Wednesday 17th June 2026
Blog Page 1099

I, Daniel Blake: a working class triumph

Jem Bartholomew
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I, Daniel Blake: a working class triumph

Cinema commands a powerful ability to influence how we perceive the world around us. It offers lessons in empathy and tolerance, as we glimpse experiences separate from our own. This can revolutionise our perspective on the struggles of others. A social realist approach to film-making strives for such an impact, focusing awareness and debate to the country’s failures. In a society still reeling from the trauma of austerity, cinema is fundamental to refuting stereotypes about those who receive state welfare – demonised as ‘scroungers’ by the media, and abandoned by a faceless bureaucracy.

This is what makes Ken Loach’s Palme d’Or win for I, Daniel Blake so important. A grandee of social realism, Loach’s new feature explores the struggle between the elderly, unemployed Daniel and what he calls the ‘conscious cruelty’ of austerity Britain’s bureaucracy. As part of a small but growing European trend of the screen, the likes of Peaky Blinders or Measure of a Man, we are witnessing the slow re-emergence of working-class stories.

And quite frankly it’s long overdue. In recent years, public representations of our state welfare have become politically charged. The Murdoch empire vanguards our ugly national discourse, which attacks ‘scroungers’ and ‘slackers’. These mythical categories act as pantomime villains, only serving to divide the working-class. But this sentiment contradicts concrete facts. Just 0.8 per cent of welfare is claimed fraudulently in the UK – a figure people perceive is as high as 30 per cent. But in our era of media saturation, perception is more important than reality.

I, Daniel Blake must take credit for rising above political digs. Rather than fall victim to the polemical, it listens and engages with those in poverty. The narrative is structured around honest, human stories of hardship. It casts real people, non-actors from Newcastle who imbue the film with realism. Into the abstract rhetorical categories of ‘shirkers’ versus ‘strivers’, Ken injects humanity. He emphasises complex human emotion, with humour being just important as frustration and despair to social realism’s impact.

Can Loach’s new film make a difference? I must admit I’m pessimistic about art’s ability to change government policy directly. But this doesn’t mean there’s no hope for modern social realism. If I, Daniel Blake can help change hearts and minds – about how we think about poverty, how we empathise with those who need food banks, how we perceive those who receive welfare – then we’re one step closer to a more just and harmonious society.

Oxford Gobblefunk Dictionary honours Dahl’s memory

Nathan Chan
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Oxford Gobblefunk Dictionary honours Dahl’s memory

ROALD DAHL FANS might have a new reason to be “whoopsy whiffling”, as Oxford University Press has published a new dictionary compiling Dahl’s words to celebrate the centenary of the illustrious storyteller’s birth.

The Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary features almost 8000 real, and invented, “extra-usual” words known as “gobblefunk”, that Dahl used in his work for children. The dictionary is also illustrated by Sir Quentin Blake, and its release is an opportune precursor to the upcoming Steven Spielberg film adaptation of The BFG.

The dictionary was researched and compiled by a team led by lexicographer Dr Susan Rennie over a period of five years. It showcases Dahl’s literary artistry, such as his adoption of spoonerisms and malapropisms, and his play with puns, sound and much more.

Examples of such literary creativity include “delumptious”, which means delicious, “whoopsy whiffling”, which means exciting, and “rotsome” which means unpleasant. “Dahl’s literary creations also were reflective of his personal life”, Head of OUP Children’s Dictionaries Vineeta Gupta told Cherwell.

An example of such would be that in Matilda, a parrot called Chopper actually alluded to Dahl’s real-life Jack Russell terrier. “Matilda” also means “mighty in battle” and was a frequent name given to tanks used in North Africa during WWII, where Roald Dahl served as a RAF pilot.

Gupta said the dictionary was meant to be an insight into Dahl’s creativity, and in particular to encourage children aged eight and above to “write more”. It also has the “rigour” of a “real and fully-functioning dictionary”.

“Roald Dahl’s work is timeless and he is the number one children storyteller in the world. How can we not have made such a compilation? We hope that this dictionary will be enjoyed by children, parents and grandparents alike from all over the world”, she said.

“I think it’s absolutely great that one of the wittiest, most creative, and most jubilant authors of all time has been featured in his own dictionary.” said Jonathan Yeung, a second-year PPEist at Oriel.

“Language leaves such a big impact on all of us, and every good language needs to have people who are willing to stretch it, give it dynamism and life. Roald Dahl is one of these people”, he continued.

Michelle Sum, a second-year lawyer also at Oriel, thought the same and told Cherwell, “Oxford is proving itself not to be archaic and boring by giving its seal of approval to Roald Dahl’s creations.”

“Children around the world can now rejoice in knowing that they can call their teacher who give them too much homework a cracfficult oompa loompa. What will be next? Perhaps a sign for a Harry Potter dictionary to come?”

Live review: Father John Misty

Ellen Peirson-Hagger
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Live review: Father John Misty

“I never liked the name Joshua / I got tired of J”, croons Father John Misty, opening the last of his three Roundhouse shows with the ingeniously twee ‘Everyman Needs a Companion’, the final track from his Father John Misty debut, Fear Fun.

It is no wonder that he was restless as Josh Tillman, drummer in Fleet Foxes, or, in fact, as J. Tillman, under which he released eight critically unsuccessful folk/Americana albums. It is only now, as Father John Misty, a name under which he could be anything from a wayward preacher to a hallucinating shaman, that Tillman has put his genius lyrics and arching melodies into play, receiving critical renown with last year’s I Love You Honeybear.

Far more important is the silhouette of his tall frame in a slim-fitting black suit, thrusting out moves half-way through ‘Holy Shit’ as though he were on a dancemat. He, a pulsating body on the floor amongst this cosmic breakdown, singing “Love is just an institution based on human frailty” with an unrivalled sincerity.

And this is the thing about Tillman: one moment he is standing upright, howling about “ancient gender roles / infotainment, capital”, and the next he falls to his knees, crying “People are boring / but you’re something else I can’t explain”, overcome with the romanticism of his own lyrics. The whole show is a roller-coaster canonisation exposing his wit.

And this wit of his embodies so many levels of human existence. One such level is that of Tillman’s marked sexuality. “I wanna take you in the kitchen”, he sings on ‘Chateau Lobby #4 (In C for Two Virgins)’, one of the finest songs of last year. The furious sexuality of his lyricism oozes with promiscuity, the kind rarely handed to a sweaty room full of strangers with such a straight face. The man is an outrageous performer, but that doesn’t mean his show is inauthentic. He may well cavort his body daringly to the rhythms of his band, but no matter how many guises of ridiculousness under which he slathers his music, nothing will detract from the intelligible crispness of his song-writing.

George Foreman: getting up after getting knocked down

Daniel Sutton
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George Foreman: getting up after getting knocked down

“When I was a kid”, booms a deep Texan voice, “I used to bunk off school. I’d set off, like any other kid, then go to the woods, stay there a little while, then climb back in through my window and go back to bed. One day, as I was climbing through the window, I saw my cousin Rita, and she said ‘Hey Monkey’ – she always used to call me Monkey – and I said ‘I just forgot something, I’ll be off to school’. She looked at me, and smiled. ‘I don’t mind if you don’t go to school. Nobody in this family ever comes to anything.’ I got my stuff, stormed off and almost went to school.”

After two world heavyweight boxing championships, 40 years as an evangelist and around $200 million in earnings from his eponymous grill, George Foreman tells his tale with a smile at the Oxford Union. His epic weaves from childhood truancy to spiritual rebirth, Olympic gold to multi-million dollar commercials, but at its centre was the world championship fight against Muhammed Ali, the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, the defeat for which he is still best remembered among boxing fans today. As I sit opposite Foreman, 42 years on, he describes how it felt to lose the world championship fight.

“Before then, it was like winning, winning, winning, and that was the only time I really lost; I lost plenty of other decisions, but I figured they could have gone either way. To leave defeated, where one day everyone is looking up at you, thinking ‘whoa’, and the next day they’re patting you on the back with sorrow, it’s the most devastating thing that could happen to you. It’s terrible. It’s like a darkness come over you, and you must get back and you’ve got to fight. That was the worst I’ve ever felt in boxing.”

Foreman continues, describing the challenges of entering a fight as champion. “The hardest thing, you know, about being world champion is you start believing things you hear about yourself. It’s hard to resist that, and I said I wouldn’t, but I became part of it, believing I was as tough as people said I was. That was a hard thing to resist.” Asked whether he had a role model himself when he was growing up, Foreman grins and sits back in his chair. “There was a great football player by the name of Jimmy Brown, who later became a great actor. I wanted to be him. He could run real fast and he was the first guy I’d seen without the football helmet, and I saw his face and I thought: ‘that’s the face I want’.”

At that time, was Foreman already set on being a boxer? “I really hated boxing – when I was street fighting as a kid, I thought I could easily fight without being a boxer, but it came to the point in my life where I realised there were things I needed for my family, and I could only get them by boxing. There was a time when I was in the Job Corps and a load of us were listening to a fight on the radio, and some of them looked at me and said ‘If you’re so tough, why don’t you go and do boxing?’ So I did.”

To start with, though, boxing didn’t go as planned. “The first time I went into a ring, I was up against this real weedy guy, and I thought, ‘This is gonna be too easy’. Then he hit me – bam – and it hurt! I tried to hit him, but I kept missing and he kept punching and the crowd started laughing, and I got real angry. I picked the guy up, and the referee said ‘put him down’, and the crowd laughed harder. When I lost, I ran out, and told myself, ‘I’m done with boxing’. None of my friends would look at me, and when I asked if they saw the fight, they just shook their heads.

“As I was walking down the street, my coach ran up to me, and he asked ‘Where are you going?’, and I told him I was done with boxing. He looked up at me and asked why, so, looking for an excuse, I said I had no boxing shoes. He then said ‘Wait here’, and ran off. I waited for about an hour, and then he returned with a pair of boxing shoes. That left me with no choice!’”

After a defeat at the hands of Jimmy Young in 1977 and what he has described as a near-death experience, Foreman converted to Christianity. Following this, he retired from boxing for a time to be an evangelist, initially on street corners, and set up a youth centre in Houston, Texas. Asked how his faith impacted his work, he paused. “I’ve been a preacher,” he said, “but faith is what I have, and it’s hard for me to describe its effect because I just know what I know. I suppose it builds you, it shapes you, and for more or less 40 years I’ve been telling people the same story of how Jesus Christ has worked in me. He’s been the only consistent thing for me, for so long now.”

Though he last fought professionally in 1997, Foreman still remembers the pressure of the ring and how he grew to relish it. “You know, the first time I got knocked down, I was an amateur, the guy hit me so hard, and I didn’t know what winning would get me, or losing, but I remember being on that floor thinking ‘I’ve gotta get up. I’ve gotta get up’. And in that moment, I didn’t have to win, but I had to get up. In boxing, when you hear that bell ring, you feel real confident because you know you have to get up. Sometimes you just get hit real hard, but you still have to get up.”

And the greatest moment of his career? “Winning an Olympic gold medal, in Mexico City. Even once I turned professional and won world titles, nothing came close. I’d represented my country, and I was so proud. I wore my medal so much that the gold began to wear off the back, and I said to my friend ‘Isn’t this a gold medal?’, and he went, ‘It’s gold-plated, George, but I’ll fix it for you’. And I remember my cousin Rita saw me soon after – the one who told me nobody in our family ever came to anything – and she said, ‘I always knew you’d do well, Monkey.’”

Google asks Oxford to find the ‘off’ button

Colin Donnelly
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Google asks Oxford to find the ‘off’ button

Google has partnered with Oxford academic Stuart Armstrong to ensure their new artificial intelligence program, ‘DeepMind’ can be turned off by humans.

Google had been concerned the program, which relies upon a neural network style of computing that mimics human intelligence, might have been able to refuse to obey instructions, and use its intelligence to circumvent human authority.

Students held a variety of views on this collaboration and the possibility that technology may become so advanced that we cannot completely control it.

“It doesn’t seem at all likely to me that software would attempt to harm humans in order to keep its execution running”, said Magdalen JCR computer rep Winston Wright, who is interning with Google this summer.

On another level, the possibilities with artificial intelligence could greatly increase quality of life. “AI and machine learning have the potential to greatly help people do a variety of tasks. Areas that particularly excite me are automated medical diagnosis, driverless vehicles, and natural language processing,” Wright said.

Oxford’s burning destruction

Daniel Curtis
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Oxford’s burning destruction

A friend once made the point that the central quote from T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”, is the ultimate descriptor of Oxford: to chart our experiences with how much caffeine is needed to get through to the next panic-inducing deadline or scenario is quaint. But in this quote lies a contradiction: the considered nature of “measured” cannot coexist with the explosion of energy and pace conveyed by the caffeine of “coffee”. It is a striking, yet jarring, juxtaposition, one which comes closer to describing Oxford than my friend ever realised. Indeed, it is this which makes our collective temperatures rise – the dual necessities of calmness and freneticism.

Needless to say, Oxford leans towards the latter. Yet this is not only in an academic sense, as overwhelming as the demands are here. Instead, other spheres all vie for the same space in our minds, with politics, relationships and our own individual challenges coming to the fore to render any mental space a luxury – a psychological reflection of the Oxford property crisis.

The other day I walked to seek refuge in the tranquillity of Port Meadow. I bumped into some friends along the way, but their conversation was already firmly parked in the arena of economic debate and political allegiance. As much as I love them, I left them, and headed back to college, ironically to resume working. This is indicative of our mental state: the need to de-stress is scuppered by the pressing concerns which harass us into action. It is as if we cannot give ourselves the space we need to cool down when there is always something below the surface vying for our attention.

Referenda are the prime offender in this regard. While much of the campaigning the NUS referendum reflected that of the upcoming EU one, the former is over while the latter rages on. How should we respond to political foot-dragging when not directly involved? Railing against the world in its entirety is an appealing proposition, channelling the immortal cry of “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” from 1976’s cutting, Oscar-winning satire Network. This anger can be cerebral, too: The Smiths’ defiant creed in ‘Still Ill’ of, “I decree today that life is simply taking and not giving / England is mine; it owes me a living” assumes a prominent edge in our battle not only to be heard, but to drown out the voices of those that we resent.

Yet sadly, in my experience, the likelier outcome is one of resignation. Jay McInerney, in the stunning post-modernist novel Bright Lights, Big City (1984), writes, “You suspected that everyone else had been let in on some fundamental secret which was kept from you.” It is perhaps the most brilliantly simple summation of the plight of the outsider – and indeed, the plight of the Oxford student.

This is an environment that fosters comparison – toxic, non-constructive comparison – and the baseless assertion that the whole world has their life together except for you. That you are the exception. That you are a failure. Thus, the natural evolution of our presence here leads to a yearning for a simpler time – a nostalgia for home, for school, for reckless abandon.

Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) is obsessed with this notion: that the only true way to deal with failure is to scrabble around in search of a time long gone. The settings, books and characters of his narrator’s past are all identified, analysed and unfurled in much the same way as our own – a revision class with A2-sized paper and black marker pens brought back pleasing memories of my own faded school days of innocence and levity. “We can cap the old times, make playing only logical harm”, cries singer Paul Banks on post-punk band Interpol’s ‘Obstacle 1’. “We can top the old times, clay-making that nothing else will change”. All of this is the logical result of the natural need to grip a constant when everything else seems amiss.

Surely, then, the answer lies somewhere in the middle – to have enough of a sense of justice to get stuck in where necessary, but to always maintain enough of a sense of perspective to stay grounded. Indeed, in Brideshead Revisited (1945), Evelyn Waugh presents a recollection of an idyllic Trinity term and Oxford in the summer. His protagonist writes on reflection that “it is easy, retrospectively, to endow one’s youth with a false precocity or a false innocence.” So leave yourself no need to do any such thing.

Yes, Oxford and life are both catalysts for burning frustration. But what goes less noticed are the opportunities they give to cool down. Waugh’s breath-taking description of the ‘dreaming spires’ puts it best, writing of the city that “her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days… when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth”. Look around you. Take it in. Cool your temperature. Measuring out your life with coffee spoons may well be necessary. But just make sure that you leave plenty of room between them.

Rewind: Bhutan’s tobacco ban

Simran Uppal
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Rewind: Bhutan’s tobacco ban

This week in 2010, Bhutan became the first country in recent history to totally ban tobacco. Bhutan doesn’t shape its economy to try to produce the largest gross national product: it aims instead at Gross National Happiness. It’s one of the few countries that colonialists never invaded, and has quite consciously rejected Western values in favour of its traditional Buddhist ones: psychological, sociological, philosophical and even economic.

In short, if you’re going to be setting things on fire in Bhutan, you’re more likely to be lighting a stick of incense and chanting refuge in the Buddha than spluttering through a Marlboro Red while downing cheap Indian beer on your definitely-not-neo-colonialist Grand Tour to Goa and Thailand. Buddhists of all denominations chant the advice every morning to ‘avoid taking anything that causes intoxication or heedlessness’. This is less from a position of dogmatic rule-keeping and more from the angle of trying to help you keep your mind clear: the logic is that taking intoxicants as part of your pursuit of happiness and fun just won’t lead to as happy a life as you could have, and that a calm, aware mind is more likely to help you make others’ lives happier too.

The distinction we make between stimulant and intoxicant isn’t quite drawn in the same way. More importantly, tobacco is associated with the general, you know, moral degeneracy and capitalist total lack of concern for others that constitute a certain stereotype of the West. Many Buddhist countries are extremely keen on that dangerous stimulant tea, for example, whether it’s drunk Western style but with powdered milk as in Sri Lanka, fermented and eaten as leaves in Burma or stirred up with Shinto ceremony in Japan.

Tobacco is obviously horrendous for your health. In the UK, the tobacco industry in fact gains more revenue for the state than it takes it away in healthcare costs: there is no real financial motive to reduce its massive, though undeniably harmful, popularity. Compassion-based politics, like the Bhutanese option, offers a very attractive alternative. One factor of Gross National Happiness is sustainable development. You don’t even have to be anti-growth, like the Green Party, to base your whole socioeconomic mindset on something far more human and intuitive than ‘Let’s just make as much money as we can’.

Solidarity for victims of sexual assault at the Radcam

Guy Bennett-Jones
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Solidarity for victims of sexual assault at the Radcam

The gates of the Radcliffe Camera have been covered with notes expressing solidarity for victims of sexual assault.

“To girls everywhere I am with you” is written across one large banner. On smaller notes others have written “It is not your fault”, “You are not alone” and “It happens here too – a survivor”.

These shows of solidarity come amid international outrage following the sentencing of Brock Turner. Turner, a former Stanford freshman, was caught assaulting an unconscious woman behind a frat house in 2015. He was recently sentenced to six months in jail after being convicted of sexual assault, which carries a penalty of up to 14 years.

During the trial, Turner blamed Stanford’s “party culture”. His father pleaded that his son should not go to jail for “twenty minutes of action”.

A petition to remove Judge Aaron Persky from the judicial bench for his leniency has received close to 1.2 million signatures.

Government to test student learning

Hannah Cox
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Government to test student learning

As part of the government’s ongoing efforts to improve teaching standards at universities, a new set of tests, one taken before beginning a degree and another taken after graduation, is being introduced. They will aim to examine critical thinking and problem solving skills in an attempt to establish how much students have improved during their degree and whether the respective university is providing value-for-money.

Starting this autumn, up to 50,000 students will pilot the initial test. Such a system is just a part of the wider programme by the government to ensure students are getting good value in their degrees, as many universities are now charging the maximum £9,000 in tuition fees. Jo Johnson, the Universities Minister, has recently criticised the quality of teaching in some universities as “lamentable,” stressing the need for the test.

Criticism launched at British higher education often questions factors such as the amount of contact time students receive, especially in comparison to courses taught abroad. For example, it has been suggested that even top British universities, including Oxford, are not off ering good value-for-money when compared to American Ivy League institutions such as Harvard and Yale, even though those universities charge five times as much as the £9,000 limit in the UK.

The response from universities to the “before and after test”, as Jo Johnson terms it, has been one of caution, with several suggesting the proposed test would be too generic to be meaningful, whilst others have warned that some universities may simply “teach to the test.”

There is also a concern the test is too narrow in its approach, and will neglect other skills gained during a degree, as well as potentially sidelining degrees, such as fi ne art and music, which may place more emphasis upon other skills, like performance and craftsmanship, that are outside the test’s parameters.

But while new to Britain, similar tests are already used in other countries such as the US. An example is the Collegiate Learning Assessment test, which aims to measure critical thinking and written communication skills. It is currently used by more than 700 institutions in the US and across the world. The test lasts 60 minutes and involves students analysing a set of documents and writing an appropriate response. This is then followed by a multiple-choice paper. Whilst the tests available in the US are voluntary, Brazil carries out mandatory testing for all university students.

Offering another perspective to the situation, English student Paul Ritchie suggests it seems “rather horrendous that the government is trying to legitimise tuition fee increases under the guise of rewarding ‘academic excellence.’”

The government has recently passed legislation to allow the best achieving universities to increase tuition fees in line with inflation, pushing beyond £9000 a year. This new legislation, aided by the proposed test, allows a push for higher tuition fees at excellent universities and fee reductions at under-performing ones.

Oxford Maths Department wins Regius professorship

William Taylor
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Oxford Maths Department wins Regius professorship

AS PART OF the Queen’s 90th birthday celebrations, Oxford’s Mathematical Institute has been awarded a prestigious Regius Professorship.

The award, whose recipients were announced on Monday, is rare and highly esteemed. Since the last round of Professorships bestowed by Queen Victoria in 1842, only 14 new Regius seats have been granted. The Professorship is roughly equivalent to an Honours List for university departments, providing a royal seal of approval for outstanding research.

This year has proven a bumper year for the Mathematical Institute, with the Professorship being just the latest in a series of prizes. In May, Professor Nigel Hitchin took home the 2016 Shaw Prize in recognition of his far-reaching contributions to geometry and Professor Andrew Wiles took the 2016 Abel Prize for his world-famous proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem.

Maths fresher Cong Lu told Cherwell “I was very aware of a few people from Oxford who popularized maths like Marcus du Sautoy and Vicky Neale who led a maths summer camp in Leeds and definitely influenced me to study it” but big names in research were less of an attraction.

“I was definitely aware of Andrew Wiles’ monumental effort proving Fermat’s Last Theorem before coming here but I didn’t realise he was actually at Oxford,” Cong said. He believes some of Oxford’s research success does come from the way they teach Maths to undergraduates though.

“You’re encouraged to tackle extremely abstract concepts that build on your mathematical intuition and lead you a very deep understanding of maths.”

In the past a Regius Professorship was created when a monarch founded or endowed a department at a narrow group of older universities, namely Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Trinity College, Dublin. Rather than have the Queen spoil her party by labouring through monographs, the recipients of the latest round were chosen by a select body of experts drawn from business and academia.

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Professor Louise Richardson, said, “2016 is proving to be quite a year for the Mathematical Institute at Oxford with the Abel Prize presented to Sir Andrew Wiles and Nigel Hitchin recently announced as Shaw Prize laureate. Being awarded a Regius Professorship in Mathematics is wonderful news for the University and another mark of distinction for Oxford Mathematics.”

The list comprises 12 universities and contains some surprises: the Professorships granted to Queen’s College, Belfast and Cardiff University are the first to be granted in Northern Ireland and Wales, respectively, and the success of Aston University’s pharmacy department and the Institute of Cancer Research, part of the University of London, marks a hitherto unusual shift away from the Russell Group.

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