In the midst of the civil war in Syria and the largest migration of people across Europe since the 1930s, it seems most appropriate to meet the first Syrian refugee to live in Oxford since 2011, having been granted residency by the British government last year. It was whilst reporting on last month’s ‘Refugees Welcome in Oxford’ rally, which took place at the height of Europe’s call to action following an outpouring of sympathy, that I first had the pleasure of meeting Abass Saidtaha.

Having him open up to me about his extraordinary experiences since the war in Syria broke out was a great privilege, and it became clear in our more formal interview that he does not intend to relive the deeply emotional experience of recalling everything he has gone through for a long time to come.

Saidtaha lost what he described as his “completely normal life” when the war began, as well as the family and friends who he has not seen since leaving Syria. “I need to start my life again. I don’t want to think about what I lost.” From the seriousness with which these words are spoken, the full extent of the tragedy of Saidtaha’s last four years was striking. He is 28 years old. He was shot by a sniper in his home city of Aleppo in 2013. It was this event, which came close to ending his life, that ultimately led to his realisation that he had to leave, pushing him to make the perilous journey from Syria to the UK by sea and then by land.

When I first met Saidtaha at the rally, his charm and stylish dress sense were amongst the first details that I noticed, but it was his remarkable story which really captivated me. Having gone from knowing no English when he arrived last year to almost effortless, fluent communication, it seems he is indeed successfully starting his new life here. Saidtaha has now been working at Topshop for a month, and he tells me that it is going well, and is quick to praise his colleagues’ warmth towards him. It is encouraging to know that he seems settled.

Asking him to take me through his life in Syria, Saidtaha recounts his time growing up playing football with friends in Aleppo, and his enjoyment of reading class at primary school. Aleppo, he recounts, was, until the war, “a thriving business city, larger than Damascus” but now, he says, “there is no life to go back to.”

Upon finishing school, he decided to start working at his father’s business of designing women’s shoes, rather than to go to university. “It was a very successful business,” he tells me. His entrepreneurial spirit and passion for the industry comes across, as he encouraged his father to agree to the opening of a large shop in the centre of Aleppo, which Saidtaha ran with one of his brothers.

Opening the shop had been an “exciting time for the family” he adds. Despite sometimes working 12-14 hour days, he says, “it was not work for me, it was a hobby. I enjoyed it. It was my business, so it was my own choice.” On his plans for the future before the conflict erupted, he speaks of his desire “for the business to be really successful and to expand across the country.”

On how everything then changed, he explains, “I saw what was happening in Egypt and Libya on the news as everyone else in the world did, but thought nothing of it from our own perspective in Syria.” It was then that groups began to criticise the government and protest in Daraa, in the south of Syria, leading to arrests, including that of children. Aleppo, however, faced criticism for not getting involved as unrest spread throughout the rest of the country.

“My father didn’t receive payments from businesses in other cities as the people of [our] city were judged to support Assad. But we didn’t support either side.” The city became increasingly expensive to live in, and, “One day, suddenly, I wake up and I see planes and helicopters dropping bombs.” He did not risk going to open the shop that day, nor did he again for over a year.

When I ask about the shooting, he tells me, “People had to go out occasionally…for food for example, but on that day, I was going to check that my shop hadn’t been bombed or stolen from. I knew to peer around corners first before turning. As I peered around the corner of the street with my shop, I was shot straight away in the chest.” He recounts how he was dragged back by other civilians and taken by taxi to a hospital where he then lost consciousness. It transpired that the bullet had lodged itself in his chest bone, narrowly missing his heart. Before entering the operating theatre, he regained consciousness and asked the doctors, “Am I going to die?” They assured him he would be fine, while he noticed his off-white trousers were now entirely red. He says he did not feel pain at that point – “I think I was too scared to feel any pain” – but his recovery after the operation was painful. Due to a lack of phone signal in the hospital, he was unable to inform any family members at the time. “All I could think was there was too little time and so much to do,” he says, as tears begin to roll off his cheeks. Saidtaha recovered in a park for two weeks, where he felt relatively safe, but would still bleed. “I then stayed in Syria and recovered for a year, and then left.”

Notably, when asked when it was that he began his journey, even for a month of the year, he responds, “Why would I need to be looking at the clock? I didn’t have work or any appointments, I just needed to make my way here.” His journey took him first to Lebanon, spending “a lot of money” for passage into the country. From there he booked a flight to Istanbul, where he then recalls seeing in the 2014 New Year. After two months living in Izmir, Turkey, he boarded a “tiny boat” which took him to a small Greek island. After arriving on the beach there, he and those he met had to trek over mountainous terrain to reach the populated side of the island. En route, however, further disaster struck when he broke his leg walking for two days to get to the other side of the island. “My friend who I had met in Izmir carried on without me, and so I carried on alone with a broken leg.” He encountered a farmer who called the police and an ambulance later arrived, taking him to hospital. Following two nights in police detention thereafter, he was granted the right to move freely around Greece, allowing him to go to the port and take a ferry to Athens, where he remained to recover for two months.

A combination of buses and car journeys with other Syrians whom he met in Athens led him through Europe. On how he reached the UK, he first says only that it was “a terrible, terrible way”, before stating that he travelled in the back of a lorry. He estimates it took two months to travel from Athens to the UK.

“I had planned all along on going to Canada,” he states early in the conversation. “I made my way to Liverpool, as I had been told to go there in order to get to Canada.” However, language barriers led to him finding no solution to realizing his aim.

The Red Cross in Liverpool was the first place in the UK that he registered. “They were very, very polite people. They looked after me and accommodated me for two nights. Someone told me I should stay in the UK, so that is ultimately what I decided to do.”

The Red Cross went on to pay for his train ticket to London in order to register at the Home Office, and wrote a letter on his behalf to show to them. “I was granted asylum on July 16; that is a date that I remember.”

Talking about the rest of his family, he tells me, “I had lost my parents. I did not know where they were for years. But then a friend contacted me this year to tell me they were with him.” Two of his brothers are now in Newcastle, but he fears for his parents, who are living in Turkey. “They are not allowed to work so they are thinking of returning to Syria. They have no choice. My father says he would rather die in Syria than out on the street in Turkey.” The British government has not been allowing his parents to join him in the UK, and I sense that he does not feel the government makes refugees feel as welcome as they should. “I wish Britain were more like Germany in its response to the crisis,” he reflects.

Regarding the sentiment nationally towards refugees during the ongoing crisis, he says passionately, “People think we are coming from nothing, but before 2011 Syria was a civilized, cultured country. “Syrian people will work hard to tell people in the UK and all of Europe that we are not coming to claim benefits. Nobody wants to have to be a refugee.”

However, he remains highly positive about his reception, stating, “Now I live the same as anybody else, I am treated in Oxford as anybody else here.” In the light of Russia’s current ongoing intervention in Syria, Saidtaha makes clear, “I don’t trust Russia but I don’t trust any of the groups operating in Syria now. They are all horrible people.” He believes Russia only wishes to bolster President Assad, whom he labels a terrorist; “He has killed too many people not to be.”

Reflecting on his new life in the UK, Saidtaha says, “It is a safe country with nice people, and there’s nothing to be scared of. You don’t expect to die during the course of the average day.”

Throughout my conversations with him, the most basic human desire to be able to get on with living a ‘normal life’ is what shines through the most. Having gone through so much to get back towards that point now, he seems happy. But the emotional scars from these recent years of tribulations seem likely to linger for longer than the physical ones.

George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” Another thing that points clearly to a political career is a position in the Oxford Union. According to Oxford-based organisation 80,000 Hours, a Union president has a one-in-three chance of becoming an MP, and it is with this in mind that the Union conducts most of its business.

Enjoying a vision of itself as a rehearsal for Westminster, the Union encourages rabid infighting, and brutal backstabbing. The position of Librarian may not sound that important, but that won’t stop rivals making dodgy deals, spreading fake rumours, or trying to hack each other’s computers (this actually happened) to gain an advantage.

During my time at Oxford, misogynistic memes have been created about one election candidate; various computer hacks have been attempted; a ‘colonial-themed cocktail’ has been advertised, leading to the Union declaring itself institutionally racist; and a Union president has attempted to use members’ money to fund his legal defence against allegations of rape.

I’m not deluded about Oxford’s student body. I know that to some, this won’t sound like an utterly pathetic way for members of a university debating society to conduct themselves. But if you are sensibly horrified by the iniquities of the den of evil that the Oxford Union has become, its politics probably aren’t for you.

Most people involved with the Oxford Union will tell you that despite all the “hacking”, it really does put on some thoughtful and interesting events. This is a bit like if the Dark Lord Sauron were to point out that Mordor actually has some very impressive mountains, but to some extent it cannot be denied. Recent speakers include Malala Yousafzai, Bill Maher, and David Nutt.

But the Oxford Union does not have a monopoly on interesting speakers in Oxford – far from it. A cursory glance at interesting talks in Oxford reveals that this term’s non-Union speakers already include Laura Bates, Paul Mason, and Richard Dawkins. These talks don’t come with a price tag of £229.

The only real advantage the Oxford Union has over the rest of Oxford in terms of speakers is the celebrity factor. And this, in fact, has become the Union’s raison d’etre over the last few years. Its obsessive ideal of itself as the last bastion of free speech has led it to court controversy for controversy’s sake, inviting far-right politicians like Nick Griffin and Marine Le Pen, as well as divisive figures like EDL founder Tommy Robinson, Holocaust-denier David Irving, radical Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary.

Quite what these figures are supposed to bring to the Union other than crowds of protesters and a few pages in the national papers has always been unclear. It seems the only way the Union can justify its ever-rising fees is by perpetuating the idea that it still somehow ‘matters’, and being the centre of a media storm once in a while is as easy a way of achieving that as any.

The worst possible fate for it as an organisation would be for it to be perceived as irrelevant, and eyes all around the building must have lit up as the Guardian, The Telegraph, the BBC, and even Russia Today hastened to cover last year’s Marine Le Pen protest. The would-be politicians of Frewin Court thought to themselves: “Finally, I’m embroiled in a political controversy and the world will pay attention to me.”

Sometimes, the publicity-obsessed Union finds less abhorrent ways of attracting attention. Talks given by Ian McKellan, Morgan Freeman, Nick Jonas, and K-pop star PSY are prime examples of this. But then, rappers Lil Jon and Kanye West both spoke at free events at the Oxford Guild last year, so perhaps the Union doesn’t even have a monopoly in this area any more either (in this columnist’s opinion, Kanye West outclasses all the Nick Jonases in the world). Anyway, your chances of getting into one of these big-name talks are significantly worse than the president’s odds of being parachuted into a Tory safe seat in ten years.

Most of the students I’ve spoken to regret joining the Union, as they feel they never attended enough events to justify the membership fee. If it’s your own money, there are so many better things you could spend it on. If your parents are offering to pay, it’s a different choice. You just have to decide if the Oxford Union deserves to have you propping it up.

Over the past eight years, the British cycling team has proved itself to be perhaps the most successful sporting team that Britain has ever produced. Sixteen Olympic gold medals, innumerable world titles and two recent British winners of the Tour de France have all helped to inspire a grassroots cycling revolution in the UK.

Yet as Ian Drake, British Cycling’s Chief Executive, points out, things haven’t always been so good for the organisation.

“When I first started here [in 1997] there were just sixteen of us. We were rubbish as a nation and as a team; we just did not have the resources.” But soon after Drake joined, British Cycling received the Lottery funding that would go on to form the basis of future success. Ranked 17th in the world having won just one Olympic gold medal in 72 years, British Cycling set the ambitious target to be number one in the world by 2012. Little did they know back then how significant 2012 would turn out to be. But just how has British Cycling managed to achieve such unprecedented success on the biggest stages?

“It’s not rocket science what we’re doing, but there are some very, very simple things that we’ve done. Having a great facility, putting talent in there and putting great people around them – you know you can do some pretty special things then.”

So British Cycling’s core philosophy revolves around recognition of the fact that success requires “a lot of resources going into a handful of people”. But as Drake points out, “the more successful you are, the more challenging it becomes.”

“Other nations startto replicate what you’re doing; we’ve seen it with France now – building a new indoor velodrome, basing their HQ there, basing their coaching staff there. Quite a few nations are trying to replicate our model and I think one of the dangers is that when you’re successful, you kind of stop doing the very things that got you there.”

It’s no surprise that other nations are looking to imitate British Cycling’s model of success. But I ask Drake whether this model for sporting success in cycling can be applied to other sports. He insists that it can and that in some cases it already is, so “hopefully by Rio [in 2016] we’ll start to see even more medals across more sports.”

He adds, “If more sports can start to say the reason we want to win is because we want to use that to get more people playing our sport then hopefully by Rio and by Tokyo [in 2020] we’ll start to see all sports talking about inspiration to participation, about the growth and having the same sort of figures that we’ve got.”

Drake talks frequently of success at elite levels having a “higher purpose”. How do we get to a point, he asks, “where we are the world’s number one cycling nation not in terms of medals but in terms of day-to-day bike usage?” He argues that it “comes back to really looking at that infrastruc- ture; how do you make it easier for people to get on a bike and not choose a car?”

“At the minute it’s something in the region of £2 per head spent on cycling and 2 per cent of journeys are done by bike. We’re saying that £2 needs to go to £10 per head and that 2 per cent needs to go to 10 per cent of journeys by bike as a start.”

The benefits of increasing the proportion of journeys undertaken on two wheels would be considerable. Some studies estimate the annual cost of physical inactivity to the NHS at £1.5bn. Achieving consensus on the best way forward is not an easy task, however. As Drake points out, “no cities were designed for bikes” so “it is really difficult trying to retro-fit to the existing infrastructure.”

2016 promises to be a momentous year for British Cycling, and not only in terms of the summer Olympics in Rio. It also looks to be the twilight year for Sir Bradley Wiggins, a man who has been a constant presence in the British team since the breakthrough Olympics for Team GB in Sydney 2000. British Cycling’s partnership with Sky will also draw to a close in 2016 and Drake feels that “the time is right now, from 2017 onwards for British Cycling to put a new 8 year plan together and bring in a new set of partners around that”, adding that they “owe it to Sky to do it bigger and better with somebody else.”

But what of Drake’s own career at British Cycling? He’s keen to emphasise how lucky he feels to have had the oppotunity “to be involved in all of it, to see it grow and to shape it.” His love and passion for cycling remain as clear as ever and he admits, “I still get really hands on now.”

“That’s probably my biggest Achilles heel actually – rather than conducting the orchestra I keep picking up the instruments!”

Mistakes, he insists, are in many ways as important as success. “If you’ve never made a mistake, you’re never going to learn and probably do the really special things. You end up being a bit mundane.”

“I think resilience is one of the strongest hings that I’ve got. The thing about sport is that everyone has got an opinion about it. Everyone’s really passionate about it. It’s sports greatest strength but it is its greatest weakness as well because it can absolutely really tie you up in knots.”

With Ian Drake at the helm, British Cycling has experienced unprecedented success in recent years. That success, both at the elite and grassroots level, looks set to continue.