Friday 17th April 2026
Blog Page 1112

Should Europe care about Trump?

Zachary Klamann
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Should Europe care about Trump?

When newly-elected President Obama toured the world in Spring 2009, just after his inauguration, the conservative media in the US lambasted him as embarking on an ‘apology tour’. Where George W. had been strong, they cried, Barack Obama was weak and a coward, apologising to their enemies for the US protecting itself. Ludicrous as these claims seem, they are perfectly demonstrative of how much of the US still feels about foreign opinions: they should fear our power, and cooperate accordingly.

Now, there’s a candidate leading the field in the burning corpse of the Republican Party who is xenophobic, sexist, racist and reliant on 18th-century foreign policy principles. He, more than anyone, will send out the feeling that he doesn’t care what a bunch of Europeans think of him. So, when Oxford students march to protest the candidacy of Donald Trump, don’t think he will hear about it, much less address it in any way. But do these largely British students really have the right to meddle in the politics of my home country?

Let’s consider for a second how the election of a President Trump would play out for Europe financially. The US is still the world’s largest economy and is especially important in financial and service sector economic development, meaning the advanced economies of Europe are intrinsically tied to our own. There’s no doubt world stock-markets would collapse with a Donald Trump presidency: at the very thought of his nomination, the FTSE 100 fell 50 points following his Super Tuesday success. Few have faith that his leadership would offer stability, so a Donald Trump presidency would bring economic turmoil for Europe.

Donald Trump is strong, though, right? He’ll secure the world: the US will get tired of winning because he’ll win so much. That, or his foreign policy agenda will spell disaster. Trump has praised Putin as a strong leader, saying he would “get along well with” the Russian leader: hardly a stabilising force in a militarising Europe. His support from far-right political figures like Jean-Marie Le Pen, who said “if [he] were American, [he] would vote Trump”, is doubly worrying, because his presidency could give those dangerous candidates an even larger spotlight on the international stage, endangering the fragile European Union even more.

As for terrorism, the US is isolated and for the most part much safer than Europe can be from violent extremists, as the tragic events in Belgium and Paris demonstrate. Donald Trump would only make this kind of threat more likely. Hillary Clinton was incorrect in saying Trump was being used in recruitment videos, but he may as well be. His calls for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” is one of many statements that fuel the so-called Islamic State’s image of the West as unwelcoming and alienating to Muslims. He will make ISIS more dangerous; he will destroy America’s treasured belief of our own morality for a false sense of security; he will damn the world with his short-sighted xenophobia.

Across Europe, governments are grappling with refugee and migration crises, set to grow in the coming months. Will this potential leader of a land once so welcoming of immigrants, adopted home of Albert Einstein, Yoko Ono and Arnold Schwarzenegger set an example for his counterparts in Europe? In his own words, “I will build a great wall – and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me – and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.” Perhaps not.

In December, the world struck a deal to mitigate the effects of climate change. Yet, the largest historical carbon polluter still has a major political party denying the science of the deal or the practicality that it could be carried out. Have no doubt, Donald Trump will destroy the advances made by the Obama Administration. This is the same man that tweeted: ‘The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.’ Electing Trump would once again set the world on a catastrophic path, endangering everyone from the Marshallese to the Dutch.

So, should students here be allowed to care about who we in America elect? Absolutely. The US President may be our specific leader, but we expect him or her to lead the world, to side with humanity, civility and science, to push the world in the right direction. Donald Trump would do none of these if elected. The British and everyone else in this world have a vested interest in the US Military not becoming the plaything of an egomaniac, the world financial market not collapsing, immigration debates not becoming a farce, extremism — Islamist and far-right — not growing and the climate not being destroyed. As the US continues to play the most important role in preventing these things, the rest of the world should express their opinions about our choices. Will the conservative media or much of the US agree with me? No. But that shouldn’t stop you.

Let’s talk about Boko Haram

Alex Walker
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Let’s talk about Boko Haram

Today is the second anniversary of the kidnapping of 276 girls from their boarding school in Chibok by the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram. A video, taken in December, has just surfaced purporting to show several of the girls still alive. Those that get wind of this development might recall the initial atrocity in association with the widespread social media campaign that involved the spread of the BringBackOurGirls hashtag. What they probably will not be aware of is the findings of a Unicef report, released several days ago, which shows that one fifth of Boko Haram’s terrorist attack’s last year were conducted by children.

Whilst there were four attacks of this type in 2014, last year forty four of a total of 151 bombings were carried out by the young. It’s hard to think of much more barbaric than utilising an eight year old, beyond the usual suspicions of communities racked by war, to infiltrate and destroy what are referred to as ‘soft targets’: market places and camps for displaced people.

There are mixed explanations for these suicide bombings, often it is thought that young people are drugged whilst explosives are strapped to them and then device remotely detonated. However, a recent CNN interview with a young girl who escaped from the Boko Haram militant she was forced to marry sheds some light on what might be behind these attacks, three quarters of which are done by girls. She said that with lives of forced marriage, repeated rape and constant fleeing from Nigerian military advances suicide bombing became a potentially attractive option, apparently offering some faint glimmer of potential escape. In fact, she said that abducted girls in the hands of Boko Haram, of which around 2,000 have been taken since 2014, were eager to undertake this potential opportunity which so often ends in the deaths of hundreds.

These statistics might come as a surprise. Coverage of these quite evidently horrifying crimes has been sparse to say the least. The Times yesterday carried two small columns on this story on page thirty, the back page of its ‘World’ section. The BBC and The Daily Mail both touched on the report, but for other major UK news outlets these findings hardly registered. Essentially, unless you pay purposeful attention to the situation in West Africa then it’s likely that you will not have heard about Boko Haram’s continued campaign of extreme inhumanity.

I used to live in Nigeria. In fact, I spent the golden years of my childhood, from when I was eight until eleven, running around in the dusty heat with my friends, many of whom were Nigerian. And until I was sent a link to a BBC news article earlier today I had heard nothing, and therefore cared little about the situation there. The media silence that surrounds these atrocities is no new phenomenon.

“We are routinely shocked by reports of the acts of barbarity committed by the so-called Islamic State but the vicious inhumanity of Boko Haram is unparalleled, as well as under reported.”

Many of you may be able to recall, if not where you were when you heard about the Charlie Hebdo attacks, then at least the vivid media coverage that surrounded them. However, I doubt you remember with the same clarity any discussion of the Boko Haram massacre of 2,000 people in Baga that occurred in the same week. You may be able to recall more clearly the social media campaign surrounding the abduction of the girls from Chibok, but did you know that the violence of Boko Haram has led to the deaths of 17,000 people since 2009, that two million people have been displaced from their homes and one million are still being denied access to education because of the risk the group poses.
We are routinely shocked by reports of the acts of barbarity committed by the so-called Islamic State but the vicious inhumanity of Boko Haram is unparalleled, as well as under reported.  Christina Lamb’s recent investigation reported teenage boys forced to dig their own graves, an executioner referred to as ‘the Butcher’, and horrifying stories of sexual brutality affecting girls as young as five. A  nine to ten year old girl was found recently in the Nigerian bush so traumatised she couldn’t speak, repeating the word ‘bomb’ over and over again; no one is sure where she comes from or what had happened to her.It’s easy to say that this is because these events aren’t European news and so it would be misplaced for European news agencies to carry them as lead stories. Putting aside the moral implications of ignoring suffering this doesn’t hold water. Events in the Middle East are technically as non-European as those in West Africa, yet the actions of IS (Daesh) consistently grace the front pages of our newspapers and are a continued topic of debate and conversation. Boko Haram bare many similarities to IS, in fact they are officially associated, with Boko Haram’s leader calling the areas they control IS’s ‘West African province.’

Boko Haram is, you may be surprise to hear, considered by the Global Terrorism Index to be the deadliest terrorist organisation in the world. The thing is that whilst they are deadly in West Africa they pose little threat to Europe. Boko Haram bomb Cameroonian market places not Brussels or Paris; the women they sexually abuse to do not often flee to Europe, they regularly face further abuse in vast West African refugee camps.

A Cherwell article written last year entitled ‘Are some lives really more significant than others?’ addressed some of these issues. Its author concluded that in actuality we, the reading public, are to blame for the media’s privileging of some lives over others. The media must be attentive to what the public is interested in, and so willing to buy. I agree that it is probably true that the reading public are more interested in what affects them and I think this attention to the commercial viability of news can be employed as an excuse.

But it is an excuse that the media should be deeply ashamed of. Is there not something intrinsically important about making the world aware of extreme human suffering that transcends commercial consideration? The reading public may not currently be interested, but if they are not confronted by these atrocities then they never will be and people will continue to suffer, surrounded only by silence. The media can hide behind the public’s selfish prejudices or take a risk and try and change them.

Calls for employers to pay higher living wage

Katherine Pye
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Calls for employers to pay higher living wage

Oxford employers have been asked to pay their staff higher wages due to disproportionately high housing costs. Green party Oxford City Councillor Sam Hollick said people should be entitled to at least £8.93 an hour, while the living wage which most employers, including the University of Oxford, now pay is £8.25 an hour. Hollick said in a statement, “The government’s new ‘living wage’ needs to be a lot higher for it to be considered a real living wage.”

The national living wage was introduced by the Government across the country, replacing the legal minimum wage for people aged 25 or older. Employers nationwide must now pay their staff at least £7.20 an hour.

Yet according to Lloyd’s, average housing prices in Oxford are 10.68 times local earnings, making it the least affordable city in the United Kingdom. Winchester comes second at 10.54 and London third at 10.06.

For this reason, Oxford City Council has separately promised to pay what it calls the Oxford Living Wage, at £8.93 per hour. It pays this to all staff and requires contractors with fees over £100,000 to pay it.

Bob Price, Leader of Oxford City Council told Cherwell, “The Labour City Council established the Oxford Living Wage at 95 per cent of the London Living Wage in 2011. We also require all contractors working on Council contracts to pay this as a minimum. We have also successfully pressed other major Oxford employers to pay the OLW. The five per cent decrement reflected the slightly lower transport costs incurred typically by Oxford workers vis a vis London.”

But Andrew Smith, Labour MP for Oxford East came out in support of a raise in the living wage. Smith told Cherwell, “I strongly support a higher living wage for Oxford, which in cost of living terms is more in line with London than much of the rest of the country, but we also have to win the argument to be allowed to build more homes, or any increase in incomes will be matched by further increases in rents and house prices.

“With the housing crisis, cuts in tax credits, and massive pressure on council and health services, there is a real and present danger of an ever deeper chasm opening up between the haves and have-nots in our city.  This is wrong, unfair, and desperately damaging both to those shut out of opportunity and to the fabric of our society.”

Danny Dolan, professor of human geography at the University of Oxford drew attention to the underlying problem of the housing crisis, telling Cherwell, “As the cost of housing rises much faster than inflation in Oxford and as Oxford is the most similar city in the country to London in terms of living expenses the case of paying at least the Oxford living wage is obvious. Not paying it demonstrates a lack of appreciation of the time and value of others. Unlike the national minimum wage, the living wage does not discriminate by age and pay people less simply because they are not aged 25 or over.”

Dolan added, “The living wage is just a small part of what is needed to make living in Oxford work as well as in most other European cities. Oxford also needs more housing. Again here the university, and in particular a small number of its constituent colleges that own land, have a part to play and a choice to make over whether they play that part.”

Lesley Dewhurst, Chief Executive Oxford Homeless Pathways, a charity providing services for the homeless in Oxford highlighted the insufficiency of salaries for those emerging from unemployment in Oxford. She told Cherwell, “It is my understanding that there is already an Oxford Living Wage prescribed by Oxford City Council which we, as City Council funded organisations, adhere to and support in terms of the salaries we pay our staff.

“However, it is true that employers are finding ways around this with the recent introduction of the national living wage, and we would be naïve to think that this wouldn’t just happen more if a higher living wage for Oxford was enforced.  The way forward, in my view, is for these loopholes to be closed and the cost absorbed by more equal pay structures, with less gap between lowest and highest paid.”

“As far as homeless people are concerned, the most helpful thing to get them into accommodation would be to raise the level of Housing Benefit that can be paid, to encourage private landlords to consider those on benefits or low wages.  Starter jobs for those people coming out of long spells of unemployment are rarely paid well – but, even if paid at the Oxford Living Wage, would not necessarily be sufficient for the high rents that are levied locally.”

However, there have been concerns the raised living wage would put unfair pressure on local businesses. Graham Jones, co-chairman of Oxford-based business group ROX, warned that the higher wage requirement could force some businesses into reducing the number of employees or hours.

He said in a statement, “Higher wages are good for employees, but although some businesses will be able to absorb the costs through efficiency savings, there will be those who need to increase prices, or the reality could be a loss of jobs.”

And Harry Samuels, an Oxford student running for councillor with the Liberal Democrats said that while he supported a higher wage for the city, its impact would be minimal unless housing costs themselves were addressed.

Nicola Blackwood, Conservative MP for Oxford West and Abingdon has been contacted for comment.

Outreach programme launched for ethnic minority applicants

Marianna Spring
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Outreach programme launched for ethnic minority applicants

Target Oxford has launched a new outreach programme with Oxford’s Undergraduate Admissions office in a bid to target ethnic minority students applying to Oxford.

Over 40 state school students with African and Caribbean heritage stayed at St. Edmund’s Hall whilst they attended the three-day residential event.

The year 12 students received an introduction to life during and after Oxford, meeting both current undergraduates and alumni for mentorship.

They also took part in a number of academic workshops and lectures led by Oxford tutors and research staff.

Dr Samina Khan, Director of Admissions and Outreach at Oxford University, commented, “The first Target Oxbridge residential has been a real success: all the participants were fully engaged and particularly enjoyed the opportunity to see from our current undergraduates what life at Oxford can be like and how achievable an option it really can be. The feedback from students and participants alike was extremely positive, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Target Oxbridge to encourage and support more ethnically diverse applicants to Oxford.

“While Oxford is a popular choice for students from all backgrounds we know there are talented students who may not be considering us – we hope these initiatives will help shift the balance and put the benefits of an Oxford education on the agenda and within reach for more ethnic minority pupils.”

Naomi Kellman, Manager of Target Oxbridge, told Cherwell, “Rare launched Target Oxbridge in 2012 with the aim of helping black students to increase their chances of gaining places at Oxbridge and Cambridge. Since the launch of the programme we’ve helped 30 students gain places at Oxbridge, contributing to improving the representation of black students at Oxbridge.

“We are delighted that the University of Oxford has partnered with us this year to provide a three-day residential for the students on Target Oxbridge. We expect this residential to further help the students develop the skills they will need to succeed in the application process, and to envision themselves as future Oxbridge students.

“We look forward to seeing the outcomes for this year’s cohort, and hope to see a significant proportion of our students gaining places at Oxford or Cambridge.”

The programme is run by diversity recruitment firm Rare, which seeks to help students with African and Caribbean heritage increase their chances of gaining a place at Oxford or Cambridge.

The event makes up part of a yearlong programme by Target Oxbridge that supports students in their studies and application to university.

Academics and admissions staff from Oxford will offer subject-talks, master classes and application support before the admissions deadline on October 15 as part of the extended programme.

Oxford will also be hosting a new conference targeted at British Asian students in the Slough area as part of its aim to support ethnic minority students in their applications.

They already host an annual conference for African and Caribbean students.

Claims of anti-semitism hit NUS Presidential race

Zachary Klamann
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Claims of anti-semitism hit NUS Presidential race

Leaders of student Jewish societies at 48 British universities, including Oxford, have signed an open letter asking NUS presidential candidate Malia Bouattia to answer questions regarding comments she has made which they consider anti-semitic.

The Jewish student leaders specifically raises concern with a 2011 blog post in which she called the University of Birmingham a “Zionist outpost in British Higher Education” and commented that one of the problems she faced as a leader of Friends of Palestine was that the University had the “largest JSoc in the country” with leadership “dominated by Zionist activists”.

“I do not now, nor did I five years ago when I contributed to the article cited in [the] letter, see a large Jewish Society on campus as a problem.”

Malia Bouattia, NUS Black Students’ Officer

In a written response to the letter, Bouattia claims she has no problem with the large JSOC. “I do not now, nor did I five years ago when I contributed to the article cited in [the] letter, see a large Jewish Society on campus as a problem,” she writes.

The letter also references a speech she gave to start Israeli Apartheid Week at SOAS in February, during which she claimed the government’s anti-extremism policy, Prevent, had been fuelled by “all manner of Zionists and neo-con lobbies”.

She has since clarified these comments as referring specifically to lobbying done by the Henry Jackson Society, a non-Jewish organisation, for neo-con and pro-Zionist policies, but denies that they reference the Jewish people as a whole. “In no way did I – or would I – link these positions to Jewish people”, she says in her response to the letter from Jewish student leaders.

Indeed, she writes that Judaism and Zionism are not the same and that connecting religion and politics is “both unfair and unrepresentative”.

The open letter also brings up an endorsement Bouattia received from Raza Nadim, the spokesmen for the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, an organisation that has been no-platformed by the NUS since 2004 for promoting belief in a world-wide Zionist conspiracy and once posted on their Facebook page to “take your holocaust, roll it nice and tight and shove it up your (be creative)!”. Specifically, the student leaders take issue with her reply to the endorsement, which was simply, “Thank you :-))”.

In her response to their letter, Bouattia claims she did not know Nadim, nor was she aware of his anti-semitic views, blaming her acceptance of the endorsement on an influx of support and a standardised response to it.

“I have a public facebook page with nearly 5,000 ‘friends’ on it, many of whom have posted supportive messages to my wall,” she wrote. “In all honesty, I was not aware of who Mr Nadim was or his position when he posted to my wall and responded in the same way I would to any post.”

She goes on to claim that as Black Students’ Officer at NUS, she has “a long track record of opposing racism – in all its forms – and actively campaigning against it. I am also an advocate of inter-faith work both inside of our union and beyond”.

Since the release of the letter, all four of the “Oh Well Alright Then” slate members representing Oxford to the NUS have condemned Bouattia’s comments and have thrown their support behind the Jewish student community in Oxford.

Additionally, the OUSU Sabbatical Team have released a public statement against her comments and urged her to answer the letter’s questions, going so far as to claim that “If these allegations are true, we believe it makes her unfit for the office of National President”.

“In order to help prevent the poison of anti-Semitism and ethno-religious hatred from spreading further, we need to make sure that the next NUS President doesn’t have anti-Semitic views.”

Alex Curtis, second year student at St Catz

The letter has also been signed by many current Oxford students, many of whom cited their concern for growing anti-semitism on  university campuses.

Alex Curtis, a second year student at St Catz told Cherwell, “As someone who is partially of Jewish heritage, I am worried about some of the rising anti-Semitism we have recently been seeing on university campuses across the country.

“In order to help prevent the poison of anti-Semitism and ethno-religious hatred from spreading further, we need to make sure that the next NUS President doesn’t have anti-Semitic views.”

The outpouring of support does not shock Oxford JSOC President Isaac Virchis, who believes “this is wholly indicative of the overwhelmingly positive and welcoming attitudes towards Jewish students and JSOC that are prevalent throughout the university.”

While Bouattia has offered her answers to the questions asked by the letter, many people see this breed of anti-semitism as widespread in universities and left-of-centre circles around the UK, including a vote by OULC to support Israeli Apartheid Week that set off questions of anti-semitism within the club and the party in general. Some see this vote as a sign of the increasing accepting of this form of anti-semitism within leftist group.

The resignation of Alex Chalmers as OULC co-Chair in February brought anti-semitism in the Labour Party to light.
The resignation of Alex Chalmers as OULC co-Chair in February brought anti-semitism in the Labour Party to light.

“If there’s one form of racism one can express freely in far leftist circles, it’s anti-semitism; often cloaked in the obfuscating language of Zionism and Zionists, the far left’s pathological obsession with Israel trumps any concern for Jewish welfare or the growth in anti-semitic attacks.” Labour activist Louis McEvoy said, “Obviously one can criticise Israeli government policy, but for some reason this is regularly conflated with dark murmurings of Zionist lobbyists and banks controlling the West, not to mention a pretty commonplace hatred for the very existence of the Jewish state. The candidacy of the utterly vile Malia Bouattia for NUS President is the peak of this phenomenon thus far.”

Indeed, many within the left have come to see the kinds of comments made by Bouattia as toxic to the role she’s running for and left-of-centre politics in general. “In light of this incident, this brings into question Ms Bouattia’s suitability for the role of NUS President where she will be representing the rights of students across the country from a diverse set of backgrounds, including Jewish students, when she is expressing views which are totally at odds with a role that requires impartiality and willingness to work with all students” said Brahma Mohanty, former OULC BME Officer and Social Secretary.

Nobody’s Fault But Zeppelin’s: When Influence becomes Plagiarism

Lorenzo Edwards-Jones
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Nobody’s Fault But Zeppelin’s: When Influence becomes Plagiarism

‘Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.’

And the greatest, it seems, manage to get away with it. Or at least, that was what Led Zeppelin front men Robert Plant and Jimmy Page thought until, last Friday, they were summoned to court for copyright infringement on 1971 hit ‘Stairway to Heaven’. The similarity between the song’s opening riff and the instrumental ‘Taurus’, released four years earlier by psychedelic band Spirit, was flagged up in 2014 by a trustee for the band’s now-dead guitarist Randy Wolfe and has since been making rifts in the music community.

Now, the band has seen its fair share of copyright lawsuits filed against them, many successfully and some rightfully. Many, however, have been largely unfounded, and can probably be put down to a mixture of financial opportunism and jealousy: when Led Zeppelin have taken from a song, their own version has usually been distinctive enough not to have to credit its influence. It’s also a question of genre. The blues has always been in conversation with itself: Chuck Berry stole from people, people stole from Chuck Berry, but at the end of the day, no one could do Chuck Berry like Chuck Berry did, and so that was that.

The ‘Stairway To Heaven’ lawsuit, however, is something quite different. It is no longer a case of taking words or tonality from traditional songs before then altering them. It is almost note-for-note theft. Led Zeppelin and Spirit toured together in the late 60s and, despite any claims that Zeppelin might make that the riff was developed without any knowledge of ‘Taurus’, Page is very likely to have come across it, not least because the album it came from reached #31 in the Billboards. Technical arguments stating that Spirit’s riff uses a musical technique too basic for ‘Stairway’ to be plagiarising it also don’t hold much water, given how close the riffs are both in terms of tone, tempo and positioning on the guitar neck.

A Led Zeppelin fan through and through, I will be the first to say that what they then go on to do with the riff is quite unique. The quasi-Elizabethan first section, the epic guitar solo, the transition into the hard rock finale that, as with so many great successes, caused an initial scandal in the media for not being ‘the done thing’; there’s a reason all guitar learners flock to ‘Stairway To Heaven’ as soon as they’ve had enough of ‘Wonderwall’. But, as far as this court case is concerned, Page and Plant need to face the music. The opening is Spirit’s, and credit should be given accordingly.

How to: A wrap detailed t-shirt

Aini Putkonen
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How to: A wrap detailed t-shirt

If you’re searching for t-shirt inspiration for summer or just looking for creative ways to procrastinate, keep reading. This t-shirt DIY is a fun way to make a plain t-shirt more special and unique. It is also quick and easy to execute.

You will need:DSC_0229

  • A plain t-shirt
  • Scissors
  • Pins
  • Thread and a needle
  • A tape measure

 

1. Cut off the hem of the t-shirt. Cut a vertical slit from middle of the bottom edge of the t-shirt to the spot where you want the knot to be placed. If you want to be precise, use a tape measure to make sure where the middle of the t-shirt is.

DSC_02332. Cut a small hole next to the slit on one side.

DSC_0242

3. Take the corner of the side of the slit that does not have a hole. Move it through the hole you just cut. It’s quite helpful to have the shirt on when doing this.

DSC_02464. Move the other corner under the bottom edge of the shirt. Tighten the bottom by pulling the corners.DSC_0251

5. Secure with pins. Now you should have the shape of the wrap detail visible.

DSC_02536. Take the t-shirt off and use thread and a needle to make sure that the wrap detail stays in place. It may take some trial and error to get this right.

DSC_0256

7. Done!

DSC_0260

 

Review: Disorder – dull and boring

Thomas Player
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Review: Disorder – dull and boring

ONE STAR

“Un, deux! … trois, quatre! Un, deux! … trois, quatre!”

You’d be forgiven for thinking you’re back in your first ever French lesson, mais non, it’s the opening quick-march scene of Alice Winocour’s latest thriller Disorder. Matthias Schoenaerts plays Vincent, a French soldier who is sent back to the south of France from Afghanistan. If the opening sequence does not hint strongly enough that he’s suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, the medical exam that follows certainly spells it out.

His army career over, Vincent becomes a security guard for home alone arms-dealer’s wife Jessie (Diane Kruger). With little explanation, the house is soon under attack by gunmen in balaclavas; presumably they’re after the secret documents Jessie’s husband is hiding in their mansion. Spoiler alert: it turns out they’re in the freezer in a zip-lock bag next to the nuggets de poulet.

Bored? I don’t blame you, I was.

Just one of the problems with this film is that it can’t make up its mind what it’s about. Is it an exploration of Vincent’s struggle with PTSD? A thriller about the collateral damage suffered by an arms-dealer’s family? The fledgling romance between a bodyguard and his VIP client? We spend a little bit of time with each of these but never properly get into any of them.

But mish-mash plot lines aren’t necessarily a problem. However, what is unforgivable about Disorder is the woefully underdeveloped characters. Considering Vincent and Jessie are the two leads, there is scant exploration of either their personalities or the relationship between them. Mon Dieu, they don’t even find out each other’s names until over halfway through.

A redeeming feature is the score by French techno artist Gesaffelstein. It does its job perfectly, racking up the tension until we feel that an attack is all but imminent. The problem is that despite sections with some great suspense and brilliant jump scenes, we still never feel any sense of threat due to a lack of engagement with the one-dimensional characters.

To add to the drudgery of the plot, the film’s colour palette can only be described as muted. It takes place almost entirely at night, and when it’s daytime the setting is a grey, washed-out version of the French Riviera. A bit of colour correction seems well needed. The dull colours make it feel like we’re back in 2006; accentuated by Vincent’s ugly blue tracksuit that wouldn’t look amiss on a most grime obsessed fresher in the smoking area of Cellar.

So, a boring story, poor characterisation, dull cinematography. What is there to like about this film? Aside from the score, the answer is not much.

Schoenaerts’ performance merits mention. Despite his very few lines he manages to successfully convey a man struggling with the anxiety and paranoia caused by PTSD once back in civilian life. But only toward the end of the film does his character begin to develop, and for me it was too little too late. The other performances were hardly memorable and there was little of substance to take away. I suppose I can report that, in an age of bloated films in dire need of a good edit, Disorder comes in at a mere 98 minutes.

So it is, at least, mercifully short.

Oxfolk review: Interloper

Ben Ray
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Oxfolk review: Interloper

Tom Kitching’s new solo album, ‘Interloper’, is truly one of the undiscovered gems of the English folk music scene. Filled with interesting and exciting takes on traditional folk tunes, Kitching polishes and reshapes these otherwise everyday melodies into new, sparkling creations, reflecting the vibrancy of the folk music scene and sure to get your foot tapping along. Indeed, this album seems to be Kitching’s attempt at ‘pressing the reset button’ in defining English traditional folk music- here, anything played by an English musician is fair game. This means his music can span a wide variety of influences, styles and techniques- and boy, does this album make use of them.

And yet ‘Interloper’ doesn’t come across as merely a simple experiment in folk music- instead, it seems a beautifully wrought, intricately structured body of music that, whilst pulling the listener in and playing around with the concept of ‘English folk’, is still an utter joy and easy to listen to. I particularly loved the tune ‘Cobbler’s’, where Freya Rae’s clarinet accompaniment gives the piece distinct klezmer undertones- just one of the influences that emerge from this album. Kitching knowingly experiments with this, taking the tune back to a more rooted, traditional fiddle riff before plunging us back into the haunting, seemingly exotic melodies of the clarinet. Throughout this album tracks are under laid with the complex rhythms of the percussionist Jim Molyneux, giving the music a textuality and a depth it could not otherwise have reached. On tracks like the opening of ‘La Rotta’ the perfect timing and use of pauses achieved by the percussion really draw you in, creating a fantastic underlay for the inventiveness and playfulness of Kitching’s marvellous prowess on the fiddle.

Despite the limited number of instruments on the album, their variety and abilities to mould into different styles means each track is kept interesting and absorbing. From the mellow, soulful clarinet solo in ‘Cheshire’ to the speeding, playful dancing of the flute and fiddle in ‘Fast Dance’, Kitching always manages to keep us on our toes. The beautiful accompaniment of Marit Fält on latmandola (it’s a Swedish mandocello- don’t worry, I had to Google what it was too) truly completes this tight-knit, exuberant set of musicians. Kitching has worked with many musicians and bands, from Pilgrim’s Way to Gren Bartley, and his versatility and ability to collaborate really shines through in this album- in seeking to define and push the bounds of the English folk tradition, Tom Kitching has definitely found the right direction.

Turn it off

Anna Wawrzonkowska
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Turn it off

How many hours a day do you spend online?

If you’re anything like myself, there’s probably hardly a moment during your day without being connected to the ever-buzzing, vibrant, notoriously egalitarian network that is the Internet. From googling film ratings (holy cow, Zootopia is 99% on Rotten Tomatoes, who knew) and random New York Times articles (yes, we all get it, Trump is a menace, bet all of you would want to get back to monarchy now, huh?) to scrolling through gorgeous recipes far beyond your culinary skills (thanks Proper Tasty, I’m drooling now), Internet activity has become a part of life just as mundane and universal as brushing your teeth in the morning: it’s there and you do it and if you don’t, you feel slightly guilty and icky the entire day until you catch up. According to the Telegraph’s report in 2015, in the last decade the time we spend online increased almost threefold: from weekly 10h 24min to 27h 36min. That amounts to nearly four hours a day, all week, plastered to the screen.

It probably looks less alarming than you had expected, given that you most likely check emails and Facebook on your phone at various times during the day – and assuming that you get a healthy amount of 8h of sleep per night, it is still a measly 1/4 of your time, leaving plenty of space for other activities.  But even with that, a weekly sum of 27h 36min is somewhat chilling: it is about three times the span of all my contact hours during an average Oxford week. Which means that for every hour I spend with my tutor or lecturer, I have three glued to the laptop.

Which is fine, right? When you make a comparison like this, you may only imagine the copious amounts of study that are going on based on my tutor’s input. – Yes, and all students know how that goes: you sit down to write an essay, and then emerge eight hours later with about 300 words of introduction and a surprisingly deep knowledge about professional kite-flying.

Essentially, what is happening is we spend the time idly browsing through the web whilst wallowing in slowly sharpening sense of guilt. The internet has made the art of procrastination maddeningly easy; and thus we are wasting away our stress-free existence one click at a time.  Let’s not lie to ourselves: many of us spend way more than four hours a day in front of the screen, and on what is definitely not work. Instead of doing our assignments productively, we ruin our attention span by feeding our brains the Buzzfeed articles, flashy cat videos, and random quizzes which are obviously nonsense because of all Harry Potter characters, I am obviously Hermione, not Hagrid. This is as much a fact of student life as the artery-clogging midnight snack at a kebab van, and there is hardly anything one can do about it except giving their gravely acknowledgment. It is just the term reality, and it takes its toll.

But it’s not term time anymore. It’s Easter vacation, and most of us are now blissfully forgetful of the Oxford lifestyle.

Are you really, though?

At home, when the relentless flow of challenges, experiences, deadlines, and stress subsides, you might find yourself falling back on the familiar procrastination habits – bombarding your brain with information, scrolling through Facebook to keep track on the events you’re missing, keeping in touch with people you’ve left. The momentum is still there, it’s been a rough fast ride, and your mind is still racing, still craving more input, more to satiate that hunger for short, easily processed information.

Turn it off.

Give your friends a quick heads-up that you’re going to be away, leave an automatic reply on your Oxford email if your tutors try to contact you, and get offline.

You’re going to be reeling for a while: what exactly do I do without Facebook, without Instagram, Twitter, external validation, constant connection?

I, for example, painted a Japanese-style landscape.

It used to be that outlet of mine, painting. I don’t really do it at Oxford, I’m not really sure why – I could if I put my mind to it, I just don’t. I don’t really pick up a book for fun either. My home has a rule that if you have a book on your shelf, it’s a disgrace if you haven’t read it; it used to be a commandment of mine. Now I’m glad that I’m more or less managing to get through one particular section I need for the essay. I never sew here either, I get annoyed if I don’t see the results quick enough, and with sewing you never do.

What is your thing that you give up for term time?

Drowning in the internet is easy. It’s the mental equivalent of junk food, providing you with empty entertainment without any actual growth. A day, three days, a week without the internet – however much you’re willing to try – is a detox for that. By being away from the instant source of cheap fun, you try to figure out what made you happy when you actually had to make an effort. You’re forced to get out. Pick up a book. Get some sleep. Plan something. Figure out how to make yourself entertained by working on it. And when you get back to the internet, you’ll be surprised how different it suddenly appears: instead of quicksand, a tool you can control.

So reclaim those four hours a day. They are yours to spend and for a month, there is no Oxford tutor telling you what to do with your time. Relax, take a deep breath, put the strain of the term behind you, and just turn it off.

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