them on and, you know, Nouse would make great wrapping paper… CLAUDIA STERN
YORK VISION
FEATURES
Tuesday February 27, 2007
MARDIGRASS
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o one knows how many people live in Nimbin. Australia’s government can at best throw out numbers in the vague region of the nearest thousand, but the town's founders are fully aware that such a figure simply cannot exist. Most of its inhabitants don’t have an address, national insurance numbers are certainly considered surplus to requirement and some don’t even answer to the name that they were given at birth; people come to Nimbin to escape bureaucracy and capitalism. A sign swaying in the window of the infamous Rainbow Café illustrates this sentiment resoundingly: ‘Escaped Refugees Welcome Here’. Born out of the Aquarius Festival in 1973, Nimbin’s town centre sits in the North East corner of New South Wales, an area aptly referred to by Nimbinites as the Rainbow Region. Apt because not only does the town represent a refuge from
governmental administration, it is famed Australia-wide for its relaxed approach to marijuana. Approach, mind, not laws. For Nimbin is no different from the rest of Australia with regards to its legal stance on cannabis, and yet even before arriving at the town’s centre the pungent scent is unmistakable. Marijuana is a way of life and a symbol of rebellion in Nimbin; a fact inescapable when ambling down the short street that comprises the town centre. In every shop and restaurant window the ever-iconic marijuana leaf sits unashamedly;, people – dealers brazenly wander the streets selling joints and happy cakes; there is even a museum dedicated entirely to the legal life of cannabis. All represent a protest long-forgotten and yet perhaps Nimbin’s true meaning lies beyond its public veneer. Beyond the bold hippy protest, concealed within the thick-forested mountains of the Rainbow Region,
Matt Houghton lifts the lid on Australia's strangest town and its annual visitors
lies a complex, sprawling world of communes and private dwellings. In amongst the marijuana plantations and eucalyptus trees there exists an incalculable number of shacks and caravans and tents, whose residents are all left to their own devices to live the life that most presumed died with the seventies. Yet, the Australian police cannot be seen to be doing nothing about the illegal cultivation and sale of cannabis. Having exhausted the customary sniffer-dog approach and executed a number of prosecutions that largely came to nothing, they have taken to spotting plantations with the aid of a helicopter and subsequently implementing ground forces to rip them out. However, faced with a highly uncooperative community who have consistently made evidence-gathering a near impossible process, the real impact of any police attempt at suppression is notably muted.
P e r h a p s unsurprisingly, Nimbin has categorically grafted itself onto the backpacker’s circuit, embodying as it does everything that the coveted gap year should represent; freedom, independence and Bob Marley. Complete with friendly hostels, funky, psychedelic cafés and the renowned Hemp Embassy, Nimbin provides for many a welcome haven and an interesting pit stop. Yet, it is its annual festival, appropriately named the Mardi Grass, that attracts travellers in their throngs. Once a year, the small, run-down, sleepy town, is comprehensively converted into a loud, colourful, vibrant ode to marijuana. The streets are dominated by dredlocked stoners willing to impart their other-worldly pearls of wisdom. Every available surface sports the emblematic red, green and yellow of the Rastafarian
flag. Stalls selling hemp clothes and hash pipes, lava lamps and beaded necklaces line the broken pavements. Events from spliff rolling competitions to hemp jelly wrestling punctuate the weekend with eager participants. And all, despite their light-hearted and blithe character, are representative of a town unwilling to adhere to the bureaucratic shackles of everyday life. In its quirky, unique and highly illegal way, Nimbin stands against the officious governmental intrusions and, more importantly, Starbucks. To some it is a haven, a single town where one can wander free from the manacles of red tape. To others it is symbolic of an age gone by. To others still it is simply a place to go and smoke weed. Yet, whether one agrees with the values that Nimbinites choose to live by – indeed, it unanimously provokes ethical questions – it is an interesting social experiment that if nothing else colours the
COFFEE AND KINDNESS Tim Oates brings random acts of kindness to a chilly campus they also had fun. People seemed very willing to share a few moments with us once they realised that they weren’t being asked to pay for anything. It was clear that my new friends really enjoyed what they were doing, and they seemed to be very good at it. After visiting Vanbrugh, the bear and friends moved up to Market Square to spread some Costcutter kindness, before standing outside the library, hoping to distract a few of those hard-working students from their essays with the help of chocolate. It was here that we were lucky enough to meet two porters, and they were more than happy to be given a bear hug. After all, porters have a tough time too.
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It was great to see people look genuinely shocked and pleased
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tood outside the library on a wintery grey morning, watching a girl dressed in a bear costume distributing free hugs to passers by, I realised that my day wasn’t going quite as anticipated. It had been something I’d wanted to do for a while, a few good deeds I mean, not watching bears. They’re fashionably known as random acts of kindness and take many forms. All that really unites them is the general wish to brighten up somebody’s day. But anyway, back to the bear. For those not in the know, we have just experienced National Kindness Week (12th-19th February) and none were happier about this than LoveSoc. With the help of a hired bear costume and several buckets full of sweets, LoveSoc were intent on bringing their message into the public eye. Inside the bear outfit was LoveSoc chair, Sal Worby. It isn’t easy to separate a bear from the business of giving out free hugs, but I did manage it, and the message she had for me was really very simple: “LoveSoc’s just about spreading a bit of love and making things a bit better”. It’s a nice message and one that people were certainly warming to; it was great to see people look genuinely shocked and pleased to be given a little something for free, although the hugs weren’t quite so popular. In fact more than one person fled in fear, but the bear was most definitely harmless and extremely cuddly (as my photographer found out very quickly). Each week LoveSoc members complete a different act of kindness for students around them. They’re generally small things aimed to make someone’s day like baking a cake for a friend or sending a Valentines text message. “Everyone has a hard time being a student,” says Sal. “We work hard and don’t get a lot of free things, I think we’re making things a bit better”. LoveSoc spread a lot of happiness in Kindness Week, but
Hoping to please a few more porters, we visited Langwith and Derwent porters lodge. Unfortunately there weren’t any porters to hug and we were all very sad. It was all very well watching other people being kind, I thought, but it was time I got in on the act. I hadn’t come quite as prepared as everyone else but I did have a thermos flask full of hot coffee and a bag of sweets. It was time to see just how good random acts of kindness felt. It took a while to get people interested in the coffee. “Sorry mate, I’m still pissed” said the first
person I asked, not breaking his stride as he stormed off to his lecture. It was a pity because I felt he could have done with a bit of kindness. Maybe it was obvious that I was new to this kindness thing, or maybe it was the photographer’s camera aimed straight at them. Either way people really didn’t seem inclined to stop and talk to me. I couldn’t have looked that weird. I did eventually manage to get someone to have a drink of coffee with me. I met a father and son who had come to visit the university from Cornwall, and shared a drink in the shadow of Central Hall. This was great, we were having a laugh. It turned out that the dad had graduated from York thirty years ago. I learned all about the pranks of the past and we agreed that very little had changed. The son seemed very pleased with his first experience of York. I only hope he doesn’t expect free coffee to be waiting for him when he gets here next year. I had finally managed a random act of kindness, and it was brilliant. Maybe they’d remember me on their drive home and smile. Maybe they’d have a coffee later and say, “this isn’t as good as the one we got in York”. Even if I hadn’t changed someone’s day for the better, it felt like I had, and that was good enough for me. Deciding to do a nice thing for someone was hard. I think being spontaneous is probably better, but for now I’m happy with my efforts and in future I may keep my eyes open for more chances to do nice things. You’d best watch out.
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Photos by Mark Fountain
porter love
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. Spiralling numbers of Hes Road thefts and burglaries cul-
Seen any horrifying happenings down Heslington Road? We want to hear from you! hesroadhorrors@hotmail.co.uk
SIT UP, TAKE NOTICE Tim Oates explains that if you really are concerned about Tesco, Sainsbury's et al screwing up the planet, York's newest supermarket provides you with no excuses for turning a blind eye
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ut Of This World is certainly not run of the mill. It publicises itself as selling ‘quality foods, ethically produced’ and this description seems to hit the mark. The supermarket, opened last summer in George Hudson Street, is the fourth in a chain that boasts the widest range of ethically sourced goods in the country. Officially it is a ‘Creative Consumer Cooperative’, a business owned by its members, with the twin aims of challenging destructive consumerism and enabling people to shop for a better world. When it began trading twelve years ago Out Of This World had the financial backing of 2,000 members, this has now increased to roughly 16,000. To find a place on Out Of This World’s shelves each product must pass the test of scoring highly in one of five categories. This is intended to ensure that each product furthers the company’s drive to help create a better world. The five categories are healthy eating, fair trade, community development, animal welfare and environmental stability. What’s strange is that while I would find it hard to think of any issue more appealing to students than any of these five, there are
very few young people shopping here today. If YUSU drives for boycotts of Coca Cola and Nestle, as well as it’s hopes of producing organic and fair trade merchandise are in anyway reflective of student opinion then it would surely be the case that the place would be packed with students eager to do their bit. There are many possible reasons
The shelves are piled high with loads of interesting and unusual products
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minated last week with the drafting of the armed forces to the Hes Road beat. Onlookers were amazed as the tank (pictured), crawled ominously up and down the road before turning left towards Fulford outside the Vic. Speculation as to whether it indicated using conventional blinking amber lights, or with a swivel of its 120mm turret gun remain unresolved. The most horrifying Hes Road happening, experienced by my own housemates, was the phenomenon of ‘student party dirty scallies’. Given certain pertaining factors, the theft of several posters and toiletry items from our house may have been understandable. However, we had not put up a sign outside saying ‘All iz up for grabs’, nor did we suggest that our ‘Guardian readers’ poster was anything other than our MOST prized living room possession. The armed forces, who we rang, were reluctant to get involved, although after some pressing they suggested that they would commit to a sustained bombing campaign, only if intelligence permitted. Last issue we revealed that peacocks had brought karma to the cynical, hungover street. This week nature fought back. One resident was terrorized by the overweight, excessive bragger birds, which staked out on her roof. In spite of the fact that she was too afraid to leave the house or to perform routine roof tile maintenance, the armed forces refused, scandalously, to intervene. A spokesman implored “how can we intervene, we can’t intervene in everything at once can we?!” But was this tank really evidence of an army presence on Hes Road? Could it be evidence of the fiendish commandeering of an armed vehicle by those envy-eyed Hull Road-ers? Were enraged feminists taking direct action to its most disturbing and purest realization by paying a visit to the Corner Shop (cleverly dubbed ‘The Porner Shop’) in an attempt to tackle head-on its surprisingly huge array of pornographic magazines?
YORK VISION
Tuesday February 27, 2007
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16 FEATURES
for this lack of students. There is certainly a lack of awareness about Out Of This World amongst the student population; it has also been speculated that student apathy is on the rise and there is a popular assumption that small retailers
such as this cannot compete on price with giants such as Tesco and Asda (an assumption which proves to be false when prices are compared with Tesco.com). Their lack of student customers is not something that Out Of This World are keen to see continue. With this in mind they are using Fairtrade fortnight (26th February11th March) to boost student numbers. All students are to be offered a 15% discount and there will be free tasting tests as well. “We’d love to see more students come through the doors,” says Marianne the shop’s manager, “we feel that many students share our values and we’d very much like to help them limit their impact on the environment.” The supermarket should be of particular interest to vegetarians and vegans with product ranges far exceeding those in large supermarkets. There are also a lot of products for those suffering from lactose, gluten or yeast intolerances and for coeliacs. It’s quite obvious from talking to the staff how important the message of this shop and others like it are to many people. “We do try to hire staff with a passion for our products,” says Marianne, “and they all have a great level of
product knowledge because these are the type of things which they’re using themselves.” It is difficult not to be impressed by what has been achieved here; not only are the shelves piled high with loads of interesting and unusual products but they are all produced in as environmentally friendly a way as possible. Many goods are produced in York’s surrounding areas and much that comes from abroad travels here by boat thus limiting carbon emissions. Out Of This World takes this very seriously, making sure that products have as minimal an impact as possible ,whether it be through encouraging bio diversity, recycling resources or protecting vulnerable eco systems. In a further effort to protect our surroundings all of their vegetable waste is composted through the York Rotters to help reduce the burden on landfills. Coming here has definitely altered the way I plan to go about my shopping in the future, and with the student discount currently on offer there has never been a better time to try the supermarket for yourself. Whether it be for the occasional treat or for your weekly shop, Out Of This World is a great option.
SNAKE CHARMING INTERVIEW :
I
t’d be easy to conclude when the credits role after Snakes On A Plane that the band that takes to the screen in the soundtrack’s blaring centrepiece, Cobra Starship, have been formed just for the picture. But how wrong you’d be. Gabe Saporta, Uruguayan-born frontman of pop-punk American band Midtown, formed the aptly named Cobra Starship over a year before Snakes On A Plane had been conceived. Apart from almost being sued by Gwen Stefani (Gabe was responsible for a parody of the song 'Hollaback Girl' that weaved giving a teacher oral sex and "superblahblah" into its lyrics), Cobra Starship had little fame to speak of until Snakes On A Plane. The recording and filming of the Snakes On A Plane soundtrack ‘Bring It’ brought together William Beckett of The Academy Is..., Travis McCoy of Gym Class Heroes, and Maja Ivarsson of Swedish band The Sounds, who Gabe begged to be involved so as to fulfil his lifelong fantasy of meeting her, for the quirky upbeat track that would propell Gabe and his project to the forefront of the hype surrounding the movie, providing them with a platform from which to tour the US and worldwide. The band brought out an album at the back end of last year, ‘When The City Sleeps We Rule The
Iain Withers chats to the boys and girls from Cobra Starship Streets’, and is currently touring with their irreverent, energetic ‘emo-pop’ sound on an MTV tour of the US. I caught up with Gabe and his full-time band members Alex Suarez, Ryland Blackington, Elisa Schwartz and Nate Navarro to talk SOAP, touring and talking snakes… The upbeat silliness of the song ‘Bring It’ is perfect for SOAP. Did you realize that the song was going to fit so well with the film? Gabe: I don’t think we realized it was going to fit so perfectly until we added Travis (from Gym Class Heroes) rapping parts. Once he did his thing I think the song really became the ying to Snakes on a Plane's yang. Is it true that you already had most of the lyrics before you knew about the film? How much did you have to adapt the song for the film? Gabe: Not really much at all. Basically one line and the rap, but since we are Cobra, the words kinda just spit out of us like venom. That’s quite a fluke. Was the way that the Cobra project, the song ‘Bring it’ and the film SOAP came together a bit eerie? Do you thank SOAP at all for the kickstart it gave the band?
Gabe: Haha yes, actually just yesterday Robert Goulet called, he wants to star in our next video. How did you conceive of Cobra? Word has it that you took time out in the desert (his myspace claims that he was bitten by a talking cobra) to decide on your irreverent vibe… Gabe: The stories are true. As for deciding what we wanted to do, we just wanted to have fun. I know when I go out I like to dance and get crazy, and I really wanted to make a record that could help out with that.
The band members with Samuel L. Jackson Gabe: We totally thank SOAP. It was probably one of the most talked about movies of 2006, and I think it absolutely contributed to our rise and we were so lucky to be a part of the phenomenon. I mean, I also think that we’ve put out a pretty fantastic record, so I think that helped a little too. It’s crazy how things work out. You got a good line-up for the ‘Bring It’ video (even Samuel L. Jackson made an appearance). Are people generally dropping what they’re doing and throwing themselves down at the Cobra altar, as it were?
Are you guys enjoying touring with Cobra? Any UK tour plans? Gabe: Tour is awesome! We’re having the best time ever. We get to play on stage and off, with friends everyday and see everyone who’s been behind us since day one. If you wanna see what we’ve been up to, you can head over to cobrastarship. buzznet.com and see us in action. We don’t really have any UK tour plans yet, but hopefully we’ll get there very soon... We want to rock the Starship worldwide. Check out their album While the City Sleeps, We Rule the Streets at purevolume.com/cobrastarship, and Hollaback Boy at cobrastarship. com/hollabackboy.mp3.
YORK VISION
LIFESTYLE
17
LIFESTYLE
V
Tuesday Feberuary 27, 2007
>FOOD
>DRINK
>STYLE
>TRAVEL
P MP MY Hair!
For Vision's next attempt at 'pimping' we took on the ultimate challenge; a girl's one classic and natural love and joy...her luscious locks. With the help of Femme Fatale Hairdressers and a Yves Saint Laurent make-up artist, we transform a typical scruffy student into an proper lady, ready for the world of work and glitzy evenings out that require a touch more glam than a night at Ziggys!
BEFORE:
Fluffy uncontrollable hair makes carla look more spring chick than rock chic.
Looking like the love child from cousin It and Big Bird from Sesame Street, with so much hair its hard to know what to do with it for a sophisticated night out. Carla usually ends up in despair...hats are her best friend.
Carla's mop is at that irritable length where it neither ties up or sits nicely, and with no layers put in she is constantly flicking her hair back from her face.
Being on a student budget makes grooming and taking good care of her hair very hard indeed - and results in split ends and greasy roots: hair nightmare!
Carla's typical student life of late night partying, and early morning lectures leaves her skin looking tired and dull.
Constant straightening her hair has left it dull, dry and lifeless.
AFTER:
Stu d It's ent dri vers all a : b ou Fiat Pun t the tos!
P19
Road Tripping into the Land of Vodka
P20 le Sty es takthe on ate m ultibate: de ny skinns! jea
Oh la la... Carla's make-over went down a treat... Make-up: by Rebecca from the Yves Saint Laurent team in Fenwicks.
Hair: by Sam Pearson, the style director from Femmes Fatales.
The first step was to clease and tone Cara's face to remove any left over make-up or dirt picked up from the pollutants outside which leaves skin looking dull.
Carla went for an inverted bob with sharp edges, for a sleek sophisticated look. A big trend at the moment. The look is more grown up and mature but still looks trendy. By taking the weight out of the hair with layers, its is also much easier to manage and style.
Moisturiser and eye cream was then applied to rehydrate the skin, as applying foundation onto dry skin leaves it looking uneven and feeling tight. Then the primer and foundation #3 was applied.
Sam used GHD heat protective products to straighten Carla's hair, Obediance cream , an anti-humidity smoothing balm to create a smooth style, and Creative style spray to give the hair extra hold and keep everything in place. Finally, he recommended Carla used a polishing serum, exellent for fine hair like hers, to add texture and to keep her hair looking glossy.
P18
A light pink eyeshadow was put on, complimented by a darker purple eyeliner to add focus to the eyes. False Lash mascara was used to open up the eyes even more. Fancy treating yourself to some love and care? Femmes Fatales Hair and Beauty salon 35 Fossgate, York 01904 655429 Student discount of 15% on Mon/Tues/Wed.
For the finishing touch, Touche Blush #3 with a blackcurrant tint was used to bring colour to the cheeks and finally a bit of golden gloss for the lips.
P21
AND...
HAS YOUR FAVOURITE TAKE-AWAY WON?
18 LIFESTYLE
YORK VISION
Tuesday February 27, 2007
Mad about Motors The Drive of Your Life (If you're a student that is!) Andy Wells and Katherine Duke tell us why Fiat Puntos make the perfect student drive.
C
hoosing the right car can leave you stumped at the best of times but it can be especially difficult when relying on a student loan for support. When looking for a new car I wanted a small yet practical car that is relatively cheap to run. After looking at various superminis like the Renault Clio, Vauxhall Corsa and Peugeot 206 I finally decided on a Fiat Punto. I went for the 1.2 3dr and found its perfect for me, after a few minor improvements like alloy wheels, remote central locking and a CD player I was ready to go. This car is brilliant for both city driving and long distance motorway travel, although speed isn’t its strong point it is quick to accelerate in lower gears. On the backroads though the car is good fun with responsive steering and excellent handling, although I wouldn’t reccommend using the city power steering. The interior offers both comfort and style with fully adjustable seats and steering wheel for the best possible driving position. There is an abundance of space for such a small car and with an extensive list of
safety features including ABS and airbags as standard you feel secure when behind the wheel. The dash board, lights, controls and ventilation are well positioned and easy to operate making for a very pleasing driving experience. One benefit of the firm suspension is road holding. When whizzing around corners the Grande Punto feels a bit like a roller skate although under acceleration the weight and limited amount of power is obvious but doesn’t hinder progress. Road holding and handling are complimented by quick and direct steering which actually has a ‘city’ mode when negotiating tricky and tight spots. When ‘city’ mode is activated and the car is below 30mph the steering becomes very light and easy to use. One compromise that has to made for this system is the feel through the steering which seems very detached and vague although turn-in is still sharp and direct. But by far the best thing about this car is its cheap running costs, its cheap to insure and service and has a relatively low petrol bill making it ideal for young driversAlso after the initial drop in price that all
cars incur the Punto doesn’t suffer from worrying depreciation levels making it a good overall investment. Despite the Punto reputation I’ve had no mechanical problems, except a small problem with the exhaust which w a s easily fixed, a n d even if things do go wrong parts for the Punto are readily available from most garages making repairs both cheap and speedy. So, while the Punto isn’t as stylish as some cars and the performance isn’t the best of its class, it can offer good value for money with a modern feel and a good driving
experience. I would recommend this car to
anyone looking for a cheap car that is fun to drive.
Society Stunner Sneak Preview I
Name: Natalie Name: HenryCarter Smith College: Alcuin College: Alcuin Year: 3rd Year: 2nd Society: Fusion Society: Men's Football
evolution of Urban music, begining with a t's that time of year again, for the past few tribal scene involving the Afro-Carribean Somonths the universities best dancers and prettiest students have been rehearsing ciety and the Capoeira Society. The remainder of the show travels through non stop to put on the third Fusion, campuses largets charity event featuring dancing, the twentieth century featuring 30's Jazz, 40's modelling and music. But this year it's Fusion Burlesque and culminates in futuristic dance with a twist. routines. The classic elements remain the same; This year will also see a greater high quality performances, a mergvariety in the choreography ing of some of campuses most used, as well a second collab. . . diverse societies, the latest oration with Lynzi Brown ty i r designs from high street of Suga Brown Dance : ha r c fo nr and designer stores Studios York students u y o f e f such as Hugo Boss, have been working on ll ers ually a e m t g n ann 's Whistles and Miss hard to put together a n u t i l i s o v ice ai Selfridge and hopenumber of specialist er r e r b s w m we aid t it. ni kroutines including fully a large profit e r o y i t o s i m d t w ballroom dancing. for charity. Fu har e tha nee Re ns ical, r c u a o r Fusion's head However new ye , a ibut wh h phys t s c c i i e choreographers Lucy president Hannah Th ire distr thos wh ial, . D e s r c Davies and Laura Martin has made Aid and to ent spe eed Wilson were keen to some fundamennd aid ectly e c with ial n c a n r c tal changes, firststress how hard evepe or di ma le an Ho aise f for peop or fin ly and most ambiryone involved with r r e d g p n l tiously increasing Fusion this year has : A ou ona the number of perworked in in order to enact for y ucati r e formances to two, on sure the show's success, with Int hops ed s consecutive nights, some rehearsals lasting eleven ensuring that Fusion hours, if last years superb show retains it's title of the largis anything to go by thsi year's will est event on Campus. Secondly definately be worth seeing, especially as while the events popular urban theme will it looks as though Miss Martin has a few surremain, this year the routines will depict the prises up her sleeve...
Fusion is on Friday 2nd of March and Saturday 3rd of March. Tickets are on now in Your:Shop, £6.50 for Could your Society Stunner sizzle in Vision? sale students and £8.50 for adults - but Send any photos to life@vision.york.ac.uk they're selling fast, so get yours quickly!
YORK VISION
LIFESTYLE
Tuesday February 27, 2007
All Work and No Play?
19
All work and no play can lead to a dull student, but more importantly to no degree. Charlotte Chung and Carla Dobson try to find the balance port, published in 2005, shows that nearly 40% of full-time stuents with part-time jobs feel that their employment has had a negative impact on their studies. Having to juggle part-time work, especially ones which are physically tiring, also increses the students level of stress. Although the results from the
activities too, such as the various dents in York, and provides paid sports clubs and socities, or just- work in sectors such as marketing time spent relaxing and socialis- and advertising, IT, PR and working. ing with databases. However, the Obviously, trying to find a suit- duration of the work provided varable job is easier said than done, as ies from one day to a few weeks. the types of jobs avaliable seem to With all the difficulties of finding that gem job from the not one be quite limited, bar work much? that makes you work like a slave, spent relaxing and socialising. Obviously, trying to find a suit- Vision has hunted down working able job is easier said than done, as students to give you a preview of the types of jobs avaliable seem to what to expect from the the usual, and a couple of unusual, part-time be quite limited, bar work much? jobs out there: Popping down to the careers centre or having a search through their 'UniJobs' listings might find you something you would not have thought about doing, especially if report are pretty dire towards stu- during vacations or in periods you are looking for a dents working during term-time, when there is not the usual press- job that is relavent to it cannot be true that all working sure of study. what you want to do as a However, most students do not future career student’s studies will naturally be find their part-time jobs through hindered by their part-time work, The careers cen'UniJobs' and it would be unrealis- tre provides a proat least not to such an extent. s Factors will include how many tic to expect 'UniJobs' to be able to gramme called ou n er le i he h provide the vast mnumbers of jobs BUSY which m b t ot y sought after. As a result the most stands for nu ila all sl ar e a v o a common complaint from working Business's th av ire of ey g t ing students is the lack of flexibility U s i n g of are equ ed th vin or ve e and understanding from their em- S t u r e d l B o g on hat ry sp An she sk. ab tin ployers who end up pushing them y t a n ' r nd s. o de ay it n er to work more hours than is good for A obs lib y a ive n. t he w e, s d o e p p . n g t j i t n g a h u id ' e rg a them. th ne ed dm on ayi wa ng es t ot pa Furthermore, with the intros a g P n di d sw g e n a duction of top-up fees leaving stuo om kin y? mu uil ovi to ttin ne i r f or sa ini b pr ity ge dents to graduate with greater gu cal job est w ou m sy it n st r n i debts, many more students a ed a e y e co s, ru hil h th , 's s m feel the need to take up t th a pu po w i d ed it r m u h in am op rk w part-time work during a ing ut an in n... cto c ct o g dd B d am e do n el terme. Not only does n fe n w n v k . i u y u x a f ha a on e o this deprive them b f b ar ro , e e t e o e t tr is f d e c a o r of time which o h o s s g ke u m or t ch m e g s a a o i n o e g m n e c d i s c could be spent id n n it p r e g i h e vi on studying, e bu sou wa ing d p ag yin hav ol w ak er h r o S a e T to ts % b lo ve pa ly ho o m rs but on shops are primarily staffed by g en 60 e r b a d on Sc t e hours a student works in a week, other other students or young people pi tud t is tim ou our An nd cal ay are the flexibility of their work schedfrom York. s a he g y y ts. , a di t w e C th f t in lly en ge e ea th ule, and how arduous the work is, Working closely alongside a varir a o av ic ati ra k M g it as a nine hour shift of constantly ety of people gives you opportunity h as p ve or s a is .) being on your feet handling hot to meet people not from your course/ b nd r a llY it ! (V ils a ou u s, sh eta A s college, while mutual moaning about plates of food is very different to u a d H y p d a m n - your boss/low wages/ tiredness can one where you’re sitting down to am a c re shifting paper work. ing as the bond people as quickly as complainc xtr mo e r Speaking with a careers statistics, ing about the bad kitchen facilities fo centre advisor i was asare, working at the University. If you are lucky sured that all employduring term enough to buddy up to someone lotime does not need ers who recruit cal you can press them for insider to impinge upon your through the uniinformation on the cheapest and versity’s ‘Unidegree or your social best places to go! life. Jobs’ listings Working during term time has Who doesn’t watch T.V are made one other obvious benefit: it puts t x . for a few un-necessary hours aware less pressure on you to find a job ne es or lay in bed bored on a Sunday a n d during the holidays, when students e at ed th pl os ur t ot p yo h e fe , h com n . O eal u re avy a u i en m ras o o s e g o m ss ar e t h y , o n r v e i nd ng in op the acr mb ha om as u i e s e a t u o y t s o k ar arr ain le an or for f yo ork vic r w g c m op nd d I w e in d e a to re g! u s ! sh an hile p em ve pa lin yo ble ips u R ay w as o d ha pre mb re ta t t d ll le s t 'll e ru su e's ge A mi k ou b h ke er to s rac y so ac a th ly morning? Those spare five hours from all over the country compete t nd es om m e ke could be worth £26.75 even work- for temp work. a im st t to er li ing for minimum wage, an amount This leaves students who perhaps t g or w re in es ere o which could easily pay for a weeks would otherwise have to work all full r h rm food shopping or a night at Ziggys. time in the holidays free to travel, w ou y Spending these otherwise wasted undertake volunteer work or generhours working could even be of ben- ally have a bit of time to recoup beefit beyond the obvious monetary fore the start of term. gains. A part time job can give you In some cases being able to avoid transferable skills, such as money paid holiday work can actually benhandling, communication skills and efit people’s degree, for example history students embarking on their even experience as a supervisor or final year are expected to spend a team leader if you’re lucky. large proportion of their summer their time joining in university acThese are valuable experiences, holidays undertaking dissertation think I can tivities, gaining unpaid work experi- which are worth having and which speak for ence or simply relaxing. In an ideal potential future employers will ap- research. It is undeniable that those atmost when world this would be possible but here preciate. One way to ensure these I say that in Britain 2007 the reality is that benefits would be to find a job which tempting to work a full time job students would rather not 630,718 students have to have a part couples as work experience, such as alongside their degree are heading work during term time. Even time job during term time, whether care home work for a potential doc- for trouble and missing out on the if you have managed to wrangle this is essential to their survival or tor. opportunities that university has to a cushy, well paid and dare I say to pay for life’s little luxuries we all A further benefit is that working offer, but it is also possible to work fun job, the chances are most need (or think we need) once in a can widen your social circle, many part time and keep your head comfortably above water. people would rather spend while. of York’s restaurants, bars and must acknowledge a student’s commitment to his or her studies comes first. The ‘UniJobs’ listings would therefore, only include jobs which the career’s service deem suitable, abiding by restrictions such as student’s will not be asked to work in excess of 16 hours a week except
Undergraduates with part-time jobs are a third less likely to get a first or upper second-class degree than other students.
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detrimental effect on studies, having a snow-ball effect on students examination results and probably on their future careers. But could dedicating a few hours of work every week have such a serious effects? Especially, since about 56% of students work during term-time for an average of 13.5 hours a week. A government funded study published in 2005, found that undergraduates with part-time jobs are a third less likely to get a first or upper second-class degree than other students. Of the students who took part in the study, about 36 percent who worked during term acheived a lower second , compared with about 28% who did not work. Unfortunately, it is not the case that once students know these facts they will simply drop their part-time work. Obviously, many students who work do so becasue they need to as a way of financing their time through university, most likely because they cannot just rely on help from their parents. A NUS and TUC re-
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hen past students look back at their time spent at York University, reminising about the ‘best time of their lives’, it is properly going to revolve around drunken dancing in Ziggy’s wearing pants over tights, hangovers in morning lectures, perhpas finding their soul mate in Doug Soc. and maybe, just maybe even their love of learning. No where would the mention of having to dedicate two days of the week to their part-time job going to spring up to mind. This basically boils down to working, the wiping tables, folding clothes, pulling pints variety, not being very fun, go figure. However, putting the mind numbing repition, that bascially characterises part-time jobs to one side, there is a more serious effect of taking up a part-time work whilst studying during term time. Part-time work is proven to have a
In Britain 2007 the reality is that 630,718 students have to have a part time job
Luckily, work does not always have to be a meaningless bore. Here's the silver lining:
20 LIFESTYLE
YORK VISION
>STY E
Tuesday February 27, 2007 Image from www.thedeco.co.uk
SKIN-TIGHT DEE-LIGHT Martin Buck eases boys into the skinny
F
ashion is a perilous affair for us gents, and rarely is this better illustrated than in the case of skinny jeans. Ladies, rockstars and rockstars that look like ladies are currently sashaying around in denim that appears to have been sprayed on, casually sauntering across a veritable chasm of sartorial danger. To follow them is brave, but potentially foolhardy; the line between your drainpipes making you look louche and beat generation cool, or an extra from some Good Charlotte meet Russell Brand porno (eep) is about as narrow as it gets. Also, I hate to say it, but they are not designed to flatter the bulkier amongst us. Seeing a pair of mighty buttocks shoehorned into skin-tight jeans, heaving away like a pair of denim pigs being strangled, is enough to test even the sternest constitution. Indeed, the risk of a disastrous faux pas is massive, and should
you by chance manage to pull it off, you still run the risk of looking the kind of desperately over-ironised and pretentious indie type. If after all this you still want to go for it and be eased in gently, then I recommend just a plain white tshirt and a big belt buckle, for a bit of a James Dean feel, rather than full-on accessorised Camden leisure pirate regalia. And remember, by the time you hit middle age and your broad mind and narrow waistline swap places, you'll never be able to fit into anything below a waist size of 38" and you'll be dreaming of the days when you had the chance to swagger around looking like the sort of bloke who could have Kate Moss if he wanted to. So, with all that in mind, here are a few to set you on your way if you can’t be bothered to peruse charity shops for vintage ones. Good luck, and Godspeed.
Style Bible This week Sarah Howe and Kat Boyd pump it up with five of the best flats.
Laura Tempest speaks skin-tight trauma
I
f I could ban one thing, I think it would be boys wearing skinny jeans. I have tried and tried to think of a reason why boys would wear them but I simply can’t. On girls with the right figure skinny jeans look great, observe Kate Moss and Stella McCartney rocking their drainpipe denim. Then compare Pete Doherty, Johnny Borrell and every other generic indie band, squeezed into jeans – girls jeans – so tight it’s a wonder they can execute that fabulously rock ‘n roll leap from the bass drum, let alone thrash around as they ‘feel’ the music. Surely it’s only the tight crotch and unforgiving button they’re feeling? Three dangers await those brave enough to venture into the realm of the denim drainpipe. Skinny Jeans trauma number one: where to buy them and which fitting rooms to head for? With the inevitable whispers of “those are girls jeans mate”
they have two options: hide behind their hair or just buy them without trying them on. The latter would explain why some boys appear to have selected their jeans not just from the female section, but the 1112 age range. Skinny Jeans trauma number two: manhood or rather where to put it. A “Mick Jagger shuffle” is vital to minimise chafing in every area (I’m including the knees) and to actually walk in what is essentially a pair of denim tights.Skinny jeans make an average sized boy look like he has chicken legs so the thin ones stand no chance. Skinny jeans trauma number three: any type of footwear teamed with skinnys morphs inexplicably into clown shoes, which I suppose is spot on, given that the jeans are pure comedy. But perhaps that’s what I’m missing! The jeans are meant to be funny. Well done boys – hilarious!
Who needs heels to be feminine? These flats create a sexy 1940's vibe with their shimmery material. Wear with seamed tights and red lipstick to complete the vintage look. £30 from Topshop .
The shape of these shoes is always complimentary to feet, and the faux snakeskin practically leaks serpent affiliations onto the wearer: perfect for the femme fatales out there. £9.50 from Marks and Spencers
Jack and Jones £64.99
Cheap Monday £40
Levi's 511's from £40
Topman £30
Diesel Safado from £80
Cheap Monday £40
£25 from Topshop
Spring Breeze
£59 Naf Naf
Holly Brockwell stays warm in style
S
pring is upon us and although the anticipation of new ducklings may make you feel warm inside, it won’t save you our classic British weather. It’s all about neon this year, whether you like it or not, and the best way to infiltrate this surge of colours into your wardrobe is to combine it with a classic vintage fit. Dorothy Perkins offers us a chance to stand out from the crowd with its outlandish but cute jacket. Just as with a little black cocktail dress, a black jacket is a must have for any girl. Versatile, timeless and chic; how could one not be included? This original NafNaf pinstripe jacket toys with the rarely seen diagonal buttons in order to do justice to both the bust and waist. But if you crave something with a bit more life then try Dorothy Per-
kins’ red jacket which adopts a military style in its shoulder detail for the ladies want everyone to know they mean business. Ironically it is the smaller jackets of all which are going to make the biggest impact this Spring – it is, of course, the cropped jacket. They compliment your waist whilst masking any areas of the arm which the gym hasn’t quite reached yet. Though seemingly small, cropped jackets provide that all-important boost to torso temperature that is essential in a country where choosing a jacket is always a gamble with the weather. Topshop brings us a curvy version with puffy capped sleeves to really set off that girly vibe. Put a red ribbon in your hair and you will officially be the cutest girl on campus. £50 Topshop
The worn look of these cracked leather shoes gives them a laid back air. Easy to wear they will add a nonchalant cool to any outfit and ease you right into spring.
If the invasion of neons currently illuminating the highstreet are too full on fame for you then these pointed slingbacks are a more tentative nod to the trend.
£50 Dorothy Perkins
£49.99 from Office
£60 Topshop
£35 Dorothy Perkins
If you like to wear your bling on your feet then these gold pumps are the perfect accessory for parties or the pub. More Beyoncé than Mr. T. £35 Topshop
£25 from Topshop
YORK VISION
LIFESTYLE
Tuesday February 27, 2007
>FOOD&DR
YORK TAKEAWAY AWARDS 2007
the Vision Hot list What's got us salivating excessively this month... • Penguins - it's a classic, but even better when you bite the ends off it and sip tea through it. And we're not talking about that bird that lives in the Antartic, just in case you were wondering.
• Amaretto
- it tastes like marzipan and goes splendidly with nearly all mixers, need we say more?
• Roger Kirk fry-ups - criminal-
ly overlooked by many, it may not be the healthiest start to the day, but it sure t a s t e s good
...and what's turning our stomachs
C o rk y ' s any drink that comes in cream egg, white chocolate and glacier mint flavours can't be good. It's only ever going to end badly.
•
• Campus hot drinks machines
- expensive, repulsive, and misleading with their buttons, these things are more of a lethal hazzard than a convenience.
Having been dazzled by the glamour of the awards season, Vision Food and Drink has gourged its way high and low, far and wide throughout this fair city to celebrate the crème de la crème of instant food and to present to you the York Takeaway Awards 2007
✩
Best Customer Service: Efe’s Kebab Kitchen, Heslington Road We all need friends. Luckily, we’ve all got one in the form of Efe’s Kebab Kitchen. The self-proclaimed ‘Student’s favourite’ is not wrong. You're always met with a huge smile, sometimes a handshake, sometimes a free coke and always with the oft imitated ‘Hello, Can I take your order?’. The promise to deliver to campus in less than 15 minutes is, meanwhile, safely achieved on every occasion. The food is pretty standard fare (although everyone should try a 13” cheesy crust ‘hot shot’ pizza and the legendary Efe’s special burger) but it is the unrivalled customer service which really sets this York institution apart. Long may it continue.
Best Chinese Takeaway: Mayfair, Lawrence Street Surprisingly, the award hasn't gone to the Willow (even though it has a built in disco) simply because the Mayfair Chinese has a slightly bigger menu and most dishes are better here than at the Willow or the nearby Ocean City. The Mayfair does a good fried rice, a very good beef and mushroom and a fantastic crispy chilli beef.
✩
Best Supporting Side Order: Chip Spice,York's Yummy Chicken, Pavement Whoever the genius is who invented this spicy treat deserves a place in all of hearts. Even Southerners, who would rather have sizzingly hot chip fat poured over them than have gravy coating their chips, appreciate this York delicacy.
Best Indian Takeaway: Chenab, Hull Road
York boasts a number of fine curry houses, but unlike many of its rivals, Chenab has no ‘eat-in’ facility in its shop, allowing them to concentrate on deliveries, which they do so very well. This popular Balti take-away has a huge number of house specials to suit any palate from ‘mild and creamy’ to ‘very, very hot, lively & daring’ livall lovingly prepared and efficiently deered. With Chenab you know you’ll be getting good food, reasonably priced with house specials coming in at under £6 or a bog standard curry at under £5 both inclusive of rice or naan.
✩
Most Generous Portions Award: Viking Kitchen, Walmgate
✩
• Turkey - never mind fear of bird flu, this dry, chewy bird shouldn't be eaten anyway, even at Christmas.
NK
21
If it's quantity for your money you want, this takeaway is the place to go. The kebabs are big and you'll struggle not to drop chips, as they're piled as high as the sky. Noteworthy for it's college-themed pizzas as well, Viking Kitchen is a student's paradise.
Takeaway of the Year: Fat Boys, Micklegate It’s been a turbulent year for this fine takeaway, having undergone the transition from Kebarbe Q to Fat Boys. Here at Food and Drink we were worried whether it would pull through, but thankfully our fears were unfounded. The friendly staff and lime green décor, which we’re sure English Heritage are oh so pleased about, remain, as does their famous garlic burger. For keeping all that's important about their admirable establishment, they remain one of the best takeaways in York, and for this reason are the Vision Takeaway of the Year 2007.
✩
And the rest? Give it a go!n: iz P za Popcor
Parmesan Blend 2 tbspsofofgarlic powp cheese, 1 ts ixed herbs, 1 der, 1 tsp of a,m with salt and tsp of paprik3 minutes. Pop pepper for as per usual the popcorn rinkle over the sp en th and . cheese mixture
York has an abundance of quality takeaways, not all of which were lucky enough to win one of our esteemed awards. Out of the losers, special mention must go to Ali G's, opposite Clifford's Tower, whose diverse menu caters for all tastes possible. Meanwhile, Istanbul Grill on Fishergate deserves recogntion for its dedication to the takeaway lifestyle, selling alcohol every night until close. Heroes. And a particular one for the ardent takeaway lover to look out for is the parmesan chicken, sold by Chubbies on Hull Road. A combination of battered chicken and pizza topping, the resulting meal embodies greasy takeaway and is quite a treat, if your in the right state of mind. Finally, let us not forget that most British of takeaways - fish and chips. As with most other types of takeaway, there is a multitude of chippies to choose from. A good starter is Millers on Fulford's main street: whilst it is located in Fulford (meaning a bit of a walk from campus), this is an award-winning, good old fashioned chippy, with a distinctly Yorkshire feel to it. The hidden gem of fish and chips, however, is even further than Fulford, and lies in the murky far away land of South Bank. Located on Queen Victoria Street and set in a row of small terraced houses, if you manage to find this chippy you'll be rewarded with tasty fish at fantastic value. Just be noted that it's a slippery fish of a chippy and has very short opening hours. Your have been warned!
The York Take Away Awards judging panel was Katie Jacobs, Paul Knapp and Rob Gallagher
22 FEATURES
YORK VISION
Tuesday February 27, 2007
20 YEARS OF VISION
We students aren't the only ones growing out of our teens... Iain Withers looks at twenty years of battling hacks and broken scandals
W
ednesday 28th January 1987. Mark Watts, head of the first Vision editorial team launches the first issue of Vision. Much excitement ensues, Mark Watts claims that "Vision represents a revolution on campus." Twenty years down the line, and as the only student newspaper to have won three consecutive Guardian Student Newspaper of the Year awards (2002-04), Vision had made a huge impact on student journalism nationwide. "Vision is the most successful activity York students have taken up in recent years. So many have taken part in putting together our paper," said Mark Watts.
Clashes with the SU and threats of possible de-ratification followed the inaugural issue leading to headlines such as "Vision Victimised by Exec." (Issue 4, 1987) after adverts were printed of companies being boycotted by the SU. Against the backdrop of various SU attempts to check campus's alternative student voice, Vision has undergone tremendous transformation. In the early years, sections such as Features and Arts went under names such as '20TWENTY' (Features) and 'Telescope' (Arts), resembling something out of the pages of Private Eye. Vision moved on from corny self-references to a sickening purple
and yellow phase at the end of the 80s and a look that could quite easily be described as the 'Daily Mail years'. In the mid 90s Vision again came up against calls for it to be dispanded. With a team of only a handful of writers, editors Gavin Thompson and Sara Nuwar revived Vision and gave it a new lease of life. The late 90s were successful years under editors such as Wes Jonson (PA) and Rajini Vaidyanathan (Radio 1 Newsbeat) and Deputy Editors such as Ryan Sabey (News Of The World) and Jonathan Isaby (Daily Telegraph). With the turn of the century Vision refined the tabloid format retained today.
ALUMNI PROFILE - RYAN SABEY
Rob Harris and Jon Bentham, both named overall Guardian Journalists of the Year during their time at Vision, cemented Vision's place at the forefront of student media, helping us win three consecutive Guardian newspaper of the year awards. As Rob Harris recalls, "I saw degree grades flushed away producing a top-quality paper which outshone any student paper ever printed in Britain. It was all about shaking things up." Twenty years on from Mark Watts' first issue of Vision, we catch up with past Vision writers and look at some of our sublime (and ridiculous) front pages.
I
“We found out he was doing some specialist training for Iraq and if you do the specialist training it basically means you’re on the plane and you’re off to Iraq. I was quite pleased with that and it was somebody, again, who I’d been nurturing for the best part of a year.” I say I’m surprised to hear the story’s been in the works for a year. He corrects me. “No not the story, the contact. I’ve been looking after him for a long time. We meet up regularly and I buy him beers just to keep him happy to be honest. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t but in this case it did so we’re all pleased.” It’s not the only major news story he’s broken since leaving Vision. In 2005 he won Young Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards for another Harry scoop – his alleged cheating on his Art A-Level – and the revelation of the love triangle at the heart of The FA between secretary Faria Alam, Sven Goran Erikson and FA Chief
We meet up regularly and I buy him beers just to keep him happy to be honest Executive Mark Palios. How does he go about getting the biggest scoops? “I think it all comes down to contacts. One of my stories that year was on Siamese twins that came from my working on other medical stories. You can never be blinded by thinking ‘well this a story about cancer treatment’ or whatever, because you never know whether that person in six months time is going to phone you up and give you a great story. Its all about the long term; keep looking after your contacts and when something big comes back they’ll come to you first rather than going to any other newspaper.” How has York helped his career? “York definitely set me in the right
direction. You learn so much and you meet so many other people who are now in showbiz or politics or PR or whatever they’re doing. They give you a perfect grounding for meeting great people who give you stories and help you out on stories. I know some people on national newspapers now who didn’t really get into student journalism until the last term of their last year but have always got that knowledge that York offers so much to journalists and broadcasters.” The News of the World graduate training scheme, he says, was an amazing experience. “I spent nine months at City University during which time I got full use of the facilities at News International and help with essays and projects. Then I went off to New York, to the New York Post, so I was living there which was a tremendous highlight which developed me as a journalist, working with a different culture.” So is their fun to be had amidst the pressures of sharp-end journalism?
FEATURES
Tuesday February 27, 2007
January 14, 2007
WWW.NOTW.CO.UK
85p
Rajini is Political Editor of Radio One's Newsbeat
Rob Harris won Guardian Student Journalist of the Year. He is now a freelance journalist
We noticed you interviewed Tony Blair last week... Yeh I've interviewed him a few times now. Before the first time, you're obviously like 'Oh god it's the prime minister' but, without wanting to sound hauty, he's just another person to me now.
Which was your favourite front page? The exclusive on the lecturer who had 16,000 child porn images will probably live longest in the memory. There was tremendous opposition from within the paper about reporting a lecturer’s child porn conviction. But it would have been wrong to ignore it and deny students the truth about a trusted member of the university. Many seemed to forget that not all students spend their nights in bars - some have kids and live on campus. But I recognised that the paper shouldn’t inspire a mob, so as well as speaking to the lecturer, I ensured there was space to reflect on the positive contributions he made through his academic work.
How would you sum up your time at Vision? I was editor a couple of years after Sara and Gavin (below) saved the paper. I fought hard for our independence as Editor. I enjoyed the variety of the job. One minute you'd be interviewing Steve Lamaq or Paddy Ashdown and the next you'd be trying to wrestle an advert from the Vic on Hes Rd. We learnt to be bold and go for the kill and get the interviews.
What are you up to now, career-wise? Since leaving York I have been a freelance journalist - involving writing, editing and TV work. Quite a mix! At the moment I do a fair bit of news and football reporting for the Associated Press (the world’s biggest news agency). My most recent assignment was the Cumbria train crash. That involved being suddenly dispatched (thankfully sober) on Friday evening from Manchester and working through the night trying to outwit the police in the dark countryside to get as close to the scene as possible and find survivors to interview. The all-nighter was reminiscent of the Vision days - but the stale stench of wine and curry in the York office was more pleasant than being coated in mud.
HARRYGOES TO WAR Brave Prince starts training this week for posting to Iraq
EXCLUSIVE
BY RYAN SABEY PRINCE Harry this week begins a crash course for war in Iraq. The 22-year-old royal will start Army training in extra skills to help him survive insurgent attacks when his Blues and Royals regiment fly out in April. An inside source said: “The prince is desperate to go.” FULL STORY: Page 7
FOUR-YEAR HELL ENDS AS KIDNAP BOYS ARE RESCUED - Page 11
Ryan Sabey broke the news of Harry going to Iraq “Yeh its fun but its very hard working. Be under no illusion that its not because it certainly is and they expect 150% from you every single day. It’s a 24/7 job – your phone is never off – but if it comes off its all worth it.”
graduate training scheme The News of the World offers a two-year graduate trainee scholarship in journalism. We’ll pay you for two years and train you as you work alongide the very best tabloid journalists in the business. We also send you to Harlow College’s Journalism Centre for an intensive formal course. September 2007 - Feb 2008 Our successful applicant will attend the 19-week postgraduate course at Harlow College’s Journalism Centre. This is an intensive, all-encompassing course providing a solid foundation on which to build and develop your journalistic talents. During the course you’ll spend all your available free time (apart from your holiday entitlement) at the News of the World. Working in various departments, you’ll cover everything from a Premiership match to major political and showbiz stories. Feb 2008 - September 2009 You’ll gain experience of every department in the News of the World. Apart from working on our news, features, picture and sports desks – plus Sunday magazine and our website– you will look at the work of our circulation, marketing, production and advertising departments. You may also spend time at the News of the World’s Scottish or Irish offices. Interested? Lots more details at http://www.notw.co.uk/graduates.shtml
Do you miss Vision? It was frantic but fantastically fun. I never felt as tense finishing an essay than I did charging towards the Vision deadline, but seeing the printed results and watching everyone reading it was always a great feeling. I certainly don’t miss the SU egos who I hope never manage to worm their way into political parties . . . or I fear for the nation! And I don’t miss the search for finances and lack of appreciation from Admin, despite getting York more positive publicity nationally by winning awards than anything they ever did.
PROFILES Tom Hazeldene and Adrian Butler - Editors 01-03 Pioneered the tabloid style still used today. Tom's favourite front page was one that the Vision team produced the night after 500 people occupied Heslington Hall in a protest against - guess what - possible porter cut-backs. Wes Johnson - Editor 99 Wes's favourite front page, like Ryan's, was 'Floody hell hits York'. He helped modernise Vision. He is now a reporter for the press association in the Yorkshire area. Gavin Thompson - Editor 96 Gavin Thompson helped revive Vision after it had been shutdown the year before. He managed to keep Vision on its feet at a time when we shared the same office as Nouse and the same phone line.
23
ALUMNI PROFILE - RAJINI VAIDYANATHAN
ALUMNI PROFILE - ROB HARRIS
How would you sum up your time at Vision? It was an extremely creative and rewarding period. Many media professionals don’t have the dedication or passion which was displayed by the Vision personnel during my three years.
Ryan Sabey broke the biggest story of the year for the NOTW and won Young Journalist of the Year in 2005 t’s a commonly held perception that tabloid hacks are feckless scavengers. “How do you spell that?” Ryan types ‘feckless’ into an online dictionary. I make an uneasy pass at a preemptive apology. I’ve already put the word through an online dictionary – ‘incompetent and ineffective’ are two of the initial meanings he’s likely to come across… “Yeh incompetent, ineffective…” “Not so much that, within that word” “Having no sense of responsibility” “Yes that, that’s more what I’m getting at.” It seems a harsh bat to hit him with but tabloid journalists have to be nothing if not thick skinned. The cavalier attitude of the tabloids has been put under a harsh spotlight as of late. Ryan Sabey’s paper The News Of The World has recently seen its Editor resign over their jailed royal editor’s tapping of phones and had to make an out of court settlement with a Romanian man over allegations that he was involved in a plot to kidnap Victoria Beckham. Cavalier indeed. “We stick to within the Press Complaints Commission guidelines, we stick within the law. Everyone abides to that. Its all about getting great stories in the paper and as long as we stick within the guidelines then that’s what we do to get stories,” he coyly replies. Have the events of the last fortnight hit morale quite hard? Ryan registers what is in effect a long-winded ‘No comment’ on the whole affair. I feel a little hurt, I’m speaking to a fellow journalist, after all, and to one of our own at that. Ryan Sabey was Deputy Editor for Vision (LATE 90S) and has done rather well for himself since leaving Vision, working through the ranks of the News Of The World from their graduate training scheme to become a senior news reporter. On the issue of whether tabloid journalists are ‘feckless’ Ryan gives me a robust and slightly incredulous response. “I don’t understand where people get this image from. I mean who breaks the majority of major stories. Number one its NOTW and secondly its tabloid newspapers. You look at who sets the agenda every week and its pretty much the NOTW.” Ryan certainly was responsible for setting the news agenda this month. Earlier this year the News of the World was the first paper to break the news that Harry would be going to Iraq.
YORK VISION
ALUMNI PROFILE SARA NUWAR
Sara Nuwar is a Staff Reporter for the NOTW How do you remember Vision? When I joined Vision it was on the verge of being closed down. There were only five members and the SU was all for getting rid of the paper. We decided to prove them wrong. I was editor from the end of 1995 to 1997. It was a really good laugh, working round the clock and avoiding the intoxicating smell of glue spray (which we had to use when we laid out the paper). What are you up to now, career-wise? I did the graduate training scheme at the Mirror and am now a staff reporter for the NOTW. Vision was a really good training ground. I had no aspirations to be a journalist at the start! What was your favourite front page? Our campaign issue on the Rwandan crisis.
What was your favourite front page? One student alleged that a porter had bit his ear. We had a lot of fun with that front page.
ALUMNI PROFILE - JAMES MILLER
James Miller is Deputy News Editor for the Sunday Telegraph How do you remember Vision? We used to have an atrocious little bunker in Wentworth with first generation apple macs. We used to have to download all the material on the macs, unplug the whole system, move across the road to the computer room and cross our fingers hoping that all our pages would download. York media was competetive but massively underresourced. It was good fun, I look back on it very fondly. We kept it going on near enough nothing. We were basically just a freesheet. We had a laughably small budget. I was editor for two terms from 95-96. To be honest Sara, the year after me, was the main force behind the revival. York definitely is a good proving ground. What tips would you have for aspiring hacks? I think if you assume that everybody has a story, even if its not specifically about them. Be imaginative, be mischievous. If you’re not being complained about you’re doing something wrong.
ALUMNI PROFILE - JONATHAN ISABY Jonathan is Deputy Editor of the Telegraph's Spy diary column How would you sum up your time at Vision? Absolutely invaluable. It armed me with so many skills which helped me get where I am today. And I’ll never forget the camaraderie between everyone on the paper, particularly during some of those all-nighters just before deadline! I actually think there’s something of the Vision spirit about the desk I work on at the Telegraph now. Which was your favourite front page? I was particularly proud of my contribution to the issue in June 1997 - I managed to get an interview with William Hague during the post-general election Tory leadership campaign which we published as a full-page politics feature the very week he became Conservative leader.
hall of fame In possibly the best headline in Vision history - editors managed to get a picture of VC Brian Cantor pulling his socks up - during the lecturers strikes.
Vision exposed the problem of aspestos on campus mimiking a mirror campaign about anthrax.
Vision editor Rob Harris uncovered allegations that the health centre missed a student fever - causing him to be rushed to hospital
Vision broke the news of a boycott by students of York nightclub Toffs.
Some things never change - porters problems make the front page years before today's problems.
24
YORK VISION
Tuesday February 27, 2007
>TRA EL Travel Log Foreign muck Steve Morrison never travels on an empty stomach.
Deep fried ice cream
L
ying in bed, a week before my university finals, I must have been hungry as my mind started to drift. All I could think of was the ham and cheese sandwich I’d half-eaten in Poland 3 years previously. It wasn’t even a very nice sandwich (hence why it was left halfeaten), but it got me thinking, you’ll eat anything when you’re travelling. Whether it’s tasting oysters for the first (and last) time on a school trip to France, or eating deep fried ice cream in Toronto, being away from home does funny things to you. Perhaps it’s the mentality you have when you’re away, the willingness to try new things, or just the fact that you’ve gone without food for so long that makes you eat anything on offer. On a recent trip to Estonia, my friends and I were so hungry whilst trawling the outskirts of Tallinn that we tucked into a tub of crispy baby food from a street vendor (and ended up addicted to it). It was a similar state of desperation that led me to force down the worst portion of chips I’ve ever bought. That was in Moscow, an hour before catching an overnight train to St Petersburg. The hunger was so consuming, it made me believe that reheated fries from a train station wouldn’t taste like warm cardboard. Sometimes a foreign language can lead you to eat things you wouldn’t dream of eating in an English speaking environment. Experience has taught me that not even translations into English can help you out in these situations. In Amsterdam, a Chinese restaurant advertised ‘beef balls’ on their English menu - ignorance made me think they’d resemble some sort of meatball related cuisine, but no, when the dish came I was confronted with two, very chewy balls, better described not ‘bull’s balls’. However, I can’t blame the next instance on hunger or ignorance. The only occasion that I’ve been ill through food whilst away was my own fault. I’m talking ill as in shaking with every bite I took- that was the recurring theme of our Berlin Kebab eating competition. The list of the peculiar, unlikely and more often than not delicious foods you find yourself eating whilst travelling is endless. I’m uncertain as to why it’s always the case but as much as you may rely on the familiar foods whilst away, you’ll always find room for something extraordinary…
ROAD TRIPPIN'
Iain Withers falls foul of Lithuanian border guards.
T
he polish man who seemed to know what he was doing and when he was going to do it lugged our stuff into the back of his car. He didn’t have as much room in there as we’d had in our Mazda (named Phil), whose exhaust was connected to the ground rather than to the car, but he was a no-nonsense-clearly-skilledkind-of-guy who crushed us into the back in a rush that suggested he was fed up with liasing w i t h France, Britain and the RAC in general.
all ends. The ability to say to someone on the phone (The Sun picturedesk, don’t you know (more on that later)) who asks you “Where are you flying back to?” that actually you’re not flying – It's all marvellous, in theory. But a lot changed from conception about this time last year to what actually happened. Originally we decided that we’d drive all the way to Moominland in Finland and back through Scandinavia. Then we f o u n d out that Moominland would be closed about a month before we left. Moomins – huge-nosed ambivalent friendly white hippolike-things that are as revered in Scandinavia as Disney characters are in America – are obviously not in huge demand out of school holiday periods, as it is only open two months a year (July, August). No matter, there was a lot to divert our attention in the eleven countries we were visiting anyway. In the end however, we only visited five of them – France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and Poland – as we couldn’t get into Lithuania. Then whilst driving back through all the countries we’d just been through (it looked set to be a rip-roaring three or four days) we broke down in Northern Poland and decided to scrap the car, flying home from Warsaw. I’m probably not the right person to ask about road trips. I wasn’t the one ringing the RAC when we broke down. I didn’t organise the service, the road tax or the insurance. I wasn’t even driving any of the way (three test attempts, three times walked away, obstinate green licence in ruddy tow). But if you want advice, take absolutely all documents regarding your car if you’re travelling as far as Eastern Europe. And do stump up for breakdown cover. It’ll probably cost a lot, but in the end we got a free night in a hotel and a free flight (bargain). Oh and probably don’t bother driving. As great as it sounds, and the freedom to do trips along the way that
Travel Fact#1: The Amsterdam Red Light District is actually one of the city's safest areas due to the high level of policing.
I couldn’t blame him. A lot of people helped us out in Poland when we broke down, and it was an experience, getting sorted out by the local population and ending up in the hotel where Hindenburg died (oddly and unexpectedly enough). But we should never have been anywhere near Ostrada, Northern Poland, where we broke down after a week of tackling Polish roads of various quality (the ways in which Polish signs depict that your car may be flipped and thwarted is quite a lovely feature of driving there). We should also never have ended up spending a night in the not-so-tourist-hotspot of Suwalki; also in Northern Poland, after being unable to cross the border into Lithuania, on account of not having original car registration documents. And its true that neither destination would have been taken in if it weren’t for having a car… But I’d probably still maintain if you asked me that road tripping around Europe sounds cooler than interrailing round Europe, just because it sounds a bit different - battling huge distances off your own back in a hunk of metal you grow to love and coax back on to ish soil Britwhen it
Wroclaw, Poland
The Brandenbug Gate, Berlin might otherwise be beyond your reach is great, it’s probably a lot easier interrailing. It’s probably a cliché to praise the drink as being one of the finest things about some of these countries, but it really was. For about 3 euros a pot you can drink amazing beers in most Belgian cities in pubs that often sell upwards of 100 types of beer, meaning that you can try those fruity beers if you really want, but for someone in search of a strong satisfying ale y o u can’t r e ally go wrong e i t h e r. Some of the ‘Trippels’ are great, but don’t go for “geuze” (grape beer). Polish vodka is also something I fell for in a big way. The red light district in Amsterdam is certainly something to be experienced. If that was ambiguous then maybe saying that it is pretty much one of the saddest places I’ve been is probably a better way of putting it (what did you expect, I guess, is what you should be saying). Amsterdam as a whole is an interesting city. Only a day’s wandering is needed to fall upon the contrasts between tasteless tat and innumerable drug touters on one side and Van Gogh and Anne Frank on the other. On the whole though interesting isn’t the same as nice. A great laugh though, especially sights such as the Sex Museum – There’s nothing alluring about watching the ‘history of sex’ on a giant roller, complete with a hose drenching the glass screen for an authentic ‘rain’ effect for sex in prehistoric times. Hilarious. Doing the eventual route we did gives you a real sense of the modern history of Europe – from the battlefields and huge graveyards of Belgium to the decentralised sombre feel of Berlin (owing much
to the fracturing effect of the Berlin Wall), to the communist drudgery of Warsaw. Auschwitz of course is really really worth seeing. There’s nothing you can really say to convey how sickening it is. Hamburg to me was wonderful and well worth visiting. Its possible (wild generalisation coming) that only a people as industrious as the Germans could lap up so many boat tour operators showing the world’s biggest carpet warehouse and huge oil tankers in its impress i v e docks. T h e T o w n Hall is one of the most tasteful buildings I’ve seen, containing some of the best craftsmanship I’ve seen, far away from the bombast of war, religion and royalty to be found in some of Krakow. Poland in general was a fantastic visit. The amount of small cool places to drink and eat in Krakow and Wroclaw is surprising. Don’t go to all the churches though. If you’re not of that bent it results in serious fatigue. Bizzarely, I almost got the chance to take photos of a front-page story in Krakow. I’d never heard of Bradley Walsh, of Coronation Street fame, and was supremely disinterested when we saw him at our café in Krakow, but as soon as I found out he was a front page story, my slow beating hack heart got in gear and I almost took valuable photos of him making up to his wife with a red rose, both of them looking uncomfortable and weary after an alleged affair, but ruined the photos and got The Sun and Mirror interested for nothing. I was told afterwards by the Sun picturedesk that they were staying for the Miss World contest in Warsaw. What an odd thing to be making up over. Still, only in soapland. Lovely stuff. But don’t drive.
Travel Fact #2: Brussel sprouts have been grown in the Brussels area of Belgium for over four hundred years.
the
scene
> february 2007 > issue 4
> interviews > features > reviews > listings
the maccabees The brighest lights to emerge from South London prepare to do battle with the UK music scene
<
CHICK FLICKS VS ‘MAN MOVIES’
The Kent quartet ready to step up to the plate and into the spotlight
vsgoodbooks
who will soundtrack your 2007? P.30
<
BRAND NEW PLAY ‘BLAME’ COMES TO YORK
P.33
<
COSTA AWARD WINNER LINDA NEWBERRY
P.36
> 26
contents
> the scene: contents and editorial
The end of term is fast approaching and as miserable February drags its sorry arse into (the hopefully less rainy) March, warm yourself up on some the hottest arts around in the second Scene of the year...
film:
Chick-flicks or action films? Plus new releases
television: TV so bad that it's good culture:
a guide to events in York, Leeds and beyond
books: a Costa Award Winners special
the super-special star rating system
new
Every single review in The Scene is be rated against our strictly maintained 5star reviewing system. With a bit of an epic battle on the front cover between two of the hottest bands in the UK, this issue we'll be running with the theme of FIGHTING...
✰✰✰✰✰ ✰✰✰✰✰ ✰✰✰✰✰ ✰✰✰✰✰ ✰✰✰✰✰
= Rumble in the Jungle - Ali Vs Foreman, 1974 = Star Wars - Obi-Wan Kenobi Vs Darth Vader, 1980 = Carling Cup Clash - Mikel Vs Toure, 2007 = Bitch Fight - Drunk Hussie Vs Drunk Ho, most nights in Gallery = Tramp Fight - Drunk Tramp Vs Drunk Tramp, most nights in any major city
editorial
Hello Boys and Girls,
Welcome to the latest, brand spanking new issue of The Scene. It's been a while since the last one, so we hope you haven't been getting the withdrawal symptoms too badly. We also have unfortunately had to forgo the magazine for a while as money doesn't grow on trees, and even if it did it would most likely be in pesos. Luckily we've got an issue so packed with juicy arts chunks that the painful wait (and paper format) will be all but forgotten before long. In the Spotlight this time around are not one but two hot up-and-coming bands. The Maccabees and Good Books are battling it out to be your favourite new band. And speaking of new, we also have a preview of the highly anticipated new play by acclaimed feminist writers Judith Jones and Beatrix Campbell; an interview with the latest Costa (nee Whitbread) book award winner; and the usual loads of reviews by your discerning student critics. As ever, please keep your comments/criticisms/enormous cheques/proposals of marriage coming in to editor@vision.york. ac.uk. Until week 10, stay gorgeous. We will. Ben and Katie - Editors, The Scene
Highlights this issue: Page title, e.g. books
These two bizarre new programmes could be seen as some kind of revolutionary-genius-fantastic-sex-magic inventions, but a more believable hypothesis would be that the creators just don’t give a shit anymore.
“ “
Richard Webb on p.32
Everything we do as humans, as individuals, is political. So it's not surprising that our writing is politicised. We're not telling people what to think, however. Beatrix Campbell and Judith Jones on p.33
It would be good if children’s and young adult fiction got a fraction of the review coverage given to adult fiction. Children’s books don’t get much of a look-in apart froms just before Christmas or the summer holidays.
“
Linda Newberry on p.36
the
music: the hottest (or not) new albums and live gigs
27 28 30 32 33 36
“
spotlight on up-and-coming new bands
“ “
feature:
scene
Yes, here is the scummy lot that made this here mess... Ben Matthews & Katie Jacobs - Editors Loulla-Mae E.S. - Music Editor Camille Augarde - Music Deputy Lani Peace & Rich Williams - Film Editors
Harry Cameron - Film Deputy Editor Richard Webb - TV Editor Charlotte Bilsland & Dan Meredith Culture Editors
Hannah Wallace Culture Deputy Editor Sam Birch - Books Editor Nicola Hebden - Books Deputy Editor Andrew Latham - Listings Editor Deborah Mason & Kate Mason Proof Readers
> spotlight: the maccabees & goodbooks
> 27
spotlight
this week:
The Maccabees Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith gets cosy in the tour bus with South London's most exciting new export... seem to have gotten a lot of sound from them. It’s the excitement of their music being structured like strips, but I don’t think we sound like them.” Fair enough. Everyone’s got to be unique in some way, even if it is simply Robert admitting that he started playing drums because he was “walking around in Toys R Us and I thought they looked quite interesting.” Felix however, seems to have been slightly more inspired: “I started playing the guitar because of Oasis. It wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for them.” Aw just think, when they were nine they
“
"We're not going to try and be cool about it. We're fucking well excited about selling out gigs.”
“
T
he Maccabees: five boys hailing from South London, which seems to be a hotbed of new music at the moment. Though these kids are pretty unknown to the mainstream ear, they’re most certainly on the up; and after having just supported Jamie T at the Astoria, will soon be winging their way to a town near you. If nothing else their eclectic set of names should attract your attention, as the band is made up of Orlando, Rupert, Felix, Hugo, and, er…Robert. I know how it sounds: a load of posh kids straight out of public school with a knack for pulling off skinny jeans and tight t-shirts, but don’t misjudge. These little ragamuffins have been playing for years and are finally getting the recognition they deserve. Describing their music is not an easy job, and press releases describing them as ‘having a healthy dose of the British sense of the eccentric’ added to ‘melancholic sunshine thunder’ doesn’t really help, whoever dreamt it up. “Yeah, well, whatever” is the reaction to this strange description, “I don’t even know what that means” expands Robert. Phew, not just me then. Felix enlightens us slightly, claiming, “We love the Futureheads, and
were banging and clashing on their instruments to their hearts content, and now they’re touring the country on sell-out shows. “We’re
not gonna try and be cool about it,” admits Felix, “We’re fucking well excited about selling out gigs. We’d never played a proper gig in Bristol before and last night we played to 500 people!” Pretty impressive, considering they haven’t been one of the NME’s breaking bands or had that much radio play either. “That’s the great thing about it,” Felix jumps in, “’cos people who come to our gigs have pretty much found out about it themselves, and they’ve told their friends. It’s a word of mouth thing instead of a load of curious people just ’cos they happened to read about us in the NME. It means they’ve actually heard our songs and they like us.” Their lack of publicity seems to have pleased the boys, and has helped to avoid the old age problem of peaking too soon. Robert reminds us that, “It can be quite dangerous being overhyped by the NME, as it puts a lot of pressure on you”. The music scene that The Maccabees belong to appears to be full of bands which have peaked and crippled under the pressure all too quickly, and some which should have done a long time ago. “There are some bands, that I’m not gonna mention, that I can’t stand on the scene right now. It’s generally quite cool with people like Jamie
GoodBooks W
e’re going to take a stab in the dark and guess that Goodbooks aren’t your all time, favourite band, your tenth favourite band, or even a band that
you’ve actually heard of. Oh the shame! It is really rather tempting to get your uncultured minds into a head-lock and give your ears a violent scrubbing out, but if truth be
T, The Klaxons and Brakes, the sort of bands that don’t get enough acclaim. But there are also the sort of bands that I’m not fond of and get too much acclaim.” Felix being the good diplomat that he is, wasn’t about to dish the dirt, much to our disappointment. When asked to leave some wise words for the public, as a sort of parting gift, it was to “listen to The Coral, they deserve much more respect than they get.” So there you have it, five crazily named boys with an indescribable
sound. The only way to solve this conundrum is to have a listen, and I’ve a feeling they’ll be getting played on your local radio, sharpish.
Simply dying to find out more? Then check out The Maccabees new single, 'About Your Dress', out now, and www.themaccabees.co.uk for more info.
The well-behaved lads from Seven Oaks give Camille Augard a good talking to about, well, themselves...
told, we hadn’t heard of them either. However, that all changed the day that The Maccabees came to town, bringing with them four young lads who they have handpicked to support them on their UK tour. Intrigued, we hit the pub to find out just who on earth the Goodbooks are? After a few pints, it transpires that the Kent quartet met “at a church fete, playing that game where you have to guess how many smarties there are in the jar, y’know?” Yes… yes we know the one. Wait, it gets better when we asked what inspired them to become musicians. “Jason Donovan!” shouts JP, Goodbooks’ keys. This, kids, is rock n’ roll in its truest, filthiest form. He is surprisingly keen to announce, with a disturbingly straight face, that “I had a fake, plastic guitar when I was four, and used to singalong to Jason’s ‘too many broken hearts”. This is not the “Oasis, Nirvana, fahking’ ‘av it, lads!!!” answer that his leather jacket and stubble suggest, but this honesty and lack of pretentiousness is really quite refreshing. We query whether they have felt
any pressure to create an ‘image’ when bands such as The Horrors and Klaxons currently glare/glow out of every music magazine available. Chris, Goodbooks’ bass scoffs, “er, do we look like we do?!” Indeed, the band are a mesh of skinny jeans, flared jeans, glasses, mullets and twee shirts, and are eager to stress that “there are four individuals here”, bringing four unique looks, musical backgrounds and tastes into the studio and onto the stage. The result is pop music – in its grimiest, most imaginative, experimental form. Add some electronic clicks, beeps and sweet vocals, and it transpires that Goodbooks really do seem to be doing something quite exciting and unique. “I despise bands who you can tell just have about 10 cds which they’ve had on repeat in their bedrooms since they were born”, seethes Max. “It’s about taking elements of whatever you’re inspired by, rather than just being a poor man’s Jam or Oasis”. Jp agrees, muttering: “there are so many generic bands around in the mainstream at the moment that I’d rather listen to Bjork or Joy Division or something”.
However, they are highly enthusiastic about the music that is currently bubbling closely under the mainstream, namedropping The Maccabees, Kid Harpoon and Jamie T as new talents to keep your eyes peeled for. “It’s a really good time for new, British music and we are so, SO lucky to be a part of it”, gushes Chris. Indeed, so far they have received a huge amount of positive attention from the notoriously cruel NME, a major deal with Columbia records and a support slot with Radio 1 darlings, The Maccabees. Goodbooks’ rhythm machine, Leo, agrees, quite accurately recognising that there appears to be a huge underground mentality at the moment, “and people are into the stuff that isn’t getting a huge amount of coverage. It’s a time for the small bands.” You heard it here first guys.
Do Good Books float your proverbial boat? Then visit www.ilovegoodbooks.com quick smart learn more!
> 28
> music: album and single reviews
New Singles by Katie Jacobs
The Fratellis
Little Baby Fratelli
Amos Lee Supply and Demand 05/03/07
05/03/07
The Fratellis recently won Best British Breakthrough Act at the Brits, despite never having been able to break through mediocrity and into actually being any good. I have the proof. It’s this song. And all the other songs. Not that anyone can tell the difference. Guitar-centric, generic, uninspired, so-called indie rock for the Artic Monkeys generation. Come back when you’ve broken through a brick wall with your heads, then I might be impressed.
The Horrors
Gloves
26/02/07
They’re well dark, these Horrors chaps. They love black and goth girls and all things eyeliner related. They also most likely spend more money on hair spray than CD production, and more time artfully deconstructing their barnets than on making music, if this slice of headache inducing goth-garage is anything to go by. I can see what they’re trying to do, it’s just a pity it all sounds a bit Spinal Tap with Farris Rotter doing an excellent Nigel Tufnel.
Joss Stone Tell Me 'Bout It
12/03/07
No, Miss Stone, I will not tell you ‘bout’ it. I’ll tell you ‘about’ it if you insist, but please refrain from dropping your letters, it’s hardly ladylike. Well done, you have a nice voice, but this ‘groove’, as your press release insists on calling it, is hardly interesting. I’ve heard more interesting shipping forecasts. Dying your hair pink is a good diversion tactic though. If you go one further and do a Britney people might not notice this is dull as ditchwater.
Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly
I Spy
05/03/07
One problem with having a band name as brilliant as G.C.W.C.F, is that unless the music you make is incendiary, it’s never going to live up to the name. ‘I Spy’ is a perfectly pleasant piece of acoustic song-writing that will doubtless soundtrack a Hollyoaks montage near you soon (no bad thing, Hollyoaks is clearly excellent). An enjoyable listen, the only problem is that once it’s over, I can’t for the life of me remember how it went.
Regina Spektor
Fidelity
05/03/07
Was the reason I have slagged off everybody else in the world of singles this issue because I was anticipating how only the marvellous Regina Spektor could redeem our current musical wasteland? Possibly. But such prejudice is beside the point as the unique vocal stylings and songwriting genius of Miss Spektor can rarely be bettered, and ‘Fidelity’ is no exception. Joss Stone tries to do quirky and interesting with pink hair, Regina Spektor embodies it. Regina, I’ll be gay for you.
A
mos Lee, yet another singersongwriter in the offering. However, this is not Lee’s first contribution to the said genre but his second and if Amos Lee has progressed at all with 'Supply and Demand' then goodness knows how bland the debut was. Yet it is not that he lacks talent, indeed his lyrics express a very apparent social awareness and his voice…well his voice is exquisite. His vocals are deep and melodic and no doubt live, he would be a winner; if only that was all it took. Unfortunately for Lee, his competition lies in artists such as Ray LaMontagne and Ben Harper and they are a cut above. What 'Supply and Demand' lacks is what these artists have in abundance: that something to give it more than a hint of individuality to differentiate itself from the rest. Declaring the album to be generic is pushing it a little too far, what is more apt is to label it as rather formulaic. The bridges in the song are ever so noticeable, giving the feeling that they’ve been dropped in because that’s how people are ‘supposed’ to write songs. Yet Amos Lee is perhaps most let down by the inadequate originality of the actual music; the best tracks are often those in which Lee and his vocals carry the song. If this was Lee’s first album you could conclude that he had promise. Unfortunately it is not, begging the question that will that promise ever develop into anything more? REBECCA SHORT
✰✰✰✰✰ Shiny Toys Guns We Are Pilots 19/03/07
S
hiny Toy Guns is a cool name. In some ways I wish I had thought of it. It is not a randomly picked word, pluralised, and appended with ‘the’; it has a retro, plasticky feel about it; it is full of lots of satisfying consonants; in all honestly, I chose to review this album because of it. So imagine my disgust when I open the little PR information sheet to discover a series of bullet points telling me firstly that “Shiny Toy Guns are from the UsofA” and that “they have a male and female lead singer.” So I am being treated like an ignoramus: not great. Then I find out that they have “toured with the likes of My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy.” My, perhaps unreasonable, high expectations slowly began to crumble. Despite all this, the album has a couple – but only a couple – of genuinely good tracks on it. 'Le Disko' is a funky, electro-infused track with a thumping bass, only ruined by a naff acoustic vocal ending, which sounds more like ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ than the piece of really, really promising synthpop it could have been. Similarly, the band’s single 'You Are The One' is not bad, but is just too childish: I felt like a fourteen-year-old, dancing away in my messy bedroom. The rest of the album, on the whole, is awful. At times, I could not work out whether I was listening to a piece of crap emo or Enya: on their own, two bad comparisons, but together, well… What’s worse, the entire album is permeated with the (male) lead singer’s exaggerated American accent, making it, at
[The Shins: Would you trust them in a rubber dinghy?] best, unbearable. Never again will I pick an album by a band name. RICHARD BYRNE-SMITH
✰✰✰✰✰ The Shins Wincing the Night Away Out Now
N
o review of The Shins would be complete without the obligatory Garden State reference, so let’s get it over with. The Shins: they’ll change your life. They certainly changed mine, because ever since their second album, 'Chutes Too Narrow' was released in 2004, they’ve had exclusive play on my iPod in the hope that one day someone will ask what I’m listening to and I will be able to re-enact Natalie Portman’s lines from the aforementioned film. So I was more excited than most about their latest offering, mainly because I’d have a few more tracks to add to the 20 or so I had on repeat. Unfortunately, this album disappoints. 'Wincing The Night Away' doesn’t have the catchy, summery indie-pop choruses that made people love 'Chutes Too Narrow' on first listen, or as much of the Beach Boys-esque close harmonies that made their first album, 'Oh, Inverted World' so distinctive. They have supposedly matured read ‘become less fun, with lyrics edging just a bit too much towards the obscure.’ This is by no means a bad album, and it contains some great new material, most notably the haunting single 'Phantom Limb', but this has a different feel to their previous work: longer, slower songs with more emphasis on instrumentals than vocals. It’s pleasant to have on in the background. It’s just not the short but intense burst of charming sing-along songwriting that fans have come to expect. KATIE ROBINSON
✰✰✰✰✰ Willy Mason If The Ocean Gets Rough 05/03/07
I
’ll confess now, before listening to 'If the Ocean Gets Rough' I knew very little of Willy Mason. The only time he’s ever registered on my conscious was through a Fibbers gig a while back I didn’t actually go to
– god was I missing out. A brief overview of Mason’s career then for those of you similarly unenlightened: He recorded his first album, Where the Humans Eat in 2004 and sold over 100,000 copies. A successful appearance at Glastonbury 2005 followed, before two years on the road brought him to where he is now. 'If The Ocean Gets Rough' is an album that just exudes quality. It says a lot that the single 'Save Myself' is probably the weakest song – but in no way is that knocking it. Mason’s influences are rooted throughout American 20th century music. He looks to Johnny Cash on the folk ballad We Can Be Strong, dustbowl-era blues on 'When the River Moves On', and you can even imagine Billie Holiday singing along to the haunting verses of 'Simple Town'. The album is helped by the stripped-down production, which never lets the backing music get in the way of Mason’s voice. Occasionally your attention is drawn away from the singer, notably with the rhythm of the piano line on 'When the Leaves Have Fallen', the counterpoint of the solo violin on 'Simple Town', and the subtle vibrato strings on 'I Can’t Sleep', all of which help Mason achieve a highly individual sound – despite his obvious debts to various musical genres. Mason tours the UK in May. By then this album could be huge. LAURIE ALLSOPP
✰✰✰✰✰ Yoko Ono Yes, I'm a Witch Out Now
M
any have long suspected that Yoko Ono’s talent lay largely in the realm of mediocre and that the rationale behind the extensive recognition of her music and art has more than a little to do with the fact that she was married to a Beatle. Hence it is in a very self-conscious and defensive atmosphere that this album attempts to right the ‘wrongs’ propagated by the media – or as the self-protective press release puts it, correct “the injustice of misinformation made fact”. Indeed, the name itself, ‘Yes, I’m a Witch’ is a less than subtle prod at the fire that Ono has come under in recent years. The album features collaborations from a series of innovative and conspicuously progressive artists, from The Flaming Lips to
Cat Power to Le Tigre, and without exception Ono feels like a deadweight. On every track her contribution acts as a creative straightjacket to the entire musical process, and what is left is an overly ambitious album that not only fails to deliver but drags a number of respected artists down with it. It is an offering nothing short of shameless in its transparent will to reassert the influence of Yoko Ono and rather than the intended two-finger salute to her critics it serves only to justify their fears and denigration. Lennon is turning in his grave. MATT HOUGHTON
✰✰✰✰✰ CSS CSS 10/03/06
I
approach the (re-released) debut album from Brazilian 6-piece CSS with some caution. Reading in every achingly cool publication that they’re the best thing since sliced Klaxons has instilled an unfair prejudice against them before we even get started (contrary? Moi?). At first, things don’t seem good, kicking an album off with what is essentially a joke track (‘CSS Suxxx’) is not generally wise; but skip past this and you’ll be rewarded with a playful and infectious blend of electro-popdisco-punk (I promise, I’m not just mashing words together for kicks here). Despite the sticker promising me it’s ‘Parental Advisory – Explicit Lyrics’, this album is fun, occasionally even twee (bouncing along happily on ‘Alcohol’ for example), rather than the filth I was assured of. Ah well, you can’t win ‘em all. Opener ‘Patins’ (discounting ‘CSS Suxxx’, they certainly should have) sounds like Le Tigre backed by The Strokes. Unfortunately it also makes me want to dig out my copy of the far superior ‘Deceptacon’ rather than listen to it again. ‘Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above’ and ‘Music Is My Hot Hot Sex’ stick out more as slices of pure effervescent electro fun. Infectious rather than incendiary, CSS would probably sound better drunk: track me down at a Toffs near you where I shall be doing my bit for Vision arts to ascertain this, and possibly falling over quite a lot. KATIE JACOBS
✰✰✰✰✰
> music: live reviews
> 29
Brand New
Larrikin Love
Newcastle Academy 08/02/07
Leeds Cockpit 02/02/07
T
J
esse Lacey appears on stage in emo jeans and a dull red hoodie, refrains from the cursory introduction endemic of so many performances and breaks into an acoustic rendition of ‘Jude Law’, arguably Brand New’s most widely recognised track. It is an audacious start to a show that usurped all expectation. Brand New are a band that have made an audible journey through the course of their three-album career: from upbeat - albeit innately cynical - pop punk to dark, even haunting, post-hardcore emo. To some extent the stark changes in their musical style and direction are not conducive to a live show because of the danger of a disjointed performance. Yet, Brand New not only skilfully evaded the potential pitfalls that their music inevitably breeds, they categorically raised the bar for those who follow. Their performance was at once epic and understated; accomplished and unpredictable. Lacey’s wailing vocals echoed commandingly around the arena with an intensity and emotion so true it stung. Unafraid of key-changes and delicate musical adjustments, the band delivered an unrelenting and powerful performance imbued with an unprecedented subtlety that was at once impressive and original. Brand New predictably evoke an instinctive recoil from many because they fall dubiously under the unfortunate emo umbrella, and yet the authority and control with which their live performance was delivered was, despite the labels, masterful. MATT HOUGHTON
Bloc Party Manchester Academy 14th 14/02/07
T
here appears to be an unsaid rule at Bloc Party gigs that you must always allow those in the space around you enough room to dance in a circle. However, while the average fan is a pretty considerate one, a few overpriced carlings down the neck can also make them very impatient and I don’t think that even the East-London quartet felt confident about taking on this beer-induced mob after a major technical fault interrupted their set after only twenty minutes. Sadly, with a non-existent bass line and generally bad sound quality throughout, this wasn’t a good start. So thank God, those boys know how to play! With Matt Tong just as shirtless and brilliant on drums as ever, front man Kele Okereke chose to cope with guitar bust ups by abandoning the stage, climbing on sound equipment, and diving into the audience instead. Even the normally silent other two managed to deal with mechanical hitches by leading the audience into an almighty sing-a-long session of Killers, Razorlight and Interpol covers. At risk of the clichéd, cheese factor, the bands own lyrics have never been more apt, they were literally ‘on fire’. Despite opening with the first few tracks on the new record, the set list itself mainly centred around their debut album, complimented with just a spattering of new material. This mix of their new more glitchy and ambient tracks, alongside dance floor fillers from the old, made a winning combination. Naturally, with a sold out UK tour and A Weekend in the City proving the lads hadn’t fallen prey to second album syndrome, this gig was never going to be one to disappoint, but extra credit has to
[Bloc Party: Was I looking at you funny? Did I eat the last doughnut? Was it something I said?] be given here for managing to entertain a crowd without saying much more than ‘How are you doing?’ and ‘We’re Bloc Party’: the whole venue transformed into an all singing, all dancing sweat pit that could rival even the most hardcore of raves. It’s times like these, when you even see those wallflowers at the back having a dance, you know a band has got something special. CHARLOTTE BISLAND
Guillemots Sheffield Octagon 15/02/07
F
yfe Dangerfield is a man to be reckoned with. With a name that has been plucked straight from the box marked ‘romance novel’ and a beard not unlike that of a somewhat debonair roadie, the Guillemots front man has your fascination from the first note. And his band, dressed in regulation white coats, is eager to hold it. The Octagon itself is very much in the school hall persuasion, but what it lacked in style it made up for in a atmosphere brimming with pantomime. An exuberance of colour and interpretative dance (provided by ninjas) brought home the feeling of theatre. Fyfe, in his white as a sort of elfin lab technician, combines impressive vocal range with a mesmerism of energy. Whether hunched over his keyboard on his ornate wooden throne, jittering behind a guitar or supplying the percussion from a dustbin lid, he never falters. For inspiration read: ‘birdsong first and foremost’. From the delicate and haunting ‘Made Up Lovesong #43’, to the sublime sun-dappled laziness of ‘We’re Here’; the set waltzed from the avant-garde to pop symphony (and more than adequately took our minds off the sombre support acts.) ‘Spouse of the band’, double-bassist Aristazabal Hawkes brought ethereal style to the proceedings. And crowd-quiveringly catchy, ‘Trains to Brazil’, with the added cascading of bubbles over the crowd, brought a much
[Regina Spektor: Cheeky Minx, n'est pas?]
needed invigoration after lesser known tunes. Perhaps nine-minute birdsongs are lost on a city that sired Milburn. But some of us will be happy to float away on the wing of any low-flying Guillemot that passes by again. HOLLIE HEENAN
The Hussy's York Fibbers 20/01/07
I
didn’t know anything about The Hussys; however, arriving to find Fibbers more than half empty, I began to fantasise. Here we go Rich, I told myself, the indie dream is coming true. In a year’s time, The Hussys would be astoundingly famous, and I would be able to boast about my guestlist place at this intimate, before-they-were-famous gig. Perhaps, in true ‘I’m sooo not mainstream’ style, I could loudly proclaim that I hated them as soon as everyone else knew who they were. It was not to be. I first realised this when, a minute after passing through Fibbers’ grotty white doors, an extremely drunk man who thought he was Bruce Springsteen tried to befriend me. Then, to make matters worse, a pikey with hoopy earings and a Croydon facelift wandered onto the stage. Realising that she was, in fact, The Hussys’ lead singer, I desperately attempted to cling onto my fantasy: ‘it’s alright, she’s being ironic’, I told myself. To start with, they were not bad: the pikey was joined by five ageing guys, and they began to bang out an unoffensive, upbeat, happy pop tune; she sounded a bit like Pink, but I could get over that. Then I listened to the next song. And the next. And then I was bored. With inane lyrics (one s o n g was about n o t coming
round because somebody’s parents were stuck in the sixties) and slightly irritatingMagic Numbers-esque keyboards, The Hussys’ songs mainly consist of one annoying line which is just repeated over and over again. One song had a promising, slower, more dirty introduction, but before long, the infuriating keyboards and bouncy guitars wereback. I left Fibbers with the words of the last song reverberating around my head: the fact that there were pretty much only nine words in the whole song, making it only more frustrating. My fantasy had been cruelly shattered. RICHARD BYRNE-SMITH
The Holloways Leeds Met 15/02/07
C
harisma isn’t usually a word that springs to mind when seeing a relatively unknown band for the first time, but for these four North London lads, it most definitely is. Their self-assured, but never arrogant, stage presence makes it impossible not to warm to them. This, along with the numerous catchy pop-punk sing-alongs, makes for a very entertaining evening, as they pull off the large-stage with a surprising ease. With lines like 'This is Great Britain, lets raise a jar, just look at Georgie Best and how it got him so far' and 'Jack from Tennessee, makes me think that every girl I see is my cup of tea!' they are possibly following too closely in the footsteps of the Arctic Monkeys youth-culturecommentary lyrics, but they do have their own distinctive characteristics. The inclusion of a fiddle on some tracks hints at folk influences, plus cute vocal line-sharing and harmonies, and dashes of Kooks-esque reggae grooves combine well to give a not-too-samey set, often the problem with new indie-punk bands. Despite having an album that only lasts 40 minutes, they managed to keep the set (over an hour) brimming with quality tunes, including most of the album, ‘So This Is Great Britain?', plus B-sides and new songs. Seeing this band live is highly recommended as they definitely live up to their promise to 'generate the music to make you feel better!' Don’t expect to leave without a smile on your face! DREW CLARKE
he bizarreness of Larrikin Love increases ten-fold with each new tour. Gone are the arm-wrenching cowbell bangs and beautifully crotched attire; enter one Edward Larrikin, with his face painted white (oh dear…), guitars (heavens, no?), suits (stop!) and an interesting array of stuffed animals to boot. With eyes a-goggle and in severe danger of rolling into the frenzied crowd, and a polite bow of off-kilt hair cuts, the travelling carnival kicks off with ‘forever untitled’. This psychedelic, tongue-twisting opener is the starting whistle for the skanking vs. moshing championship (pick your side carefully – dep. music ed.) and the beginning of a breath-takingly energetic, sharp set. Sweating and bleeding their way through a genre-hopping 40minutes of songs, the band eventually reach their former single, ‘Happy as Annie’, throwing the crowd into new realms of hysteria. The guitars at this point are ditched, in favour of the pulling of some serious barndance shapes. Meanwhile, the calypso-punk single ‘Edwould’ and social commentating ‘Sussex Downs’ whip the band into even more of a frenzy, and thankfully, Ed’s white face begins to drip off. Their unfortunate identity crisis aside, they make a damn good clatter for four scrawny lads. Additionally, they must be given credit for frolicking their way through a bottomless pit of genres, and for making Leeds’ A&E’s waiting room fit to burst after what was, quite frankly, a fantastic set. CAMILLE AUGARDE
Regina Spektor Manchester Academy 1 15/02/07
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egina Spektor owns the Manchester Academy before she comes on stage. She owned it whilst the queue of wide-eyed indie girls and boys snaked up Oxford Road in the rain. Hell, she owned it the minute the tickets went on sale. There are few artists these days that inspire such fanatical devotion, few that deserve it, but from the second Regina takes to the stage and launches into ‘Eight Miles High’, which is sung completely acapella, it is clear the crowd would do anything for her. The reverential mood is sustained throughout a generous (although still not long enough) 90 minute set. For the first part of the set, a piano, a guitar and a stick to bash against her (rather the worse for wear) stool in ‘Poor Little Rich Boy’ are all she uses to accompany herself, but her considerable charisma and the diversity of her voice make her a captivating spectacle. She is capable of moving from fragile to fierce, comical to poignant, all in the inflection of a word or sound, and she’s a big fan of sounds, being known to growl or whoop when the mood strikes her. In a performance so rich, varied and breath-taking, it’s hard to pick stand out tracks, but the bittersweet ‘Samson’, the crowd-pleasing ‘Us’ and the riotous ‘Baby Jesus’ deserve a mention. Whether backed by a band, singing solo, or banging a stick against a chair, Regina Spektor’s charm and warmth make her truly entrancing. Right, now I’m off to found a religion in her name. KATIE JACOBS
> 30
> film
Film
Post - St. Valentine's Day Massacre there is goes something like this: “You killed my best friend/ partner/lover in your bid to take over the world,” “Hell yeah, I love it because I’m unhinged,” “KABOOM” The protagonist of the film is a woman (bad start) with a personality (uh oh) who deals with various dilemmas in a gently humorous way. There isn’t much time for grenades, but there is time for a reflection on reality a little more upbeat than say, Mad Max. Rich asks why we would rather lust after Drippier than thou Hugh Grant than Bruce Willis? It is not the case that we find the romantic affectations appealing; they serve only as reciprocals of the heroine’s barbed comments and witticisms. More importantly, the male leads serve as eye candy. Yep, subverting the male gaze ‘n all that. Action films may save that passive hottie from a vat of boiling tar at the end, but consider Colin Firth emerging from the lake in Pride and Prejudice and how massively gratutitous that was. Major problems with emotions seem to be the motive for much of the action in a high adrenaline film and don’t offer any insight into anything other than how exactly you stop a bus that will blow up if, you guessed it, it stops. Chick flicks offer some sort of slant on everyday life where you do (maybe on quite a superficial level) empathise with the characters. Let us also consider for a moment the stars of these action films: Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwarzenegger, all totally unhinged oddballs. Why would you aspire to be a professional weirdo, antiSemitist or a Republican governer? What did Hugh Grant ever do to anyone, eh?
Cult Classic Matt Houghton takes a look through the Rear Window 1954 Dir: Alfred Hitchcock Starring:James Stewart, Grace Kelly Running Time:112 mins
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ear Window tells the story of a professional photographer (played by James Stuart) who, when confined to his bedroom on account of a broken leg, becomes obsessed with watching the intimate goings-on in his neighbourhood. Initially the unnervingly voyeuristic camerawork renders the film almost
repellent, and yet as Hitchcock gradually allows the plot to unfold the viewer is inexplicably absorbed into the private lives of those on show. When Stuart’s character - the inescapably charming J.B. - begins to suspect that a murder may have taken place in the apartment opposite, he enlists the investigative aid of his tireless girlfriend - the mesmerising Grace Kelly and his obsession spirals out of control.
L Critics are too quick to judge a film based around a female character that isn’t automatically horror or pornography as solely for women and their ‘issues’.
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You may argue 'manly' action films are unrealistic, but romantic comedies seem to operate in an entirely different universe, where men can dance.
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he ‘Woman’s film’ is not a term that does these films justice, but for the sake of brevity we will have to use it. Critics are too quick to judge a film based around a female character that isn’t automatically horror or pornography as solely for women and their ‘issues’. However, there is a canon of work that men in particular despise: the rom coms, stretching back from Pretty Woman up to anything starring Cameron Diaz. These films are the much derided slice of the filmic canon-pie, somehow considered more conventional than the action film. Chick flicks come from a long tradition of the ‘woman’s film’ and revolve around relationships: those with men, with friends and with family. There is a lot of talking: some of it funny, some of it sad, some of it massively bitchy. This emphasis on communication could be one of the many reasons why men prefer action films where the little communication that
Die-Hard action man Rich Williams showers Bridget Jones and her crew in a hail of word-shaped uzi bullets.
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Legally Blonde Lani Peace tells gun totin', muscle bulgin', lady lovin' macho action films where to go.
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The film is set in a single room, and thus relies entirely upon the strength of its story and perhaps more notably its direction to relay t h e
et’s face it, chick flicks have just got it all wrong. Most are downright rubbish films concerned with flowers and feelings and lovely nuns riding rainbows all the way to the candyfloss castle on the moon. Ok, perhaps I’m exaggerating. Nonetheless, some stereotypical ‘girly’ films receive far more acclaim than they truly deserve. Lacking both style and substance, chick flicks incessantly rework the allegedly timeless narrative of the boy meets girl scenario, lamely attempting to jazz it up with an element of ‘original’ comedy (wow, they are actually brother and sister) or an overarching theme (we met through dancing, it, like, binds our love). Occasionally some films break the mould, such as The Notebook, but generally we know the romance is inexorably going to work out, the guy is often an unlovable bumbling British buffoon and the lack of talent from most of the actresses masks their attractiveness entirely. I’d rather see them split up, throw things, and watch Hugh Grant get his pansy ass beaten down by a girl. You may argue ‘manly’ action films are completely unrealistic, but romantic comedies seem to operate in an entirely dif ferent universe, w h e r e men can dance. I can’t understand the attract i o n e i t h e r.
kind of suspense endemic of a Hitchcock film. Inhabited by flawed yet highly believable characters and punctuated confidently with dry wit, Rear Window is nothing if not an enjoyable film. Yet, it is its unflinching commitment to simplicity, founded upon the unshakable genius of Hitchcock’s directorial interpretation that elevates it to its worthy position upon the pedestal of cinema. Rear Window, in its masterful implementation of the most basic elements of film, is quite simply one
Colin Firth emerges from the water, his white shirt sodden and see-through.Girls swoon. Bruce Willis emerges from an air duct to save his wife and hundreds of innocent people, his white shirt sodden with his own sweat and the blood of three recently dispatched German terrorists. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a real man. A man with strength, integrity and honour. A man who is not afraid to drop Alan Rickman thirty stories in order to reclaim his wife’s affection. Let’s not forget that action films also teach us valuable life lessons, from Edward Norton’s school of self defence, to Arnie’s camouflaging jungle survival techniques in Predator. Should we really be surprised that most of today’s top actors opt for the more ‘masculine’ action realm of cinema? All chick flicks seem to attract are up and coming young bucks who don’t know any better, and Richard Gere. You don’t see Matt Damon, Christian Bale and Daniel Craig signing up for much soppy romance, and when these fine thespians get reduced to the realm of the chick flick they seem to lose all ability to act. Just check out Ralph Fiennes in Maid in Manhattan. How the mighty have fallen indeed. Or even Leonardo Di Caprio in Titanic. We all know the best part of that film is when the chef hits the propeller blade. Action films represent the heroes we all want to be and should aspire to. Romantic films represent the type of guys we can never be and never have been. ‘No one puts Baby in the corner’. That’s right. I’d put you in the bin.
of the most impressive pieces of directorial execution in cinema history.
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> 31
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dapted from the novel by Zoë Heller, Notes on a Scandal begins with the arrival of a new art teacher at a London school. Sheba Hart, played by Cate Blanchett, soon finds herself hopelessly involved in an affair with a 15year old student, which threatens to destroy her unconventional yet comfortable family life. Judi Dench plays the aging history teacher, Barbara Covett, who is quick to befriend the new arrival and like most, also becomes enchanted by her. On the discovery of Sheba’s indiscretions however, the scale of Barbara’s obsession becomes disturbingly apparent. A sharply crafted combination of scornful observations and deluded romantic musings from Barbara’s diary effectively form the basis of the film’s narration and Dench’s vocal performance succeeds in creating a chilling atmosphere. However, the film does not live up to the premise. While the trailer offers a thrilling tale of obsession, power and desire, Notes on a Scandal ultimately fails to engage the viewer as Sheba’s increasingly idiotic behaviour denies us the opportunity to empathise with her self-involved character. Despite this, Blanchett performs well in the main role, and there are strong performances from Bill Nighy, as Sheba’s husband and
DVD: THE LAST KISS Dir: Tony Goldwyn Starring: Zach Braff, Jacinda Barrett, Casey Affleck, Rachel Bilson Running Time: 115 mins Certificate: 15 Release Date: Out Now
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he Last Kiss marks Zach Braff ’s follow up to the highly acclaimed self penned Garden State, focusing on a group of early thirty-something friends all going through a period of transitional crisis in their love lives. Braff ’s character, Michael, is in a long term relationship with Jenna, who is pregnant with his child and increasingly to keen s e t t l e
Andrew Simpson as the young pupil. As the film progresses, the plot suffers from alternately far-fetched and predictable sequences which result in a level of detachment in the viewer. Rather than a story of passionate infatuation, at the core of the film is Dench’s sensitive portrayal of an aging woman, whose lonely, solitary life leaves her desperately longing for human contact. At its best, the film powerfully evokes her quiet suffering, but even this is invalidated by an overblown finale which leaves the viewer cold. JO BECKETT-KING
Edgar Wright has described his intentions with Hot Fuzz as Bad Boys 2 in the west country, a film that will for the first time since the dawn of man make British Bobbies look cool
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NOTES ON A SCANDAL Dir: Richard Eyre Starring: Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench, Tom Georgeson Running Time: 92 mins
> film: reviews
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✰✰✰✰✰ HOT FUZZ Dir: Edgar Wright Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Timothy Dalton, Bill Bailey Running Time: 121 mins Certificate: 15 Release Date: Out Now
Bad Boys 2 in the west country, a film that will for possibly the first time since the dawn of man make British Bobbies look cool. The movies plot sees London ‘super cop’ Nicholas Angel (Pegg) sent to the west country because his arrest record is making the rest of the force look terrible. On arrival he is teamed up with bumbling, generally useless sidekick Danny (Frost). Angel proceeds to embark upon investigating a series of particularly grizzly deaths that have been passed off by local police as accidents. Hardened urban cop Angel knows better than these country folk and suspects foul play. The first hour of the film is one of the funniest cinematic experiences that are you likely to have this year with the laughs coming thick
and fast. Unfortunately the film is slightly too long and the ending somewhat drawn out, with Pegg and Frost having to make the most of some standard regurgitated gags. Hot Fuzz may not have the charm and as many laugh out loud moments as its mighty predecessor, and one of the movie's best jokes may have been spoiled by the trailer, but it is still very watchable entertainment and should not be missed. It will no doubt be one of the better British films of the year.
bling nature of Jim Carrey’s fantasy relationship in Eternal Sunshine through to an oddly successful attempt to re-imagine The White Stripes as giant blocks of Lego. However, The Science of Sleep takes this offbeat approach a step further with frustratingly mixed results. Whilst visually arresting with a stunning imagination at play, the film lacks any real depth. For a romantically inclined comedy, it contains a worrying lack of heart with characters mere ciphers onto which Gondry projects his latest frivolous ideas. Gael Garcia Bernal is largely under-used as the retiring Stéphane and, whilst inventive, the character’s dream sequences never bear any deep-rooted psychological interest. The use of Spanish, English and French dialogue is
another needless convolution that can’t help but distance the audience from proceedings. However, for all its narrative deficiencies, The Science of Sleep is a breezy and enjoyable feast for the eyes. Whilst it may lack real dramatic edge, the imagery is never less than intriguing and is worth the price of admission alone.
HARRY CAMERON
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ot Fuzz is Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s follow up to one of the biggest hits of 2004, Shaun of the Dead. Unlike the rom-zom-com, which was something of a surprise hit, Hot Fuzz comes to the cinema with huge anticipation and expectation. Writer Edgar Wright has described his intentions with Hot Fuzz as down, buy a house et cetera. With his life seemingly mapped out before him, Michael enters into a phase of indecision, self doubt and confusion, which leads him into the arms of Rachel Bilson’s Kim, a young university student who embodies the freedom Michael thinks he is losing. Michael’s friends are all experiencing their own difficulties, from Casey Affleck’s preoccupation with work rather than his wife, to Michael Weston’s reluctance to move on from a past flame. This makes the film engaging and thought -provoking by offering a range of perspectives and insights into relationship turmoil, and the way in which each of these difficulties can be resolved. The film is enhanced by some particularly compelling performances. Braff has remnants of the likeable downbeat guy from Garden State and his natural appeal forces us to sympathise with a man making decisions potentially ruinous to his own life and the life of his girlfriend and unborn child. Unfortunately the melancholy atmosphere this generates doesn’t make for fantastic date movie material. Nonetheless it’s an interesting take on the midlife crisis and testament to the imperfections in all relationships. A good rental for those who feel their own lives are moving too fast. RICH WILLIAMS
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THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP Dir: Michel Gondry Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg Running Time: 105 mins Certificate: 15 Release Date: Out Now
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onestly, you wait years to see an experimental film of real worth and then two come along at once. Next month sees the mouth-watering return of David Lynch with his sprawling Inland Empire. Meanwhile this week brings the long-awaited third feature from pop promo auteur and beguiling visionary Michel Gondry. Following 2004’s muchcelebrated Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Gondry has crafted a bizarre and sprightly follow-up which is, perhaps inevitably, a noble failure. The Science of Sleep examines the dream world created by the painfully shy Stéphane (the ever-dependable Gael Garcia Bernal) and his romantic dalliances with charming ‘neighbour’ Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Forced to escape the grim boredom of reality and his job at a calendar making company, Stéphane retreats into a madcap fantasy world of a cardboard Paris and stopmotion oddity. Gondry’s projects have always had a dream-like quality about them, from the crum-
DAN SMITH
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[The man on the left did not win the ensuing thumb war]
> 32
> tv
teleVISION
So Bad, But Oh-So-Good
It's cheap, it's low quality, it's exploitative and it's blaady beautiful. Richard Webb investigates TV that just doesn't care anymore...
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ccording to recent experimentation, scientists have now proven that finding something decent to watch on telly is more difficult a task than creating a life size model of your own genitalia using only spaghetti hoops and treasury tags. Of course like most recent findings by scientists, that fact is absolute bollox and can be discredited by the simple flick of a switch, press of a button or kiss of a prince. There is loads of stuff that’s decent enough to watch on TV, for example did you know Dale’s Supermarket Sweep was still going? Well it is ITV Mondays to Fridays, 5.30pm. So obviously there is always going to be something to watch, but perhaps the term ‘decent’ needs investigating. Every now and again something 'decent' comes along and occasionally it’s a corker, but its corkability is usually only a temporary condition and the show will either finish and disappear, like a graceful swan after intercourse, or, more likely, just keep chundering along, losing interest and gaining shitness in equal measure. On the other hand, there are several other types of television that can be deemed ‘decent’ to watch, but which will never, ever be allowed the title of ‘decent programme’ (an example of this being Cribs on MTV and Ftn (all the time) - its trash, but its fascinating trash… trashinating?) We are now, however, approaching the territory of televisual programmaphical analysisification and as a TV editor I can safely say that this is no place for me to start dipping my proverbial wick. On the other hand, my proverbial wick has been hanging out for the past few days so its probably about time I dipped it somewhere, otherwise I’d just be irresponsible… so lets get down to business: As most fascist/obsessive compulsive/mass murderer will tell you, everything in life can be sorted into neat little categories and kept there for all eternity… unless, of course, something slips out and starts fucking the categories off and leading its own free, individual life, in which case you have to catch that sauntering little bastard, beat it repeatedly in the face and then bury it alive in a corn field just as it breathes its last few blood choked breaths... So anyway, these nice neat categories i n which the world can be chopped up and put into, can also be applied to the world of television. All you have to do is
[Telly may be crap now, but centipides are a lot more interesting] invent a title for each category, make up a quick list of anything that you’ve seen in this weeks TV guide, stuff them into whatever section seems best and forget all about the millions and millions of other programmes and subsequent contradictions that are out there and just plough on with your very own wok full of stir-fried bullshit. Our first category is called ‘Stuff That Has Always Been Around’, and within we can find those fuzzy bits off TV warmth that have always been there, and seem like they always will, to welcome you in on a cold depressing evening and give you that special treatment on those sensitive days, they’re just like your Grandparents were, before they died. Here live programmes like Match of the Day, Countdown, University Challenge, The Simpsons, Documentaries about freaky people, The 10 O’clock News, Chucklevision, and (if your’e just after straight up depression) the numerous Soap Operas; Eastenders, Coronation Street and so on. They are TV’s safety nets, always around and able to provide simple satisfaction in an unexcitable way, like a nice cup of tea. The second category is called ‘New a n d Interesting’ a n d , excitingl y ,
[Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul: What's poppin', baby?]
involves two sub-categories which shall be labelled; a) Popular But Just Dies Away Quietly or Finishes Abruptly and b) Popular and Keeps on Going For Ever and Ever. In group a) we can introduce bygone greats such as Spaced, Deadwood, Quantum Leap and the Crystal Maze, all of which stayed only for a short, but brilliant, period and are now only accessible through DVD purchase or by chancing upon one of the two hundred repeats shown every day on numerous channels. Section b) is much more common and includes a vast collection of worthless artefacts; examples include Little Britain, Lost, Desperate Housewives, The Weakest Link, That one where Gillian McKeith looks at peoples poo, and the OC. They all started off pretty interesting, some pretty damn entertaining, but they either stayed too long and quickly withered into a dried up boring mess of nothingness or became so up their own arse that even McKeith got sick of wading through the shit. The third and final category has its origins in ‘New and Interesting’ but later evolved and grew so that it would eventually become its own fully fledged Category, with the catchy label: ‘Stuff that you know is shit but is still quite good fun to watch.’ Here we find the specimens that embrace what may be seen as the defining character of early 21st century TV. A lot of it is reality based, not of the Big Brother or Get Me Out of Here style but more honest in its approach. Take Kelly Osbourne: Turning Japanese (ITV3 Thurs 9pm) for example, there’s nothing on offer here except the prospect of laughing at a reality-celebrity dressing up as a geisha and getting sushied by an aging Tokyo businessman, but what more could you possibly want? And if that floats your boat then there’s a long list of similar reality based favour-
ites; There’s Dragons Den (BBC2 Weds 8pm), American Idol (ITV2 all the time) or even Paris and Nicole’s The Simple Life (E4). They’re cheap, they’re low quality, they’re exploitative and they’re blaady lovely! With all this watchable crap flying around it could just be possible to identify a mini revolution occurring in TV land, created by those restless few determined to rise above the copycat popular programmes which surround us, and create something a little bit original, maybe just as crap, but certainly original. And so we have the creation of two weird programmes; Life on Mars (BBC1 Tues 9pm), which involves detective Sam Tyler unexplainably travelling back in time to be a policeman in the 1970s, and Primeval on ITV1 (Sat 7.45pm). This stars the little blond, nonracist one (I assume) from S Club 7 and about thirty nine Scottish people who are on the hunt for Dinosaurs, giant centipedes and other crazy massive stuff that is unexplainably spewing out of a time hole thingymagig in the centre of London. These two bizarre new programmes could be seen as some kind of revolutionary-genius-fantasticsex-magic inventions, but a more believable hypothesis would be that the creators just don’t give a shit anymore. Got another boring old detective series? Why not just have the hero travel back to the seventies and never explain why! Want to make a programme to compete with Doctor Who but on ITV? Why not have a load of dinosaurs turn up in London and get a bunch of Scottish guys to kill them! Fuck it, why not find someone out of S Club 7 to play an A-level student who wears the latest range of Argos Additions fashion catalogue! Now we’re talking! Now that the floodgates have opened lets hope that more stuff like this will spill through. It might be crap acting and cheap special effects but at least someone’s having a go and creating something interesting. Who knows what could be next, but rumour has it that channel Five have a Spielberg produced epic on its way about a tribe of massive alien Humpback Whales on their way to invade Birmingham and the only ones who can stop them are a craggy gang of world-weary quadriplegic paedophiles and Simon from Blue. Meanwhile Channel Four have also entered themselves into the race with the creation of a dark legal drama in which Ghandi, controversially played by Timmy Mallet, is summoned from the past to investigate council tax fraud in north-east England. Whether these shows can or cannot live up to the great expectations which surround them doesn’t even matter, because being given the opportunity to watch something exciting and different is a million times better than having to sit and watch Gillian McKeith prodding through the Hamiltons poo… well at least it’ll be something to put on during the ad breaks.
CATEGORISE
THIS! Where Did You Go, My Lovely?
Spaced, Channel Four 1999 - 2001
The Crystal Maze Channel Four 1990 - 1995
When Will the Suffering End?
Little Britain, BBC
Lost, Sky One
> culture
> 33
Culture: Interview
Katie Jacobs chats to Beatrix Campbell and Judith Jones about their new play Blame (premiering at the York Theatre Royal) for the feminist theatre company Sphinx.
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t’s not that often that our fair city (yes, York is technically a city. It has a Minster and everything) plays host to truly cutting edge works of art, but this March the York Theatre Royal is lucky enough to be teaming up with the feminist theatre company Sphinx to stage Blame: a brand new play by playwrights, broadcasters, feminists, social commentators and all round super heroes Beatrix Campbell and Judith Jones. ‘Blame’ is the duo’s second play, and follows the critically acclaimed And All the Children Cried, which explored attitudes towards women who murder children, and thus completely trangress society’s view of feminine roles (it is a dialogue between Myra – based on Myra Hindley – and the fictional, emotionally scarred Gail, who killed two of her children). After such an explosion onto the British theatre scene, it is hardly surprising that in their new work, Campbell and Jones delve into different political issues in their typically frank and acerbic style. Blame is centred round the disappearance of the working class: an exploration of a new despised social underclass, the problems that those living in poverty face, and issues of who exactly is to “blame” for this. Beatrix Campbell explains that, “Blame began its life as a play about class and the way in which a class that was once regarded as the majority – that is to say working class – has disappeared from political life. The time when the working class was something to be acknowledged has gone. It’s over. Kaput. Now, 30% of children live in poverty, something which was totally unprecedented in the time of a Labour Government.” Judith Jones expands, explaining that despite this memory of the vanished class into which they were both born, the play is neither sentimental nor nostalgic: “It may explore the relationship between power and powerlessness, but this
powerlessness doesn’t necessarily make you a nice person. The play interrogates who’s to blame, there’s a lot of passion and outrage there, and everyone is interrogated. We’re exploring how these characters got to the point where they made what were often disastrous choices.” When I broach the subject of fully politicised theatre, and their views on art having a moral responsibility, with its capacity to reflect and even influence society, Beatrix is quick to point out that, “Everything we do as humans, as individuals, is political. So it’s not surprising that our writing is politicised. We’re not telling people what to think however. It’s important to us that this is a shared experience between the audience, the performers and the writers.” They both agree that political theatre appears to be having something of a renaissance of late, but that this shift is not without its hazards: “Political theatre is evolving into a new form of drama with no predecessor, which can mean it’s a difficult thing to pull off as the territory it occupies is uncertain, there are no standard templates or guidelines. Some of the best work that’s emerging is experimenting with new forms and genres; therefore it is of course precarious and dangerous...and it can be problematic because the dispossessed part of society that is often explored isn’t part of the theatrical milieu, so you have to be confident in your knowledge of that.” They are both obviously confidence in their knowledge of this class, and Beatrix clarifies her view that, “Far from not having any culture, this class has an incredibly fertile relationship and interaction with popular culture. New cultures are being developed before our very eyes and it’s glorious. We want people to see the potential in this class, what they could achieve if they weren’t so poor and if the relationships between men and women
'Blame' examines the devastating effects the decline of the British working class has on childern were challenged and changed. The only thing that makes them different is their poverty.” Both writers are well known for their feminist views, and reveal that this new play is no exception, even though it involves a number of male parts (unlike the two hander And All The Children Cried). They explain that, “What we bring to the relationships [within the play] between genders and generations is a feminist eye, and that’s a vital eye. We’re confident we can bring that eye to anything.” As experts in case studies
of domestic abuse, I throw in a final mention of the hockey club’s ill-advised (to say the least) ‘Wife Beater’ social. There’s a pregnant pause, then Judith exclaims, “If we’d known that we might not have agreed to do this interview!” Beatrix continues, “Tell them we’d like to issue an open invitation to all their members to come and talk to us when we’re in York. And that they should be afraid, very afraid”. With their ferocious wit and intelligence, I’d be surprised if anyone would be willing to take these two on, but any takers, write to us at
the usual address…
Blame runs at York Theatre Royal from 3-17 March Tickets for students are just £5.00, available from www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
Previews One Night. Six people. Twelve Characters. Beth Pitts' 'Cricket on the Moon'
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ix old friends reunite for Mary’s birthday party, dressed as their favourite film icons. Over the night however, the atmosphere of bonhomie becomes distinctly chilled, glamorous attire failing to hide the many foibles and secrets on display. Abi and Mac bicker and fight over their past liasons; Jimmy drinks solidly and broods on a failed army career; Phillipa tries in vain to keep order and remind them why they are there, but no one appears to be listening; Alan turns up dressed to impress with new girlfriend Susie; and Mary... Mary doesn’t seem like she’s going to arrive at all. As identities blur and the night wears on, nothing is certain; especially not what we see in front of us. Cricket on the Moon is a contemporary tragi-comedy on the themes of celebrity and mortality. It is a piece of new writing that uses fancy dress as a potent metahphor for the masks we all carry with us in life and asks fundamental questions about fame, adoration and the obsession our culture has with these superficial qualities.
This new piece, which has been workshopped in the barn from inception through initial readthrough to final production, is merging the mediums of film and theatre to produce a multimedia extravaganza If you’ve ever wanted to see Audrey Hepburn in your living room, watch as The Godfather gets it on with Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz or wondered, do they really play Cricket on the Moon, then the drama barn has the answers: Friday to Sunday week 8 at 7.30pm. BEN RIDGEWAY
'Cricket on the Moon' Friday - Sunday, Week eight Tickets: £3.00 Friday, £3.50/£4.50 members/non-members Saturday & Sunday
Verdi's grandest of operas, Aida, takes to the stage at York Grand Opera House next month
H
eralded as one of the grandest and most popular of all Verdi’s operas, Ellen Kent and Opera International are bringing their award winning production of Aida to The Grand Opera House, York on Wednesday 14 March. Originally written for the Cairo Opera House, Verdi’s opera tells the story of a beautiful Egyptian slave girl called Aida, and her love for the Egyptian hero, Radames. Set in Ancient Egypt, 3000 years before Christ, the production promises to feature sets and costumes twinned with a dramatic plot which will reflect the splendour and mystery of ancient Egypt, using ancient Egyptian tomb paintings and extant documents found in various archaeological expeditions. The opera itself premiered at the Cairo Opera House in December 1871, where it was an immediate success and even today Aida still enjoys the same welcome reception from British audiences as Cairo offered in 1871. It will return to York with the Chisinau National Opera, a company of about 170. Natalia Margarit, the Italian soprano will return to sing Aida and will join a
host of international stars which include the magnificent Moldovan baritone Petru Racovita and Mezzo soprano Nadejda Stoianova.
Tickets Priced £23 - £35.50 Available from 0870 606 3595
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Reviews Enola Drama Barn 01/02/07
O
n August 6th 1945, an American plane dropped the world’s first atomic bomb over the population of Hiroshima, effecting the instant vaporisation of 70,000 lives. The Colonel in command named this fateful plane after his wife, Enola Gay, who had committed suicide. Her shadow haunts the play and the life of her daughter, also Enola Gay, who tries to come to terms with both personal and global tragedy. Al Smith’s acclaimed play first performed at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2005 switches between time frames, entwining Enola’s reflections on the events with the race to build to
devastating effects of radiation on the human body through to the greed and bribery that fuelled the bomb, science, politics and art are skilfully blended. In style Enola recalls Faulk’s war classic Birdsong, especially in the juxtaposition between beauty and horror. The moment of the explosion is a perfectly timed climax, in a monologue describing the splendour of the scene that seems to make time stand still. Schubert’s 'Ave Maria' is heard here and weaves throughout the play like a bird singing amidst the horror of war, transcending human suffering, in hope or in mockery. Excellent use of media can be found throughout including a shadow screen, projected authentic photographs and a mock-live video broadcast of a speech from the US President Trumann. Jonathan Kerridge- Phipps excelled
it was of little hindrance in this case. Beth Davis gave a credible performance in the role of Enola at her many different life stages. John Hoyle was excellently cast as a young ambitious American who gets caught up in the race, as was Jamie Wilkes, as the scientist who tries avert the impending disaster of his own creation. Altogether a 5* play with a top quality cast to look for in the future. HANNAH WALLACE
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bomb. For those of us to whom the science of the atom, not to mention this defining moment in history, are little more than GCSE memories, the carefully researched dialogue is illuminating. From the
in this role, with great attention to gesture and articulation that led to a fluent and convincing character. British drama students trying to emulate American accents can sometimes be the ruin a play, but
Preview:
Omid Djalili
audience to laugh at themselves. When I say ‘teach’, I mean ‘trick’. What he actually did was to get the entirety of the stalls to jump around whacking their heads and their stomachs pretending to be Islamic fundamentalists before they realised that they were the butt of his joke. Suffice to say, it worked very well. However, the final story of his dad slapping a skinhead in the cinema whilst pretending to mistake him for a relative three times (during the racially unsound backdrop of the 1970s) topped the bill and had us all in stitches. I could hardly breathe when Omid reappeared performing Iranian disco dancing for his encore, and I’m pretty sure that were I to have died at that moment in time, it would have been with a dirty great grin on my face.
Grand Opera House 20/02/07
LOULLA-MAE SMITH
LAUREN OWENS
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West Side Story Central Hall 01/02/07
A
[The plane that dropped the bomb that changed the world forever]
The orchestra on stage was conducted by Bryony Davies who showed great control over her ensemble with a particularly difficult score. The only flaw that could really be picked at was the dancing. Whilst Choreographers Sarah Betteridge, Michelle Clarke and Nicola Murphy put together some excellent routines, often the dancers themselves were a little out of time with either each other or the music. All in all though this was a highly memorable show and if you missed it, you missed out.
fter appearing in FAME last year, I was sceptical that West Side Story would not live up to my expectations. How wrong I was. From the opening number until the end, I was entertained. On Friday 9th February, for a few short hours, I was transported from Central Hall to 1950s New York where two teenage gangs ruled the streets – the Jets and the Sharks. Anyone who had seen FAME would recognise a few familiar faces amongst the cast. Leading the men, Tony was portrayed by Tom Rogers, whose singing during ‘Maria’ was incredibly moving. Maria herself was Miranda de Silva and her performance was certainly equal to Tom’s. Viki Jones was on form as the fire-cracker Anita from Puerto-Rico and her pairing with Jerome Edet as Bernardo, provided some fabulous dancing and chemistry between the pair. Oliver Regan’s performance as Riff was also memorable, but what really stole the show was the Second Act song ‘Officer Krupke’ led by James Calver as Action with the Jet boys, well deserving of its resounding applause.
O
mid Djalili, the tubby British Iranian who likes to prance around like an arse on stage dancing to disco music, is my new favourite funny man. Step down Russell Brand, this guy’s got a belly and he ain’t afraid to shake it. Djalili takes the term ‘multi-cultural’ to a new level; and I’m not just talking about his act. I think it’s safe to say that York is one of the most white middle-class cities I’ve ever been to, but Mr Djalili managed to pull together the most racially diverse crowd I’ve ever seen in this sleepy old place. On asking if there were any Indians in the house he was met with a burst of cheers; on discovering the Arabic population of the auditorium he was hit with shouts of pride; and when he tried to discover any kind of Greek community in the theatre there was only one cheer. ‘Live the dream’, I was told whilst laughing at myself and looking like a fool. With racism being such a touchy subject these days, Omid not only managed to take the piss out of himself, but as many cultures as he possibly could, whilst teaching the
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[Omid Djalili: the tubby British Iranian who likes to prance around like an arse to disco music]
Mad Forest: this week at York Theatre Royal
Matt Houghton introduces us to Caryl Churchill's 'Mad Forest', as adventurous a piece of theatre as it is a politically important one. families in post- and pre-revolution times, the play is a penetrative and highly perceptive depiction of a society in turmoil. Perhaps then the manner in which Mad Forest was spawned as the cumulative product of political tumult and collaborative artistic
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n Christmas Day 1989, Romanian communist dictators Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were expelled from power and executed in front of a national television audience. Amidst the setting of this revolution against an imposed police state, Briton, Caryl Churchill, a prolific dramatic satirist responsible for such works as Cloud 9 and Top Girls, embarked upon an unprecedented project. Widely recognised for her politically significant voice, Churchill took a group of students from the London School of Drama to Bucharest, and Mad Forest emerged as the creative product. Utilising the content from interviews conducted with those who experienced the Romanian Revolution first-hand, and embedding it within the context of the stories of two interconnecting
Mad Forest may well prove to be one of the highlights of this year’s drama calendar.
vision is particularly apt for York’s ‘Out Of The Blue’ theatre company. Renowned for their unique fusion of music, film and theatre, York’s most self-consciously progressive drama hub guarantee to deliver
this play with the finesse and flair it demands. Following their success with Far Away last year, ‘Out Of The Blue’ have uncompromisingly raised the bar of ambition, promising “an evening of dazzling entertainment”; an experience as much as a performance. Directed by the theatre company’s founder, Mary Luckhurst - who in the past has directed a series of widely acclaimed plays including Martin Crimp’s Attempt on her Life – Mad Forest not only has all the preliminary makings of a successful production, but moreover provides students from the University with an excellent opportunity; one that certainly warrants support. Perhaps most significantly, all of the actors in ‘Out Of The Blue’ are students from the drama initiative based in the English Department. Founded in 1999, it offers courses
that aim to investigate the relationship between the base text and the performance itself – and in doing so promotes fresh analysis and interpretation. They unite the intellectual meaning of dramatic medium with its practical realisation and consequently not only provide a firm basis for a future in the theatre or film industries, but more importantly encourage interesting drama. Mad Forest is a play that, given both its subject matter and the manner in which it was created, is at once politically significant and creatively remarkable. It is a demanding play (indeed, it is described by the director as “the most dazzlingly adventurous piece of theatre”), one that, under the supervision of such an accomplished director and capable team, will doubtless deliver. Moreover,
‘Out Of The Blue’ is an initiative well worth supporting, providing as it does a forum within which young talent may thrive. With progressive intent and an inventive artistic approach Mad Forest may well prove to be one of the highlights of this year’s drama calendar.
Mad Forest is on at York Theatre Royal: 27 February - 3 March Tickets priced £5.00 for students.
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Culture: feature Vision takes a look at what's cultural goings are happening in the rest of Yorkshire in the coming weeks... Leeds
Theatre
Unfortunately, the number of theatres, museums and galleries in Leeds is nothing to match its thriving nightlife. Luckily, what there is, is good and worth a look around, so here are some of our top picks. Art If you have ever looked at a chair and thought it should serve a more important purpose than supporting your beautiful posterior or seen a bed as something more than a glorious safe-haven to nurture your hangover, you should head to the Henry Moore Institute. The latest exhibition explores the shared space of modern furniture and modern sculpture, asking how they each shape their environment. Looking in particular at architect and designer Mies van der Rohe’s furniture as well as some of the actual figurative sculpture Mies chose for his buildings. Put more simply, it asks you to look at examples such as the Lounge Chair, the Ottoman and the Egg and consider how they are designed as much to look at as to sit on and whether they have thus, edged into the perimeters of sculpture pieces. It runs from 18 January to 1 April.
It’s an England versus Germany match in October 2000 and the King George pub’s own football team arrives to watch the last match from the old Wembley Stadium, and so football becomes the focus of Roy Williams’, Sing Yer Heart Out For The Lads, at the West Yorkshire Playhouse this month. With strong language throughout, the jokes, chanting and general banter conceal a more violent and specific racism, with specific focus on Barry, the teams star black striker: he may have a Union Jack tattoo but it soon becomes clear that he is a barely tolerated outsider. This has strong language throughout and could prove uncomfortable for some, but is an interesting take on Britain’s obsessions with football, race and national identity, as it asks just what it means to be British in the twenty-first century. Vision Recommends: Leeds International Festival of Street Performance, ‘Rhythms’. It runs through mid-July and August, and visitors are warned of flying juggling batons and to watch out for love theatre in the streets during these dates.
Hull Two facts about Hull: firstly, Hull is just an abbreviation and the city is actually called KingstonUpon-Hull – true stuff this; second, its only twenty minutes away by bus and train, so no excuses for not having a look at what this has got to offer. Art The best place to begin here is at the Ferens Art Gallery. There is an extensive display of permanent and temporary collections here. Come here to see works by Frans Hals, Antonio Canaletto, Stanley Spencer, David Hockney, Helen Chadwick and Gillian Wearing.
If you fancy a more controversial look at baking, get a ticket for the new production written by Richard Bean and directed by Gareth Tudor Price, Toast. This drama explores the lives of men working in Hull bread plant, whose futures are looking bleak and are forced to contemplate life without wholemeal dough. It runs from 1 March – 24 March. Comedy A regular on ‘Mock of the Week’ and ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’, Russell Howard comes to Hull
this March with his new stand up show, Wandering. If that doesn’t take your fancy, Edinburgh Festival favourite Lucy Porter is coming later in the month. Russell is there 4 March and Lucy, 30 March. Vision Recommends: If gritty bread-making isn’t your thing, and you have had your fill of comedy, then dance yourself along to the Hull New Theatre and get tickets for the stage adaption of Footloose.
Theatre Although boasting a number of theatres, the one really worth visiting is the independent Hull Truck Theatre. Just a five minute walk from the city centre, the theatre promises ‘the production of popular and accessible theatre, the development of new writing for the theatre by established and new playwrights and to develop and retain new audiences’. True to this, there’s a lot going on over the next few months. What’s on: Drama: Think of a bakery in York and you immediately start imaging Betty’s cream filled fondants, and ladies in frilly pretty coats - hardly the setting for a gritty and realistic take on working life.
Sheffield
YORK LEEDS
HULL
SHEFFIELD
Having never before visited, and with my knowledge of the city severely limited to the movie The Full Monty, I’ll admit that I when I pictured Sheffield, I still saw images of an industry and city in decline. Well, having paid my substantial six quid to get there, I can assure you the tagline of ‘City of Steel’ is still pretty apt – but for different reasons. Dominated by a ninety-foot steel water feature and dotted with fountains, Sheaf Square - created as a new gateway to the city as part of Sheffield’s regeneration programme – must be the grandest entrance/exit to a train station in Britain. Not a bad start for a feature looking at artwork and performance in northern cities… Art The artwork in Sheffield is not limited to their grand station, in fact the city itself is full of art pieces. The whole city centre is covered in fountains and sculptures making it a really interesting place to wander round. The best place to start though, for your cultural day out in the city, would be the Millennium Galleries and Graves Art Gallery. The Millennium Gallery is situated in the centre of Sheffield, only about two minutes walk from the train station and opposite Sheffield Hallam University. Graves is about two minutes walk from there, across the road and above the central library.
Hull's famous Humber Bridge
What’s on: Millennium Gallery: The Millennium Gallery is currently hosting an exhibition called Abstraction: Extracting from the World. Sounds confusing. Well, apparently, that’s the point, it aims to dispel myths that abstract art is confusing and only concerned with modern painting. Drawing from artists across generations, it includes works in digital technology, video production, sound and smell and painting and hopes to demonstrate how space, time and interval have formed the most basic elements of art and how now, with digital imagery and installation it is extended into contemporary life. It runs from 8 February – 13 May, Graves Gallery: Angus McBean’s portraits. Most people associate McBean with the cover portrait of The Beatles first album, Please Please me, and this, alongside portraits of Audrey Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Noel Coward and Cliff Richard are all displayed in this exhibition of his thirty-year career. Running from 2 December – 10 March Theatre Sheffield has three theatres - The Crucible, The Lyceum and The Studio - which means there’s plenty of variety about what you want to see. What’s on: The Crucible: Cherry Orchard. One of Anton Chekhov’s great
‘comedies of life’ the production explores how a family’s pride leaves them with inability to adapt after their family estate, including the Cherry Orchard, has to be sold due to mounting debt. Joanna Lumley stars as Madame Ranevskya. Runs 14 March – 7 April The Lyceum: Don’t Look Now. When John and Laura’s daughter dies, they escape to Venice. Here they meet two sisters, one of which claims to be psychic and has visions of the dead girl. Adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s work, this promises to be a classic supernatural thriller. Runs from 22 February - 10 March The Studio: Paradise: ‘Behind the television news. Under the headline in your daily paper. We are real. And we are everywhere’…so reads the tag line for this play, ssounds intriguing to me. The whole plot line is just as vague, apparently the production explores the life of a small village caught in a conflict that divides the community. It runs 1 March – 3 March. Vision Recommends: Take a walk. Sheffield council has put a lot of work into making this city look nice, so don’t spend all day in theatres and galleries, and take some time to appreciate what they have done in the city centre. You should definitely have a wander around the indoor forest at the Millennium Gallery and eat a sandwich in the Peace Gardens in the city centre.
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Books: Set in Success As the coveted Whitbread becomes the Costa for the first time, Sam Birch meets Linda Newbery, winner of the 2006 Costa Children's Book of the Year Award.
Hi Linda. First of all, well done on winning the 2006 Costa Children’s Book of the Year Award! How has it changed life for you? Things are certainly very busy just at the moment, but I’m sure I’ll soon be back to normal and writing quietly by myself - which I look forward to. Publishing a book can feel like writing a message in a bottle and chucking it into the sea - you never know quite where it will go, or who will fish it out and look at it. So it’s very gratifying that my book has received this attention. As Children's Book winner you are automatically nominated for the 2006 Costa Book of the Year award, but since its inception in 1985, only one children’s book Philip Pullman’s Amber Spyglass - has won it. Do you feel that as a children’s author your chances of winning are marred? The Whitbread/Costa is the only major award that pitches the various categories of books against each other, and I think in situations of disagreement it can come down to a matter of scale. If, for example, the final decision was between a scholarly biography of six hundred pages that took years to research and write, and a much shorter work of fiction for young readers, it would be hard for the children’s book to win unless it was truly exceptional. On your website, www.lindanewbery. co.uk, you seem keen to identify your winning novel, Set in Stone, as ‘young adults’ fiction’, rather than children’s. Do you think that the present ‘vogue’ (as the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook 2006 refers to it) for young adults’ fiction represents a new appreciation for an audience who are neither prepubescent nor yet fully adult? I know that some people are surprised that
Set In Stone has won a children’s prize when its main characters are in their early twenties. I’d call it a young adult book, or a novel of adolescence, likely to be enjoyed by capable readers of fourteen up to and including adults. Maybe there’s a new awareness of novels like this, spanning the gap between children’s and adult fiction; certainly the term “crossover” is widely used at present. But such books have been around for a long time: for example I Capture the Castle, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye.
children’s novel I’m working on now, it’s Samuel Palmer. I keep a collection of postcards, cuttings, images of various kinds. Do you enjoying painting, or sculpting like your character Gideon Waring?
Stone-carving is something I’ve become interested in recently, and especially for this book, of course. I’ve never tried carving stone, though I’d like to. I used to paint and draw, and especially liked sketching rapidly in ink; but now the writing has taken over, and I’ve lost the facility I once had.
Do you feel that in literary circles children’s fiction is differently received or respected than adults’, or indeed young adults’?
The first person narrative means that you are forced to assume the masculine role of Samuel Godwin much of the time. Did you find this challenging - particularly when conveying his most private romantic notions - compared with portraying female protagonist Charlotte Agnew?
It would be good if children’s and young adult fiction got a fraction of the review coverage given to adult fiction. So often, even in the broadsheets, children’s books don’t get much of a look-in apart from the round-ups just before Christmas or the summer holidays. Upon beginning the book, I was pleasantly surprised by the intellect assumed of Set in Stone’s young readership. Was this a conscious decision intended not to patronise the audience? My intention was to write the book as well as I possibly could, and to be true to the characters and situations I’d set up. I don’t try to aim at any imagined readership - just assume that if I write a good story, and most importantly one that pleases me, some readers will enjoy it too. Set in Stone is set in 19th century England. Do you feel that you have been influenced by 19th century writers such as Jane Austen or the Brontë sisters, or do you prefer to read more contemporary texts? Certainly the influence of Wilkie Collins and Charlotte Brontë is strongly felt here. It was very much a genre piece - I began with the idea of including several traditional elements of the Victorian Gothic novel, such as the big country house, the attractive widower, sleepwalking, a fortune-teller, wills and solicitors. I felt very much at home in that world, as I think most readers or watchers of TV dramas do. But Set in Stone is the first and only novel I’ve set in this late Victorian period. Did you undergo much historical research to ensure the authenticity of your work? I’ve learned not to overdo it so that the story feels burdened by facts. It’s more a matter of absorbing atmosphere - and I feel that the period flavour is conveyed as much through the language of the two narrators as through the background detail.
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{Costa Conquerers: Linda (bottom right) celebrates her win} Nature is a pungent theme throughout the book. Did your surroundings in rural Northamptonshire and the area's stately homes inspire this and the conception of Fourwinds, the central home of the book? Whatever I’m writing, I like to give a strong sense of the natural world, of a particular season, and changing weather; the writers I most admire do that. The setting here is the South Downs, and I wanted the reader to experience the lushness of the English countryside in midsummer. Fourwinds is a house built and furnished in Arts and Crafts style. While writing the novel I visited the Red House in Bexleyheath and Standen near East Grinstead, both designed by Philip Webb, and Blackwell in the Lake District, designed by Hugh Baillie Scott. Samuel Godwin - the novel’s male protagonist - is a skillful and passionate artist. Is art something about which you yourself are passionate? With several of my novels I have a particular artist in mind as inspiration - for this one it was Caspar David Friedrich, the German expressionist painter. For the
No, I didn’t find it difficult to “be” Samuel. I’ve written from a male perspective before, and I’ve heard other writers say that using the perspective of the opposite gender gives an immediate freedom, since the first-person viewpoint is obviously not their own. The challenge was that the two narrators - Samuel and Charlotte - had to sound sufficiently different from each other, while still being convincingly late-Victorian.I know, even if most readers won’t notice, that their phrasing and punctuation is individualised, and each has favourite words. The close of the book is an excerpt from The Times, 1941. Is this a genuine obituary which inspired the book? No, I made that up. At the end of the novel, I wanted to indicate where the characters’ lives go after the last chapter, and the obituary was a concise way of doing that. Your website proudly declares your membership of the Scattered Authors Society. Do you think that it is important in such an isolated discipline to share your work with other writers socially? Many writers lead quite lonely lives even if they live with someone else. The Scattered Authors’ Society is a network of friendly people who share experiences - the ups and the downs, the frustrations and rewards, as well as practical advice about dealing with editors, agents, the media, etc. I’d have loved to belong to the SAS when I was new to writing and publishing. Set in Stone is available now for just £6.99
On theVision bookshelf this issue... My Side Of The Story Will Davis Bloomsbury (£10.99) illed as B ‘A d r i a n Mole meets
Queer as Folk’ by its frankly optimistic publisher, My Side of the Story is an assured, if uninspired work. The debut novel from former actor Will Davis, it fails to create the necessary humour or tension that its slight plot
cries out for. Davis’s story follows sixteen year-old Jarold (‘Jaz’) as he accidentally stumbles out of the closet to the widespread disgust of his family and schoolmates. Bullied by neo-Nazis, a puritanical sister and his haggard parents,
Jaz shrugs off the mounting pressure to conform and falls in love with his dream man at a gay bar. As the chasm between his old life and newfound acceptance widens, the teenager is forced to confront his social place, facing a series of difficult choices. Colloquially written in a frustrating firstperson narrative, Jaz’s story fails to grab the idle reader. Davis struggles to define a target audience and the novel staggers between childish humour and Big Themes (note capitals) as a result, too inconsistent to fully engage with any one demographic. Teenagers may find much in Jaz’s solid character to empathise with. However, the book’s self-importance will surely be a turnoff. Meanwhile, older readers will have little sympathy for the cocky, wisecracking lead and his loser mates, regardless of the important message of toleration that underpins the novel. Although too flippant to be in the same league as Melvin Burgess’s Junk and too childish to be considered alongside Jonathan Coe, Will Davis has crafted a flawed first novel that, for all its faults, is a readable and loosely diverting affair. For now, the author needs to find his voice and look towards the future. DAN SMITH
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We Need To Talk About Kevin Lionel Shriver Serpent's Tail (£7.99) e need to W talk about Kevin is the
seventh novel from Americanborn author Lionel Shriver, and winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005. The book takes the form of a series of letters written by Eva Khatchadourian to her estranged h u s b a n d , Franklin, about their son, Kevin. Three days before his sixteenth birthday, Kevin shoots a teacher, a cafeteria worker and seven of his fellow high-school students in a carefully planned massacre and watches with grim satisfaction as they bleed to death. The letters within the book serve to remind
Franklin of the life he and Eva had together before children, relate to him the hidden secrets of Kevin’s childhood and update him on their son’s progress in Claverack, the Juvenile Detention Center Kevin is sent to. Having only agreed to a child to prove that she could be a good mother, it soon becomes clear that Eva does not like her son, much less love him. She interprets Kevin’s misdemeanors as early signs of a psychological imbalance, and her suggestions that their son may be less than perfect causes a rift between herself and her beloved Franklin. The reader is left to decide whether nurture, in the form of Eva’s ambivalence towards motherhood, has led Kevin to horrific violence, or was nature responsible all along? Although initially difficult to get into, and often overly wordy, We need to talk about Kevin soon proves to be extremely gripping and well worth the patience it requires to plough through the opening chapters. However, it is a tense and absorbing book with a genuinely unexpected twist at the end. Overall, We need to talk about Kevin is a well-written and highly original story and comes highly recommended. AMANDA ELLIS
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Letter to Brilliance
John Haynes's Letter to Patience won the 2006 Costa Poetry Award and was nominated for the 2006 Costa Book Award. Nicola Hebden asks him more about his poetry and his career in writing... I don’t think poetry, as a written art form, has ever been popular. And in schools we tend to put difficult poems on the syllabuses instead of ballads and things. Poetry is the kind of text that is by nature incomprehensible until explained by teacher. But then again, if you look for it, there is poetry in some popular songs. From Leonard Cohen to Jeff Buckley to who knows who will come along? There has been much controversy surrounding one of the writers nominated for the Costa award because she’d never visited the country where her book was set. What links do have to the country your poem’s set in?
{Winning Words: Haynes's 2006 Costa Poetry Award-winner in all its golden glory.} Some would say that poetry has become a forgotten art, with more people writing it than reading it nowadays. Would you agree with this sentiment and if so why do you think other forms of literature have become so much more predominant? The saying that more people write than read poetry has its point, but I wonder what empirical proof there is for it. Prose - or perhaps I should say SOME prose, the prose perhaps that sells well - may be more accessible, but we must remember that major novelists such as Joyce and Faulkner make the division between poetry and novel much less clear-cut than people assume. I doubt if really deep novelists have a readership much different from poets, but I may be wrong.
I think it's quite wrong to judge a book by any other criteria than it’s quality. The proof has to be in the pudding My poem is based on eighteen years in Nigeria and a continuing relationship at a distance through my (Nigerian born) wife and former colleagues. My links are of memory and gratitude. Zaria was where the things that have really mattered to me and/ or shaped my ability to ‘see’ my life happened to me (and I’m aware of echoing words from Nadine Gordimer’s protagonist, Bray, in A Guest of Honour). Your poem is written distinctly in iambic pentameter and terza rima, which ring respectively with the works of Shakespeare and Dante. Would you consider them strong influences, and who else do you feel has influenced your work? Every English poet has Shakespeare in his/her bones.
But the so-called ‘iambic pentameter’ is, as you know, not a monopoly of Shakespeare’s. What people sometimes forget is that it’s a sort of analysis and stylisation of the everyday rhythms of informal conversation. It, as it were, ‘brings out the flavour’ of what we do everyday with our words, rhythmically speaking. I didn’t aim to imitate Dante (fatal!). I experimented with terza rima for some sketches and to help myself learn to write in traditional forms. I’d almost always written in free verse before that. I find I’ve come back to Yeats, whom I read first of all the poets I’ve got to know. The momentum of his syntax is amazing. Poetry is not the only form in which you have published works. Do you prefer it to story or factual writing? As Letters to Patience is a strongly autobiographical piece, do you think that it was in any way affected by your knowledge of factual writing? I don’t think my textbooks on stylistics are very good, but I enjoyed doing them. I’ve written one story I like, not published as yet, and I like my book of stories for African children, which Macmillan published. I’ve done very little straight ‘factual writing’, except for some journalism once for Index on Censorship. LTP has got material in it drawn from my experience, but this is memory rather than research. The poem itself is fictional. Patience is an imagined person, and so are many of the incidents described. The Letter Writer is LIKE me, but a rather better person - quite an important distinction! Not only have you written books, but you are the founder of a literary journal, Saiwa.
Cult Classic ‘Naked Lunch’? I’ve seen the name but not the face…
fective method, mesmerising and frustrating in its absurdity.
A landmark in American literature, William Burroughs’s beguiling yet bewildering third novel was published in 1959 to impressively mixed reviews. Banned in the author’s native land for obscenity and explicit homosexual content, Naked Lunch was embraced with open arms by European critics, finding a home at the Olympia Press in Paris. Celebrated as a key text of the Beat period, it still packs quite a punch today.
Hmm, anything to do with the fact Burroughs was a long-term Heroin addict? Well, possibly. The novel examines the environment of ‘Interzone’, a seedy underworld of narcotics agents, dope fiends, dealers and hallucinatory visions. With its explicit sex, openly gay themes and frightening descriptions of violent drug abuse, its not a pretty read. But that’s the whole point.
So,
Sounds heady…
why
the
controversy?
In both form and tone, Naked Lunch is groundbreaking. Adopting his infamous ‘cut-up’ technique for the first time, Burroughs randomly spliced together bits of an original, linear narrative just for the fun of it. Sentences are randomly stuck together from different chapters and early paragraphs follow those from the final pages. It sounds tacky but it’s an incredibly ef-
It is. A 250 page trip through the jumbled mind of an addict, Naked Lunch is alarmingly affecting and has been known to cause nightmares. Great, nightmares. Just what I’m looking for… Remind me why it’s so important again… Naked Lunch deserves its hefty stack of acclaim simply because of its boldness. In challenging
What inspired the idea, and in what ways do you remain involved with the journal? When I was at Ahmadu Bello University I was made head of department of English for a couple of years, and I wanted to add to the academic journal already run by the department. I wanted to make a more creative magazine open to writers all over the world. We got good contributions from the likes of Jack Mapanje and Amma Ata Aidoo. And I was lucky to have Mbulelo Mzamane on the editorial committee, with his Soweto connections. I don’t think the journal is running now, alas. You have been a teacher for several years as well as a writer. Was writing always your main career ambition? I never really thought I could survive economically on writing, so I went into teaching. But then, when I went to King Alfred’s College in Winchester, I got personally involved in ideas about teaching in the sense of getting people to love learning, and I felt it was worthwhile to try to make learning of all kinds something which kids could feel in themselves and feel was an understanding and expression of themselves and (eventually) their surroundings. I still think, from my study of Plato way back, that teaching and learning are interconnected and to do with love. I know, alas, such a declaration sounds hopelessly idealistic now! Can you offer any advice to students who are thinking of going into writing? It’s like love. Don’t get involved in it unless you can’t help it.
Vision delves back into its literary archives to provide you with that much needed fix of novelistic goodliness...
the censor-driven establishment, it opened the door to the likes of Kerouac, Ginsberg and Mailer and was massively influential. The text has been cited as a key source of inspiration by the likes of David Bowie, David Lynch and Chris Greenacre. OK, OK, it sounds technically intriguing and is clearly ‘massively influential’. But where’s the soul? True, Naked Lunch may lack compassionate characterisation and a neat linear narrative but it isn’t altogether lacking in humanity. Dr Benway, Bill Lee and even, ahem, the ‘Talking Asshole’ are irresistible, outlandishly comic figures who are admirably scatterbrain and utterly detestable in equal measure. A maddening book of myriad contradictions, Naked Lunch is a novel that will have you swooning at its winningly pretentious ambition or tearing your hair out in snarling dismay. In a culture of widespread apathy, this provocation of extreme reactions is surely no bad thing.
Alright, you’ve won me over. I’ve read the book, enjoyed it (well, mostly) and I now want more of the same. Where do I turn next? The Bill Burroughs canon is packed with curiosities, from his early, more coherent works such as Junky and Queer through to the slender but fascinating Yagé Letters volume. If you enjoyed the cut-up technique and strikingly random imagery of Naked Lunch, then Cities of the Red Night and The Soft Machine bear much in common with the earlier text and would be a good place to look. Sadly much of Burroughs’s later work is sketchier with halfbaked books of dream visions and limp adventure novels set in the jungle. However, Last Words is a poignant memoir published just after the author’s death in 1997. It offers an alternative, more intimate portrait of a man whose reputation preceded him on far too many occasions. DAN SMITH
TIPPED FOR THE TOP Vision seeks out brand new bestsellers to suit all tastes . . . Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling Release Date: 21st July You don't have to be a wizard to foresee the success of J.K. Rowling's final tale of magic and . . . murder! With rumours abound that multiple characters will finally meet their end - some even suggesting that Harry himself may wave his final wand - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows may not prove the perfect bedtime story, but it will surely be a killer climax to a stunning series, and certainly a bestseller of legendary literary proportions. The Loner by Josephine Cox Available Now One for your mum this Mother's Day, The Loner has been released to coincide with the launch of the author's new website, www.josephinecox.co.uk. The book itself promises the intriguing and emotive tale of Davie and his family, who are devastated by the death of his mother and disappearance of his father, while the website pledges exclusive new stories from the author, which will only be available to those who register with the site. The first of these, Divorced and Deadly, starring 36-year-old divorcee Ben, is set to entertain Cox fans worldwide! Love in the Present Tense by Catherine Ryan Hyde Available Now Why trust Vision's judgement when you can trust Richard and Judy's?! Featured on their Book Club last week, Catherine Ryan Hyde's latest triumph looks set to join a long line of Madeley and Finnigan-styled bestsellers. Starring Pearl, a teenage mother, Mitch, her neighbour, and Leonard, her son, Love in the Present Tense tells from all of their perspectives what happens when Mitch's casual babysitting is transformed into full-time parenting, as struggling Pearl walks away from her child. The relationship between five-year-old Leonard and inadvertent new father Mitch slowly grows into a strong familial bond, only to be broken when Mitch is forced to give up Leonard to a two-parent family. A moving, vivid story of love enduring and love lost, Love in the Present Tense seems likely to bring Hyde to the bestseller's list
Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee Release Date: 6th September We know it's a fair way off, but here at Vision we're very excited about the upcoming release of the double-Booker prize-winning and Nobel Laureate's latest work. The novel concerns an eminent, seventy-two-year-old Australian writer who is invited to contribute to a book entitled “Strong Opinions”. What, he asks, is the origin of the state and the nature of the relationship between citizen and state?How should the citizen of a modern democracy react to the state’s willingness to set aside moral considerations and civil liberties in its war on terror, a war that includes the use of torture? How does the state handle outsiders? He is troubled by Australia’s complicity with America and Britain in their wars in the Middle East; an obscure sense of dishonour clings to him. In the laundry-room of his apartment block he encounters an alluring young woman. When he discovers she is ‘between jobs’ he claims failing eyesight and offers her work typing up his manuscript. Anya has no interest in politics but the job provides a distraction, as does the writer’s evident and not unwelcome attraction toward her. Diary of a Bad Year promises to be an utterly compelling work of fiction from one of our time's greatest writers and deepest thinkers.
> Listings
> 38
Listings
THURSDAY
now...
LCD Soundsystem Leeds Metropolitan Uni,
Observe the following. Money is tight at the University of York. York cuts portering services. Students quite rightly complain.Some students grafitti 'Fight For Your Porters' on campus walls. The University spends lots of money on removing said grafitti. There is even less money to be spent on portering. This may not have much to do with Listings - or does it? It is part of a broader pattern of an inability to engage in Joined Up Thinking by the Powers That Be. The best takeaway burgers in York are provided by JJ's2. But this is only open 9-12 Monday to Friday, not much use if you are coming back from a night in town, even James Murphy is no longer sure he can get his toe out of the plughole. if it finishes at 11; or fancy some junk-food-action after £TBA 01/03 Lush, Langwith Fusion on Saturday of Week THURSDAY Bar and Dining Hall, until 2am El Tanbura, National £3.50 Relaunched campus late-licence 8. Junk food often rounds off Centre for Early Music 8pm event. The second night of a good night out, regardless of Egyptian folk collective play the Fusion is on in Central Hall. what went before it, like the NCEM, combining chants, dancaddition of chocolate sprinkles ing, and virtuouso musicianship Bunker 13, £3 to a trifle. If the University on indigenous instruments. A CityScreen Basement Bar, 8pm wants to generate revenue, limited number of student tick- If you fancy something a bit whilst providing a service to ets at bargain prices. different, why not head down to its students, better post-events catering would be a good idea. Soup Presents.... £4 CityScreen for a night of indusCert 18, 8pm trial-goth-rock, mixed by DJs Slash Bikini, with Arcana, Cheeky and D-Ject. Goth-ware James Dean Syndrome and GST a must.
8
week TUESDAY
27/02
Cert 15 Presents... £TBA CityScreen Basement Bar, 8pm
Four local bands for hopefully about £4. There is no age restriction on the gig, so those of you without passports or driving licences can go feeling happy. That said, at least one of the bands is bound to use a naughty word.
Cardinals. Local rock music
Superstition, Cert 18,
£4/3 with flyer 8pm
Blues and rock and roll stomp from Superstition, with variations from the Slowdown and Arcadian in support. Also the intriguingly named Drugs and Girls 5 Stars.
YUSU: Elections Hustings £Free Campus 8pm Irregular
campus
comedy
£5 night. 7.45pm Drag Night, Magical take on the struggles Shoulder of Mutton PH,
Mad Forest York Theatre Royal,
facing post-Ceaucescu Romania, produced by York Uni students. Until 3rd March.
The Daimlers Fibbers,
£4/3 8pm
Fresh from supporting the View, this local four piece may be destined for big things. Guitar fuelled indie-pop, with support from GST Cardinals and the Becoming Suits.
WEDNESDAY The Feeling Manchester Apollo
28/02 £15 7pm
Synth-infused pop music looks set to fill Manchester Apollo right up, right up. ‘Love It When You Call’ was perhaps the best earworm of the end of 2006.
Mika, Leeds Cockpit
£8 7pm
Synth-infused pop music. ‘Grace
Kelly’ was perhaps the best earworm of the start of 2007, and if you manage to blag tickets to this, you are likely to enjoy Mika on one of his last small venue tours.
Buswell + Support CityScreen Basement Bar
£4 8pm
Melodic pop-rock in the vein of Belle and Sebastian and Neil Hannon, with support from up and coming folk quartet OK Brandy and Tigernaut.
£TBA 8pm
Join Lolita Tequila, fresh out of retirement, for some friendly drag action. With disco afterwards.
Milton Jackson, Cert 18,
£15 8pm
LCD Soundsystem (frontman James Murphy, pictured left) play Leeds Met. Definitely worth the train fare.
New Skool Presents... CityScreen Basement Bar
£3 8pm
Showcase of bright young things, from North Yorkshire, featuring The Novelties with Conflux, Try Delinquency? and Airheads. "If you like pacey riffs, thundering bass, precision drumming and songs about tea, you’ll love The Novelties...like a fat kid loves cake". bandwagon. co.uk
Otherside Comedy Club, Wentworth Edge,
£5 8pm
Regular campus comedy night.
FRIDAY
09/03
YUSU Election Night, Derwent College, until 1.30am Annual campus comedy night.
Bradford Film Festival £various National Media Museum,
The thirteenth Bradford Film festival kicks off tonight, hosted at the NMM. Normally an impressively esoteric programme, however details are not fully available at time of going to press. Until 24th March.
Candy, Wentworth Edge
£TBA until 1.30am
SATURDAY
Planet V Vanbrugh College
10/03
£4 OTD 10pm
Three rooms of entertainment in the bar, JCR, and the main dining hall. Dance mats are usually available. No chance of a JJ's2 burger though.
SUNDAY
11/03
The Bootleg Beatles £15.50 York Grand Opera House 8pm Perhaps on tour in celebration of the closure of the hostilities between the remainder of their namesakes and Steve Jobs, the undisputed greatest Beatles tribute band plays at the Grand Opera House. Infact, they've played at Glastonbury, and count the Gallagher brothers as fans, so they must be good.
Bellevue Rendezvous Live! £10/9 York CityScreen 8pm
One of the greatest animated films of the twenty-first century is given a multimedia bolster, with the addition of a live soundtrack, featuring guitars, accordians and turntables, with musicians from Animat and guest Ed Carter.
SuzyHope York Junction
£TBA 8pm
Five piece pop-punk outfit, their 'Get Up' EP is out now, and comes complete with spiky emo-type haircut.
GSA hosted event in Wentworth. Party tunes all the way through.
Glaswegian house DJ signed to Freerange and Urbantorque, with a live set through to 2.30am. Promises to be 'huge', apparently.
SUNDAY
Digicore+ TestTone3 The Junction
04/03
£TBA 8pm
Local scamps TestTone3 bring a rock-hiphop fusion to the Junction, supporting Digicore, whose name is a contraction of 'Digital' and 'Hardcore'. Rockin'.
9
week
02/03 MONDAY
FRIDAY
£5/4 members 9pm
08/03
05/03
The Chinese State Circus, £7-22 10cc, £27.50 York Grand Opera House, 8pm York Grand Opera House 8pm Even if they just played Dreadlock Holiday on loop for two and a half hours, this would be worth going to. All seating though.
Hijak Oscar CityScreen
Basement
Bar
Blues sextet supporting their recently released self-titled LP. Zep and Theloneous Monk influences.
Fusion Central Hall,
£8/6.50 until 1.30am
The annual fashion and dance extraveganza returns to campus for the third time. A performance not to be missed. Second performance on Saturday.
SATURDAY
Blame York Theatre Royal
Widely recognised as one of the world's greatest circus troupes, and in a venue that is probably a bit warmer and more comfortable than the usual big top. You'll still get fleeced for interval snacks though. On all week.
TUESDAY
The Spoken Word Exhibition Hotel,
06/03
£Free 7.15pm
First-Tuesday-of-the-month celebration of poetry, folk music, and prose. Open mic and all welcome.
Jet £16.50 Leeds Uni Refectory, 7.30pm Promoting new album Shine On
WEDNESDAY
07/03
Howling Bells £8/50 03/03 Leeds Cockpit, 7.30pm £5 8pm Fresh from supporting Snow
The renaissance of political theatre comes to York with a hard-hitting play exploring the emergence of a British underclass. For an interview with the writers, see page 33 . Until 17th March.
Patrol in Australia, the indiealt-country semi-antipodean four piece brings its national tour to Leeds. Having recently worked with Coldplay producer Ken Nelson, these rising stars are worth the journey.
Tiny Dancers: El Tanbura play the National Centre for Early Music on 1st March. Tickets cost as little as £3.50 for students.
All events, times and prices are correct at the time of publishing. Vision cannot be held responsible for any poor nights out as a result of the suggestions in this column.
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40 SPORT
Laurie ALLSOPP
YORK VISION
Tuesday February 27, 2006
FOOTBALL: YORK 3 LEEDS 2
SEMI-FINAL STUNNER
sport@vision.york.ac.uk
It’s been a while since a game of rugby has been hyped up so much. Ok, Jonny’s return against Scotland was quite a big event, but for sheer anticipation and excitement the England-Ireland match takes some beating.
The Six Nations had barely started when The Daily Telegraph ran a feature on the first Bloody Sunday massacre at Croke Park in 1920, and more emphasis has been put on the tie’s historical significance than as a game of rugby. There were worries that the playing of ‘God Save the Queen’ would be met with dissent from the Irish fans - and I don’t think I’d be too cynical to say that some people in the media may have hoped for it. But it is doubtful whether today’s Irish supporters really care that ‘English’ games are being played at Croke Park, or that ‘God Save the Queen’ was being played there for the first time. The few Republican protesters outside the ground were largely ignored by the crowds - the opening of Croke Park to non-Irish sports isn’t much of an issue to most Dubliners, especially since the stadium is Ireland’s only topclass sporting arena. The stories that the media wanted to hear involved a match in which passions and national feeling ran high, and old wounds were opened up. When ‘the Soldier’s Song’ was sung a tear was brought to the eye of more than one Irish player, and Brian O’Driscoll’s men took to the match like men possessed you felt that Paul O’Connell could have taken on the entire English pack by himself. But Brian Moore made an excellent point commentating for the BBC. After the anthems were played, he remarked that passion was by far from the most important factor in rugby - not when compared to organisation and teamwork: “Everyone must know what job they have to do, and they must all do it.” The Irish XV did exactly that. It was a lesson that England completely failed to heed. It might be too much to say that England wilted in the face of the occasion, but you could tell who was turning up to play as a team, and who was turning up just to wear the shirt. It's fair enough to argue that 'playing for the shirt' is what the fans want to see, but as Moore says; sport is not won on who belts out the national anthem the loudest. England would be world beaters if it was. It takes more than just kissing the badge and hoping for the best. It's easy to hark back to Rudyard Kipling - I'm sure 'If' has been pinned up to many a dressing room wall - but the pride and the passion are nothing unless you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs...
ST LEEDS 1 10 8 4 7 7 1 0
Photo: Tom Hole
Pride and passion, yes, but get the job done first
YORK 1s t SHOTS ON TARGET SHOTS OFF TARGET OFFSIDES CORNERS FOULS YELLOW CARDS RED CARDS
BY BEN MATTHEWS After losing out on penalties in a hard fought game with Leeds 3rds, the York University Men’s 1st team looked to bounce back and secure a place in the final of the NUL cup.
Once again they faced Leeds, but this time the White Roses would be playing their semi-final match against the ominous talent of the Leeds 1st team. With home advantage, Leeds started the first half brightly, making effective use of the central midfield’s skill and distribution, with both of the green-shirts' wingers terrorising the York full backs with their electric pace. The pressure eventually told as York faltered in an attempt to clear the ball, allowing the hosts to release a striker on the right wing. An instantaneous cross caught the York defence out of position and the ball was tucked away into the corner of the net. After this setback, the UYAFC side settled down and started to keep
6 7 2 7 13 0 0
> York mount remarkable comeback to reach final
hold of the ball, creating a few half chances without testing the Leeds goalkeeper. The first half finished with York still a goal down. The visitors looked to equalise early into the second half, but after conceding one corner too many, their questionable defending was punished as Leeds extended their lead. After a fumble from goalkeeper Sean Henderson, the opposition striker grabbed his second goal of the match by pouncing on the loose ball. Two goals down, York started to regain control of the central midfield with Dan Brown tempering his opposite number. This allowed his midfield partner Joseph Brennan to flourish, collecting loose balls and distributing them well. With the central midfield won, the attacking force of the York flanks began to assert itself, as Nick Hassey produced several clinical cross-field balls which opened up the Leeds defence. After 60 minutes, right winger John Searle attacked the Leeds byline, cutting the ball back to Dominic O’ Shea, who managed to hook the ball over the head of the scrambling
THETACTICSBOARD Key: Movement of player
goalkeeper and into the back of the net to reduce the deficit to one. An alert and disciplined York defence, led by centre back Ben Matthews, meant that chances were few and far between for the Leeds team as the smaller university searched for the equaliser. A period of patient build-up play was rewarded when centre-back Johnny MacWilliams played a neat pass out of defence to the feet of Mark Gouland. A well-timed run by O’ Shea allowed him to latch on to Gouland’s beautifully weighted through-ball, and an incisive finish with the outside of the striker’s right boot saw the Leeds players' heads drop and the match levelled at two-a-piece with just over ten minutes until the final whistle. With extra-time looming, Leeds pushed forwards and created several chances when York failed to clear their lines properly. A string of fabulous blocks from full backs Carl Worrall and Sean Evans kept the home team's strikers at bay. Henderson made up for his lack of aerial command earlier in the match by palming away a tally of long range efforts from the Leeds midfield.
Overconfidence from the Leeds defence soon proved costly as a loose pass to the hosts' left back resulted in a good tackle from substitute Mike Flood, who played the ball down the right channel. O’ Shea bolted onto the through ball and forced a corner from the onrushing Leeds 'keeper. Brown stepped up to deliver a perfect outward curling corner that was challenged by a sea of players in both the green of Leeds and the white of York. O’Shea leapt between two defenders and claimed his hattrick with a well-placed attacking header that easily beat the floundering keeper. With mere minutes left on the clock, Leeds threw everything they could at the York defence. A pinpoint pass down the right flank led to the right winger gaining a yard’s advantage on Worrall, who committed a foul right on the edge of the penalty area with a last-ditch tackle. The Leeds players surrounded the referee in desperation claiming a penalty, but Worrall and the rest of the York team breathed a sigh of relief as the ensuing free kick was wasted and the final whistle blown to seal a memorable victory.
o'shea's second goal levels the match at 2-2
Movement of ball
O'Shea
O'Shea
Gouland
O'Shea
Gouland
Searle
MacWilliams
Fig 1: John Searle plays the ball back to Johnny MacWilliams as York patiently keep the ball.
Gouland
Searle
MacWilliams
Fig 2: MacWilliams hits the ball up to the feet of Mark Gouland, who turns in space as Dom O'Shea makes a run.
Searle
MacWilliams
Fig 3: Gouland drops a perfectly-weighted pass into O'Shea, who finishes the move off in style.
YORK VISION
SPORT
Tuesday February 27, 2007
VARSITY 2007: YORK 55 YORK ST JOHN 10
41
BY DARIUS AUSTIN York retained their title with a crushing victory over local rivals York St John in the annual Varsity competition. The home side romped to a 5510 victory, claiming the spoils in all but four of the day's events. Amongst the highlights were a 9-0 whitewash for men's badminton, a 6-0 thrashing handed out by men's hockey seconds and the comprehensive 3-0 victories for both men's and women's volleyball. However, the one-sided appearance of the scoreline conceals some close contests between many of the teams and some impressive St John victories. All three netball teams claimed victory by just two points in thrilling battles in the tent, while women's basketball were winners by the margin of three points, 55-52 the scoreline. St John also managed to defeat York women 4-0 in football and fought to a 0-0 draw with the men's firsts. Cross country and hockey were the other victories for York's rivals, the women's firsts going down 3-2 on the astroturf. AU President Tom Moore was delighted with both the event and the scoreline, reiterating the value of the Varsity event. "It was a huge success," he said. "Although I’m sure the result will once again bring doubt upon the event as a competition, I sincerely believe that on this occasion it was the strong performances of the York teams that brought the result it did. "St. John were optimistic at the start of the day about how they would perform but all our teams performed as they have been doing all year; that is very well. All the individual fixtures were competitive with York coming from behind in many. "The success at Varsity is consistent with our great BUSA performance and hopefully we can carry this through to the BUSA knockouts and Roses."
Derby demolition
> Three years, three wins for York as St John are humbled Men's hockey on their way to a victory on the astroturf on a successful day for York university sport. Photo: Matt Ledger. The competitive spirit and enjoyment of the day was somewhat marred by the football seconds game. York's seconds were said to be extremely frustrated as their opponents reportedly made a mockery of the match by indulging in ridiculous celebrations and set pieces. At one point the referee actually told York to kick-off while the St John's players were performing an over-the-top goal celebration.
VARSITYSCORE BADMINTON
Photo: Xavier Nitsch
An e-mail was allegedly sent after the match expressing York's disappointment at the behaviour of their opponents. On the whole, however, reaction was positive, particularly amongst those who helped to organise the event. Tournament Secretary Nigel Proctor saw the day as both great entertainment and an excellent warmup for Roses. “I feel it was a really enjoyable
FOOTBALL
event and the reason for such a large victory margin was such great performances by many of the York teams." Proctor identified the netball matches in particular as an example of the 'guts and class' shown by the York teams, as well as the great entertainment value. There were several other close games during the competition, of which Proctor said: "They offered really good challenges in preparation
RUGBY UNION
Women's 1sts York 7 - 2 St John's
Women's 1sts York 0 - 4 St John's
Women's 1sts York 19 - 17 St John's
Men's 1sts York 9 - 0 St John's
Men's 1sts York 0 - 0 St John's
Men's 1sts York 47 - 5 St John's
Points awarded: York 6, St John's 0.
Men's 2nds York 4 - 3 St John's
Men's 2nds York 69 - 5 St John's
BASKETBALL
Points awarded: York 4, St John's 4.
Points awarded: York 9, St John's 0.
Women's 1sts York 55 - 52 St John's Men's 1sts York 65 - 40 St John's Points awarded: York 6, St John's 0.
NETBALL
Women's 1sts York 25 - 23 St John's Women's 2nds York 28 - 26 St John's Women's 3rds York 29 - 27 St John's Points awarded: York 9, St John's 0.
Maximum points for rugby
HOCKEY
INDOOR CRICKET
Women's 1sts York 2 - 3 St John's
St John's 87 all out York 88-3 York win by three wickets.
Women's 2nds York 4 - 0 St John's
Points awarded: York 3, St John's 0.
VOLLEYBALL Women's 1sts York 3 - 0 St John's
for the main event – Roses!” With just over two months to go, the AU will now be turning their thoughts towards the big showdown against Lancaster, which York will be expected to win on home soil. On the evidence of this victory, Moore will fulfil those expectations by bringing the Roses crown back to York. The competition takes place at the end of week two of the summer term, from Friday 4th to Sunday 6th of May.
FINAL SCORE YORK 55-10 ST John's
KEEP YOUR EYES ON.. .
CROSS COUNTRY York St. John's win. Points awarded: York 0, St John's 3. Photo: Matt Ledger
Men's 1sts York 4 - 3 St John's
...Netball
Men's 2nds York 6 - 0 St John's
TENNIS
Men's 1sts York 3 - 0 St John's
Men's 1sts York 7 - 3 St John's
Points awarded: York 6, St John's 0.
Points awarded: York 3, St John's 0.
Badminton whitewash St John's
A trio of exciting matches saw York pick up maximum points from their netball games. Can they do it again against Lancaster? Roses sees the first, seconds and thirds all in action again against York's old rivals with seven points up for grabs.
42 SPORT
YORK VISION
Tuesday February 27, 2007
IT'S A BUSA KNOCKOUT
SPORTS SHORTS > Volleyball, tennis and fencing enjoy great terms McEwen threatens cup withdrawal A three-game suspension handed out to striker Richard Brodie has left York City boss Billy McEwen threatening to withdraw from the North Riding Cup next season. “The decision on Brodie looked harsh," said McEwen. "The referee seemed to hear a crack, then turned round and just sent him off." McEwen hinted that the side could pay a fee to exempt themselves from the tournament next season to avoid running afoul of debatable officiating.
BY LAUREN COCKBILL Vo l l e y ball has served its way to success this season. With all league matches complete, Men’s Volleyball 1sts sit proudly in second position in the Northern Premier League.
Such an achievement was not anticipated at the season’s start, as, not being match sharp, York lost their first match. Nevertheless, hours of training paid dividends, as over the season York secured victories over Liverpool and Manchester, home and away. The highlight of Volleyball’s season is undoubtedly their performance in the English Volleyball Association Student Cup. York strode through the qualifying rounds to earn a place in the finals, held in The York Mixed Martial Arts Club early February. are holding a charity Open Mat session on Sunday the 11th from 12-3.30 in the Sports Centre to try and raise money for Sports Relief. Some notable fighters will be Five other teams qualified for present, including Richard Cadthe the BUSA Plate knockden, holder of the World Proouts, including the football fessional Muaythai Federation firsts, who won their division. (WPMF) World Title and the No.1 Their run came to an end last MuayThai fighter in Britain and Wednesday in the first half of their Ian Butlin, one of the leading remarkable Leeds double-header. names in Amateur Boxing and The other four teams to make MMA in Britain. it through to the knockout stages were men's hockey, women's basketball, men's badminton and women's squash. AU President Tom Moore was delighted with the perfor mance of all the teams. Which club got "Every themselves into team has hot water over worked retheir mode of ally hard transport? After a this year," he long-distance joursaid. ney and unsuccess" T h e ful day, the team returned to their fact that ride to find it malfunctioning. we have Weighing up the choice between eight waiting with the vehicle for repairs or abandoning it to seek alternative transport for a night of debauchery, club officials decided it was a no-brainer and fled.
Martial arts hold Sports Relief session
Competing with England’s finest teams, in the last stage of the tournament, saw York Volleyball gain national recognition. The finals were played over one weekend that demanded tremendous levels of fitness and strength. On the first day York proved their worth by finishing second in their group of four, only losing to eventual winners Sheffield Hallam. Sunday was not as fruitful. Sore limbs and lack of experience at national level lead to three straight losses. Despite Sunday’s disappointment, valuable experience was acquired at the highest level of university volleyball. York finished in eighth position thus entitling them a ranking of
eighth in England, an incredible accomplishment. After such success what is next for the York Men’s Volleyball team? "We only have one knockout game, followed by a tournament for the last eight teams in the country. The knockout game is against Oxford. Our chances are fairly good, as Oxford finished 5th in the Student Cup tournament, only 3 places above ourselves," said Captain Ben Brown. However with a fresh team and home advantage, hopefully we can make it through.’ The tie will be played tomorrow, 6-8pm, Central Hall. Volleyball cannot steal all the limelight though, as York Men’s Tennis was the only undefeated team this year.
Maintaining their winning streak until the end of the season has earned Cameron Downey and his players a place in the BUSA Cup. The prestigious event is a national tournament which sees the winners of all the division three leagues compete for the title. Having been awarded a bye in the first round, York 1sts face Lancaster a week on Wednesday for a place in the final. A win would boost their confidence for the much anticipated Roses tournament. Fencing has had an impressive season too, finishing third in the north’s premier division. Winning five matches out of seven propelled York into the BUSA Cup knock-out stages. Unfortunately their winning streak was extinguished by University of East Anglia’s first team. Yet, according to captain James Kirk, the loss has not dampened the team’s spirit: "Confidence for victory at Roses is high".
> Wins for basketball and badminton in knockouts
wicked WHISPERS
Pool reach semi-finals
BUSA
York’s Pool 1st team reached the semi-finals of the BUSA 8-ball tournament last weekend, with the club finishing in the top four of the overall competition. The side, captained by BUSA 8ball individual finalist Luke Fleet, knocked out number two seeds Cardiff 6-3 before going to eventual winners Ulster in the last four of the Team Championship – the highest level of BUSA competition. Fleet was joined by Mike Walsh and Steve Bradley in a first team that has reached two semi-finals this year, something that York’s captain hopes can spur the club on for Roses. “We’ve only won Roses once in the last sixteen years”, he said. “But both club membership and the playing standard have increased massively over the last couple of years, so we’re confident we can take it.”
teams in the BUSA knockouts is an impressive one - much better than previous years."
Men's Hockey
Men's hockey qualified with an impressive record from the Northern 3B division, remaining undefeated from their ten games.
Northern Men's Hockey 3B 1 York 1st 2 YSJ 1st 3 Newcastle 2nd 4 Newcastle 3rd 5 Hull 1st 6 Sheffield 3rd
P 10 10 9 10 9 10
W 6 6 5 1 2 0
D 4 3 2 3 3 3
L Pts 0 22 1 21 2 20 * 6 6 4 6* 7 3
*=walkovers/points deducted
They now face Abertay in the last 16 of their plate competition, with the winner facing a quarter-final against Manchester or Salford.
Women's Basketball Women's basketball came through their Northern 3B division in second
place to earn a tie against Liverpool John Moores. They emerged 33-32 winners and play Teesside in the next round.
Men's Badminton Men's badminton were also second in their division, finishing three points behind Sheffield in the Northern 2B league. An away match against Oxford Brookes was their reward and they were equal to the task, coming away with a 5-3 victory to set up a quarterfinal clash against Liverpool.
plate fixtures, as all five teams left in the competition are playing their games in York. Fixtures to watch: 28th February Men's Volleyball vs Oxford Women's Basketball vs Teesside Men's Hockey vs Abertay 7th March Men's Badminton vs Liverpool Men's Tennis vs Lancaster
Women's Squash Women's squash claimed fourth place in a division which saw the withdrawal of two teams, Keele and Northampton. They suffered the penalty of being relegated while York went to Birmingham for their plate game, where they failed to progress as Birmingham ran out 4-0 victors. York's teams will benefit from home advantage in the next set of
Photo: Matt Ledger
SWIM SUCCESS FOR VANBRUGH > Returning one-day event sees Vanbrugh claim the spoils in the water
BY ALEX RICHMAN Swimming made a triumphant return to the world of college one-day tournaments, as Vanbrugh cruised to victory.
Buoyed by a large turnout and a series of close events, the AU’s decision to bring a swimming gala back to the spring sporting calendar made a real splash, despite Wentworth’s absence. The gala saw seven races each for the men and women, with five individual disciplines followed by a group medley and group freestyle. Early on, the event threatened to dissolve into a farce. Teams had been given incorrect running orders for the medleys, and although the men’s race had culminated in a thrilling dead-heat, the first leg of the women’s breaststroke was started twice due to miscommunication between the organisers. However, the rest of the events went smoothly and a solid team
display from Vanbrugh meant that despite not winning the most races, consistently good times granted them success over their rivals.
Final Results
Vanbrugh Langwith Goodricke Halifax Alcuin James Derwent
89 80 78 77 73 58 49
The victorious sports representatives were quick to praise the team’s spirit over individual performances. “I’d like to congratulate the other teams,” said Jonathan Loughrey. “But I’m pleased for our guys as they all did really well. They all deserved it.” Langwith may well wonder how they ended up so far behind. After a blistering start, the college threat-
ened to leave the rest of the teams in their wake. Langwith won four of the five men’s individual races, with their early superiority typified by an impressive performance in the medley from Steve Bennett. In the break before the team events, the college was tied in first place with Goodricke, with Vanbrugh and Halifax in joint third. Unfortunately for Bennett and his team-mates, despite their early dominance they failed to maintain their form in the group races, allowing Vanbrugh to overtake and record a convincing nine-point victory. The final results showed the strength of overall competition, however, with only seven points separating fifth from second. The atmosphere was friendly while remaining decidedly competitive, which was never more evident than during the roaring climax of the women’s group medley. When asked how he felt the event
had gone, co-organiser Nick Hassey thanked the Swimming Club for their help in such a successful event, and shared his hope that the gala would return next year: “Lots of people came, and everybody’s had a really good time, so I’d like to think that it’ll become a regular fixture in college sport.” Defending champions Goodricke will be pleased that they managed to keep rivals Halifax behind them with two more important one-day events taking place over the next couple of weeks. The women's football tournament is scheduled for this Saturday, while week nine sees the introduction of the full-contact rugby sevens tournament. The rugby was one of Nick Hassey's election promises in his successful campaign to become AU Vice President. It could prove crucial in the race for the college title, with Goodricke's excellent form in the one-day tournaments turning out to be the catalyst for their eventual victory.
YORK VISION
RUGBY: MIXED END TO BUSA SEASON FOR 1STS Photo: Xavier Nitsch
BY LAURIE ALLSOPP The fixture pile-up faced by York Rugby 1sts this year has been well-documented, with the club controversially rescheduling their Varsity fixture to complete the BUSA programme. York’s outstanding fixtures against Sunderland 1sts and Leeds Met 2nds were both played last week in order to beat the BUSA cut-off date of Sunday. Relegated Sunderland were easily despatched 45-12, before unbeaten Leeds Met left the York Railway Institute ground – standing in for a flooded 22 acres – with a 25-6 win. Club President Danny Stacey felt that the results summed up their season: “We’ve beaten teams we expected to beat comfortably, but most of us have felt unlucky in many instances to miss chances to beat the bigger universities,” he said.
BUSA Northern Men's 2B P 1 Leeds Met 2nd 13 2 Leeds 2nd 13 3 Durham 3rd 14 4 H'field 1st 11 5 York 1st 13 6 Teesside 1st 13 7 YSJ 1st 12 8 Sunderland 1st 13
W 13 10 9 6 5 4 2 1
D 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
L 0 3 5 4 7 9 10 12
43 York reach Futsal final SPORT
Tuesday February 27, 2007
Pts 39 30 27 19 16 12 6 3
* = walk-over points deducted/awarded
22 acres was declared to be unplayable on both occasions, meaning that York, to Stacey’s annoyance, were forced to travel to Sunderland last Wednesday at late notice. The switch meant that York were forced to hand a debut to Michael James at number eight and recalled Rob Milnes, who had been struggling with a hamstring injury, to full-back. York had a shaky start to the match, letting Sunderland straight back into the contest after Paul Goodall had registered the away side’s first try, and mistakes in build up play cost the White Rose a number of chances. It was debutant James who settled the nerves with a try towards the end of the first half, before Sunderland buckled and York managed to go over the line twice more before the whistle, making the score 28-5. Sunderland suffered three yellow cards over the course of the match, and the strugglers’ heavier
BOTH SIDES OF THE COIN
> Rugby 1sts beat Sunderland but can't get past Leeds Met.
pack was comfortably repelled until they managed a late pushover try. York ran in a further three tries in the second half, with centre Stacey adding a second to his first half effort, making the final score 45-12. The only black mark on the game was the sinbinning of second row forward Joe Peach for an alleged biting offence. Saturday saw a significant change in opposition: from bottom-placed Sunderland to league-winners Leeds Met 2nd. Leeds’ simple but effective game plan proved to be too much for York, who were again fielding a weakened line-up. The University were let down by inconsistencies in defence and attack, especially in the second half, as a
number of intelligent runs from centre Tom Benbow were halted by poor second-phase handling. Leeds notched up several close-range scores to take the game 25-6. Despite the loss, Stacey was quick to pay tribute to the side’s efforts: “Tensions were high in the changing room, with it being the last BUSA game for many of the squad,” he said. “But Captain Chris Fox’s inspirational pep talk prepared the team for what was a tough encounter - it wasn’t a memorable end to the 1sts’ season but was nevertheless a gutsy performance.” York 2nd team couldn’t get their games played last week – an all too familiar tale in a year when they have
BETTINGVISION BY DAVID STOKES Daniel Craig wannabes all over campus must have been thrilled last month to learn that the city of Manchester is to play host to the UK’s first super casino.
Indeed, betting companies are currently submitting bids to build and run the ‘Las Vegas style’ establishment, which could place up to 1,250 unlimited-jackpot slot machines right on our doorstep. But don’t get the tux out just yet! Projects like this can take years to develop so for now let Betting Vision satisfy your gambling needs. Andy Murray continues to take the tennis world by storm. Since his epic Australian Open battle with Nadal in January, the young Scot has been in a rich vein of form. This month saw him notch up a nine game winning streak, which brought a tournament victory in San Jose and a semi final appearance in Memphis just a week later.
Notable wins over the likes of Ivo Karlovic and Andy Roddick have confirmed that Murray can mix it with the ‘big guns’ and fuelled speculation as to whether he can go all the way in 2007 and win a major (6/1 WHill). Why not? His partnership with new coach, Brad Gilbert, certainly seems to be bearing fruit and would suggest that with home advantage he is definitely worth a shout to win Wimbledon at 12/1 (WHill). Unsurprisingly, the Champions League produced some exciting action last week as five British clubs endeavoured to put one foot in the quarter-finals. Funnily enough, though, it was Liverpool and Celtic who provided the best British performances. Putting Craig Bellamy’s golf club shenanigans behind them, the Reds recorded an impressive win at the Nou Camp, while the Celts held AC Milan to a goalless draw. Gordon Strachan’s boys will no doubt fancy their chances of causing a massive upset at the San Siro next week, and perhaps you should
only managed to play four BUSA games – leaving them in fourth place in BUSA Northern Conference 4B. Stacey expressed his annoyance at the situation: “Owing to poor organisation from BUSA, universities who were not fulfilling fixtures last year have been allowed in following the shake-up of the leagues. “It appears that York have felt the brunt of this problem.” It’s been a satisfactory BUSA season for York, which promised much but was dashed by a mid-season injury crisis, despite the side playing some quality rugby at times. Waiting round the corner is Roses - with Lancaster a league above York and looking to win successive titles.
BY OLLIE WEBB
On Saturday, the University of York Futsal team entertained crowds at the York Futsal Open 2007 by reaching the final in emphatic style.
Despite the absence of club captain Johnny McWilliams, York cruised through Group A with three straight wins, before going on to defeat a team of semi-professional footballers, ‘Kent Street’, in the quarters. Unfortunately, an injury to ‘keeper James Sweetman put him out of the competition, which came as a massive blow after a string of class performances in the group stage. York were forced to place one of their most valuable outfield players, Owen Grafham, in goal. The semi-final pitted York against UEFA Cup opposition, Scottish Champions ‘Santos’. Three goals from Dan Depledge and one from the versatile Portuguese player Santiago were enough to clinch a 4-3 victory, although the high-octane encounter was ended a minute from the end of normal time as tempers flared in the Santos camp. Following a sending off and a number of incidents involving both sets of players, the referee called time on the game. They went on to face Teesside – one of the top teams in Britain – in the final. With the welcome return of McWilliams to the side and a superb defensive display from Ben Cowley, York looked every bit as good as their opponents as they overcame a Teesside opener to go in 1-1 at the break. An opportunistic second half goal from top scorer Mark McKay was enough to give York a 2-1 lead with 15 minutes left to play. However despite the best efforts of stand-in keeper Grafham, Teeside stepped up late in the game to clinch a 4-2 victory, and the York Futsal Open Trophy. “Teesside were excellent” said new Club President Myles Preston. "They were worthy winners, but I’d have liked to see what would’ve happened if James Sweetman had not been injured in the quarter-finals”. The 1st team currently occupy the top spot in the local league, 6 points clear of their closest rivals.
THE FASTEST WAY TO BLOW YOUR STUDENT LOAN KNOWN TO MAN
Can Paul Collingwood continue his form to boost England's World Cup chances?
too (11/4 WHill). Although less than convincing in their first leg matches, the bookies have Chelsea and Manchester United down as favourites to win the competition outright at 10/3 and 5/1 respectively (WHill). Both teams will face tough challenges next week though and Lille (9/1 to progress WHill) and FC Porto (5/1 WHill) are certainly bets worth considering. To cricket now, and the World Cup is just two weeks away. Let us put the Ashes out of our minds and focus instead on England’s victory in the one-day International Triangular Series, which surely offers some hope. England’s mini-revival saw them win four games on the trot, three of which were against the World Cup favourites, Australia (9/4 WHill). With players like Collingwood and Plunkett in top form, and Kevin Pietersen set to return from injury, things are looking good for England who will be full of confidence going into their opening
group match against New Zealand on Friday 16th March. Remember: anything can happen in one day cricket, so it’s well worth getting behind the ECB’s finest, who are 8/1 (WHill) to win the tournament. There has been talk of a possible return to the ring for Lennox Lewis who is rumoured to be preparing for a one off title match against Vitali Klitschko. This would certainly bring some much needed excitement to the heavyweight division, but it must be remembered that the history of boxing is littered with ‘punchdrunk’ fighters who didn’t know when to stop. At 41 years of age, our Lennox would certainly be skating on thin ice, which is something Kyran Bracken is proving to be very good at. The former England scrum half is the bookies’ favourite (1/2 WHill) to win ITV’s ‘Dancing on Ice’, and is looking to become one of many ex-sportsman to flourish in a leotard.
Tuesday February 27, 2007
Issue 177
FULL VARSITY RESULTS AND ROUND-UP
REVENGE IS SWEET
Photo: Tom Hole
P41
> Double drama for football against Leeds > BUSA penalty loss to Leeds thirds > Dramatic comeback win against firsts in NUL semi BY DOMINIC O'SHEA York took revenge on Leeds in dramatic fashion last weekend in the semi-finals of the NUL Cup
After Wednesday's BUSA Plate game, in which the Leeds 3rds sent York crashing out on penalties, it seemed as though Leeds firsts would inflict a similar fate in the NUL semi-final. However, a stunning turnaround saw York come from 2-0 down with half an hour remaining to emerge 3-2 winners, courtesy of a Dominic O'Shea hat-trick. York will be wishing they showed the same resilience earlier after twice letting a lead slip in the previous game.
O’Shea redeemed himself after missing a penalty when a through ball from John Searle allowed him to strike from just inside the penalty box. The shot beat the goalkeeper at the near post, sending York in 1-0 up at the half-time interval. In the second half York were punished early on when Leeds earned a free-kick on the edge of the penalty area. A well struck shot proved too much for ‘keeper Sean Henderson to handle and Leeds bundled the ball in to level the score. York were forced into two changes, with Joe Brennan and Tom Moore replacing Dan Brown and Simon Oatridge in centre midfield.
Moore managed to open up a few channels with some well placed passes but York lacked the final delivery and couldn’t force their way into a lead. Extra time was required and York pressure was rewarded after strong pressure when John Searle produced a dangerous cross from a difficult position and O’Shea arrived in the box to head the ball down into the corner. York were in a lead they deserved but Leeds came back strong again, York managing to hold on until half-time of extra time. Unfortunately a lapse in concentration gifted a Leeds striker the opportunity to round goalkeeper Henderson and level the scores
once again. It was then down to penalties to decide the outcome of the game. Leeds won the toss and elected to go first. With the first five penalties hitting the back of the net, Leeds went into a 3-2 lead. Johnny MacWilliams then saw his kick saved by the trailing leg of the ‘keeper. The next two penalties were scored and Henderson was left needing to save the final penalty to keep his side in it. Despite diving the right way, he couldn't keep the ball out and York were eliminated. It looked like being a bad week for York until the last half hour of Saturday's semi-final.
Semi-final report, p. 40.
KNOCKOUT EIGHT A great term of sport for York University was emphasised by the progression of eight teams to the BUSA knockout plate. Hockey, volleyball, football, tennis, squash, fencing, badminton and basketball all qualified through their good league positions, and five teams still remain in the competition. All will play at home in the coming weeks.
BUSA Knockouts, p. 42