Monday 6th April 2026
Blog Page 1198

‘The Petulant One’ — José Mourinho’s fall from grace

Alex Urwin
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‘The Petulant One’ — José Mourinho’s fall from grace

If you had asked me a month ago, I would have found it incredibly difficult to argue that José Mourinho was anything other than the ‘Special One’ he famously proclaimed himself to be. Now though, as his once all-powerful Chelsea side continues its unprecedented disintegration, it would appear the ‘Petulant One’ would be a far more fitting title.

This is a man who has never played by any rules. From bursting onto the scene with a victory by his Porto side over Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United, Mourinho’s team have won very stylishly, very dirtily and everything in between. But the important thing was that they won. The statistics speak for themselves: Mourinho has won 66.18 per cent of the games of any team he has ever managed. Eight league titles in 14 seasons. Two Champions Leagues. An unbeaten home record stretching from 23rd February 2002 to 2nd April 2011, covering 150 games and four different clubs. Mourinho may not win pretty, but he wins.

When Mourinho strolled, ever-nonchalantly, onto the scene of English football in 2004, his enigmatic charm and playful arrogance rapidly cemented his position as the darling of the British game. For those inside Stamford Bridge he was the messiah, the man who would bring them the world. For those of us looking on, he was the genius we loved to hate. Mourinho was mischievous, he was controversial, but most importantly, he was brilliant. His Chelsea were winners, they were record-breakers; the dominant force in our domestic game. They remained so until his departure in 2007. When Milan beckoned, English football mourned the loss of one of its most celebrated, most decorated figures. In three years, he had captivated fans, entertained the media and achieved success wherever there was success to be achieved. When Mourinho walked out of Stamford Bridge and into the San Siro, he did so as one of the greatest managers the Premier League had ever seen. Once he had finished in Madrid, he returned to London having secured his place as one of the finest footballing minds to have ever lived.

A lot can change in football. Perhaps the warning signs were there all along; his selfcentred style caused immediate factionalism within the Bernabeu. He had left Chelsea amidst rumours of a fall-out with the club’s billionaire owner, Roman Abramovich. On top of this, his approach to referees and other managers drew frequent criticism during his first tenure in the Premier League. And it has always been evident that he does not lose well. When a team is winning trophies, however, it is amazing what can be forgiven. Unfortunately for Mourinho, Chelsea is not winning anymore.

First came the Eva Caneiro debacle. At best, he let his competitive nature infringe upon his decision-making in the heat of the moment; his team was chasing the game. At worst, he showed a dangerously arrogant disregard not only for his colleagues around him, but also for the fundamental rules of the game. When Mourinho won his most recent personal award, he was photographed with his backroom staff, celebrating a ‘team effort’. When he disciplined Caneiro for doing her job, his obstinate self-interest was painfully clear.

To make matters worse, Chelsea began to lose. Then they lost again. A poor start became a prolonged blip; the blip became a slide. As reports emerge that senior Chelsea players are preparing themselves for their manager’s imminent departure, it is clear that the slide has now become a crisis. When Mourinho was sent to the stands for yet another altercation with a match official, his petulant lack of sportsmanship or humility in defeat was unavoidably apparent.

Talking of a ‘Mourinho team’ used to involve speaking of a team that won. Sometimes they won at all costs, but they always won. Now, in the light of the £25,000 fine Chelsea received after seeing seven yellow cards against West Ham, it seems a ‘Mourinho team’ displays nothing more than the abrasive qualities of its manager. This is not so endearing, nor does it illicit any respect, when the results do not follow.

It should not be surprising, though, that Mourinho’s players seem to struggle so much with on-field discipline. Mourinho himself faces yet another FA misconduct charge and an internal club sanction. On this occasion, like so many occasions that have come before it, it is his blatant disregard for the game’s expected levels of respect, restraint and humility for which he is to be punished. The game against West Ham was not the first time Mourinho has been accused of using ‘abusive or insulting’ language towards the referee. As long as he remains in charge, it will not be the last. If Mourinho leaves Chelsea, as the media is predicting with increasing conviction, one of football’s most incredible falls from grace will be complete.

His legacy is under considerable threat. His status as the effortlessly cool enigma of football management is in danger of total evaporation. Arresting the current decline of his haplessly misfiring Chelsea side may well confirm his status as the best there has ever been. But what if he fails to do so? Perhaps he was never so special after all 

Yayoi Kusama: repetition and restfulness

Sam Joyce
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Yayoi Kusama: repetition and restfulness

My first encounter with Yayoi Kusama’s work was almost impossible to forget. Rounding the corner of a street in the Japanese mountain town of Matsumoto, I came face to face with a giant, winding cluster of tulips, bursting skyward from the floor. Garishly coloured, as tall as a house and patterned with gigantic polka dots, the complex, twisting maze of stems and buds demanded exploration and discovery from every conceivable angle. The permanent installation, entitled ‘The Visionary Flowers’ is a fascinating piece of contemporary sculpture. The monstrously kitsch flowers seemed both deeply empty in that pop-art way, yet at the same time hugely personal. This first meeting is amongst the my most memorable that I’ve had with any artist.

 

But it’s when you encounter your second, third and fourth pieces by Yayoi Kusama that things start to make sense. The 86 year old Japanese artist, born in Matsumoto before stints of various lengths in Tokyo and New York which preceded her permanent residency in a centre for the mentally ill, will cover absolutely anything with dots. From canvases,to entire apartments, and even naked bodies participating in an orgy, nothing escapes adornment by Kusama and her brush. But this is not a Lichtenstein style deconstruction. For Kusama, the dots are both a lifeline and a curse.

 

“One day I was looking at the red flower patterns of the tablecloth on a table, and when I looked up I saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows and the walls, and finally all over the room, my body and the universe. I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate,” This is how Kusama describes the genesis of a 1954 painting of a spotted flower. These dots, and her endless repetition of them onto surfaces are a symptom of her obsessional compulsive disorder, but they also provide a means for her to escape herself. In her words, they are “a way to infinity.” In the repetitious nature of of panting these multitudes of dots, she finds peace. For Kusama, the orbs have come to symbolise celestial bodies, and even the entire universe. Through the act of painting, she escapes herself.

 

Nowhere is this more apparent than in her ever popular installation, The Infinity Rooms. Having toured the world, these chambers, of apparently finite but seemingly infinite space, allow the viewer to position their heads in a small window, and gaze into a mirrored room full of hanging balls of light. Reflected in infinity, the viewer feels lost, peaceful, and atomised by the endless, dotted universe. Before them lies an infinite star field. Here Kusama allows her viewers peace, solitude, and an understanding of herself.

 

Kusama’s influence can be felt across the art world, inspiring avant-garde contemporaries such as Warhol, with whom the shared practice of prolific production invites tempting but ultimately fruitless comparison. But whilst Warhol sought to question the market definitions of art, to Kusama its purpose and value is self evident. It’s a necessity. And whilst Warhol kept his critical ambitious ambiguous and playful, Kusama was openly political. She once invited Richard Nixon for a session of vigorous love making if he would only declare an end to the Vietnam War, and participated in in a homosexual wedding all the way back in the 70s.

 

But what of the individual herself, attempting to lose herself in a crowd of spots? She is rarely photographed away from her art, or out of clothes that don’t camouflage her into the work she is exhibiting. So whilst she’s not quite yet become one with infinity, she’s still making her way there, one meticulously painted white dot after the other.

ISIS, iconoclasm and art — for peace’s sake

Katherine Hinzman
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ISIS, iconoclasm and art — for peace’s sake

In recent years, ISIS’ destruction of ancient monuments and artefacts in the Middle East has horrified the world; symbolic, performative acts recorded and replayed across headlines are the propagandistic art of their violent politics. This past spring, ISIS stormed the Iraqi city of Mosul, and with it, one of the most ancient homes of Christianity – the Nineveh Plains. Thousands of Christians were forced to flee, leaving behind them the homes and culture that had resisted thousands of years of persecution. Taking what little they could, the Christians abandoned the rest to ISIS. As if it was not enough to be driven from home, work and community, the ISIS soldiers made ruins of their spiritual monuments and artifacts – structures and objects revered as the emblems of God, the “artworks” studied from our air-conditioned lecture halls, in glowing PowerPoints and glossy books. Every dome obliterated, every manuscript burned is a potent message broadcast worldwide. Like the Nazis of all-too recent memory, ISIS destroys the physical materialisations – the cultural expressions – of its political enemies. ISIS’s attacks make clear the political and cultural importance of the art and the symbolic – a fact that becomes all too obvious when we see these symbols being destroyed in front of us.

Broadly speaking, ‘Art’, in peace and in war, has ever been and will continue to be an es- sential mode of symbolic communication for humanity. In general discussion, many disregard the true importance of art, especially when actual lives are threatened and being taken. In the world of academia, we often get caught up attempting to answer questions about what art is and what its use and purposes are. Plato, Tolstoy, Kant, Baudelaire and Greenberg argue over the centuries-long dilemma; they dip into theology here, politics there, toeing the edge of the enormous abyss of ideas about our own existence, divine and earthly.

Despite the confounding complexities of the idea, it is this relationship to the concept of art, so woven up with our sense, or questions about, ourselves that makes art itself so important and consequently, the acts of ISIS powerfully disturbing. Surely the history of monumental art and architecture is marked by the wealthy and powerful themselves; people who manipulated lower strata of society to generate messages of their own. The bricks of our pyramids and cathedrals, castles and capitals may have been laid by slaves, gilded portraits funded by feudal underclasses, but we cannot deny them their eternal resonance; their language, unwritten, speaks to our personal experience. The genesis of art, whether for honestly or politically pious reasons, oftentimes lies in humanity’s need to express and understand divinity, spirituality, morality. As if in prayerful meditation, medieval monks in isolated scriptoriums devoted their lives to the creation of glistening illuminated manuscripts, which in themselves were supposed to inspire the same effect in future readers. Ancient calligraphic Chinese landscape paintings can highlight the smallness of man, dwarfed amidst the powerful and moving spirits of nature. In an age of industrial boom, decadent wealth and Dickensian poverty, Victorians A.W. Pugin and John Ruskin summon the spectre of an art beautiful in her goodness to restore a perceived loss of morality.

Certain experiences with ‘Art’ stand in relief in my own mind. How, in my first Evensong at Christ Church, I was inexplicably moved beyond myself beneath the vaulted domes of stone. Impossibly light as air, they trembled with angelic stained-glass rainbows and angelic voices. Suddenly I was unaware of physical nuances and felt external to the strict confines and categories of time and place, religious creed and social circumstance. At that moment a single person can be united with a long history of the human multitude and its collective feeling; the undefinable, invisible ‘heart’ that pulses curious emotions through each and every one of us. Wander through a museum for a while; admire the faces of pale Renaissance Madonnas; lose yourself in Turner’s tumultuous oceans of light; contemplate graceful Japanese ceramics; long to reach out touch the marble muscles of ancient Hercules. Indeed, these pieces were created in vastly different times by different people in a wide range of circumstances. But what is it that draws us to them, makes us long for that “divine” experience felt at Evensong? What makes a Christian priest in Iraq weep as he laments manuscripts, early religious foundational documents, dismembered by men masked in black? What makes us weep with him?

This is the unexplainable phenomenon Im- manuel Kant grapples with as he attempts to determine our judgements of the beautiful; we appreciate his struggle because we too are unable to verbally wrap our minds around these mysterious emotions stimulated by certain places and objects of art. Particularly in our age, art (perhaps in this instance, ‘visual culture’ would be the more appropriate term) can be a privilege of peace, an icon of our individual, spiritual freedoms. In its physicality, it represents what is beyond ourselves, our religious, political and personal liberties. Nevertheless, ISIS understands its power, however mysterious. Art has a place in war. Similarly, art must become our tool, our continued advocate for peace. Where they destroy, others must rebuild. We must become the ‘Iconophiles’ of our day, standing against iconoclasts who attack the buildings that literally structure our valued ideas of ‘self-hood’.

In making many of these statements, I recognise that I am of course making vast generalisations. However, I believe that in our drive toward (quite necessary) specificity in scholarship, we occasionally forget the truths underlying our generalisations: the realisation that art, to this day, still works on us in a level above the simply historical or theoretical.

So if we have, through time looked at and categorized art according to its many roles – art for a king’s sake, for religion’s sake, for beauty’s sake, for its own sake – it is important to here realize and appreciate both our individual personal and broad universal claims in an art for peace’s sake

OUCC climbs towards BUCS success

Angus Fisk
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OUCC climbs towards BUCS success

Cycling and Oxford are synonymous. Dodging bikes on Broad Street or racing to a tutorial five minutes late down the High Street are all parts of the university experience. It is no surprise, therefore, that the Oxford University Cycling Club has a proud and successful tradition of racing.

Last week saw the University Cycling Club loading up a couple of cars and heading up to the Peak District for the first BUCS cycling event of the year, the BUCS Hill Climb Championships. This particularly sadistic form of cycling involves finding a short, steep hill, and getting everyone to race up it; the fastest time wins, and there are unofficial bonus points for collapsing at the finish line.

Last year, Cambridge took out the competition decisively, winning both men’s and women’s individual and team categories. This year however, the Dark Blue squad came in with a new focus, and had some successes in the weeks prior with a string of podiums in some tough races from Isaac Mundy and Angus Fisk. The Hill Climb Championships were contested on Curbar Gap, a one-mile ascent averaging an 11 per cent gradient, a number that hides several cruelly steep pinches. The weather was less than ideal, with rain and leaves leaving the road slippery, but a tailwind at the finish provided a bit of extra speed. At the bottom of the hill, hundreds of nervous cyclists milled around, warming up or just trying to avoid the rain. The women headed off first, and the Oxford team of Tamara Davenne and Olivia Withers put in some great performances. Tamara just missed out on the podium, coming in at fourth place with a time of 07:12, and combined it was enough to give Oxford the bronze in the team competition. Hayley Simmonds from Cambridge came back from the recent World Championships in the USA to win the women’s category in a time of 06:18, a new BUCS record, and home team Sheffield took the women’s team prize.

After standing by the side of the road and cheering for the women, it was the turn of the men. Tom Bolton, Daniel Alanine, Angus Fisk, and Isaac Mundy made up the men’s team. All had put in strong performances at the Club Hill Climb the week before, so were hoping for good things today.

Whispers of some very fast times being set on the day set the nerves off and raised the bar early on. Though it looked threatening, rain held off for the rest of the day, giving everyone else a dry run. Everyone pulled out some fantastic performances, helped along thoroughly by the tailwind and the crowds near the top, who were getting progressively rowdier as the afternoon wore on. Tom Bolton rode strongly to improve on his time from last year; Daniel Alanine snuck into the top 20 with a gutsy ride, and Isaac Mundy dug into new levels of suffering to secure fifth place in a time of 05:23. Another local rider, Kieran Savage of Sheffield, took the men’s prize in a time of 05:17, another BUCS course record and a stunning effort. Sheffield showed its strength by winning the men’s team event too, but the Oxford men snuck in to take out the silver position, a massive improvement on their 15th position last year.

It was very well-run event, with live electronic timing visible online adding some excitement for everyone. Congratulations to everyone who rode, the limited numbers this year doing nothing to reduce the atmosphere at the race. The cycling club has started off well this year, and heads into the winter mountain bike season with extra motivation. Hopefully this is the start of a great year for OUCC. 

Lewis amongst the best

Jamie Chapman
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Lewis amongst the best

Lewis Hamilton may divide opinion, but there can be no doubt that he is one of the Formula One greats after his third World Championship. Some might point to the dominance of the Mercedes package the last two years, but his car has been no more dominant than Vettel’s Red Bull, Schumacher’s Ferrari or even Ayrton Senna’s McLaren and Williams. The only thing missing from his CV, perhaps, is that he has not had a teammate who has been his equal, winning the first of his championships with Heikki Kovalainen, the McLaren number two, and his last two championships with Nico Rosberg in his mirrors.

Last season appeared closer than it was owing to the large share of Mercedes bad luck going Hamilton’s way, but this year a relentless Hamilton has made it look easy, and the pressure has been reversed. The Hamilton of last year would have released his anger after the Mercedes pit-stop strategy failure in Monaco; this year, he contained his emotions, saying only that he “will come back and try to be a bit stronger”. And that has been the theme of the year. The struggles of last year appear to have brought out the very best in Hamilton, so that virtually from race one in Melbourne, there has been no doubt about where the championship has been heading, even as early media coverage hoped to make the most of the Mercedes rivalry. Rosberg’s refusal to congratulate Hamilton on the Austin podium won’t have off ended him; if anything, it just underlines the extent to which Hamilton has beaten Rosberg both on and off the track.

To his detriment, at times Hamilton wears his heart on his sleeve. In always telling it how it is, he gives us an insight into the emotions of a Formula 1 race driver. This makes him easy to relate to at times, but also incredibly frustrating. It’s also refreshing to see genuine emotion in a sport that often gets called boring because “it’s just about who has the quickest car”. In 2007, it was arguably the pressure of leading the world championship that caused his bid to crumble in the closing stages of the season. Over his five barren years at McLaren, the frustration often showed.

One wonders how he would have felt if he had stayed at McLaren and had to endure this year. Certainly there wouldn’t have been the humility and patience that Jenson Button has shown. Formula 1 never has been the most action-packed version of motorsport on track, but Hamilton has carved out a niche in being as much a celebrity personality as he is a racing driver.

Although it’s been a relatively comfortable third title for Hamilton, Vettel’s Ferrari has been closing the gap all season and Singapore showed that, on a circuit where power matters less, the chassis on both the Red Bull and Ferrari cars are more than a match for the Mercedes. It’s fair to say that Formula 1’s oldest and most successful constructor is due a world title – and who better to lead the charge than the other triple champion on the current grid? A dormant Fernando Alonso, considered by many to be the strongest driver, could also produce a challenge and he would only need half a chance to seize his third world championship. Hamilton may say that his aim has always been to match Senna’s three world titles, but I have no doubt that his eyes are already on Vettel’s four and perhaps even Schumacher’s seven.

Hamilton is no longer the boy who launched onto the scene in 2007 with bundles of talent but a hot head. He now knows what it takes to win a world championship and he will be straight out of the blocks in Melbourne next year. 

Oxford students ‘kettled’ at protest

Ellen Milligan
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Oxford students ‘kettled’ at protest

Two first-year undergraduates from Balliol college were allegedly kettled by police at the student march against the government’s cuts to grants on Wednesday. Around 50 to 70 students from Oxford went to the demonstration, with transport funded by Oxford University Student Union (OUSU).

Oxford students Beth Cadwalladr and Pria Bourne, both from Balliol, claim to have found themselves kettled on St James’ Street. This group was escorted by police to Charing Cross Station. As a result, Cadwalladr and Bourne missed the OUSU coach back to Oxford, but Cherwell understands that OUSU will reimburse them for the journey home.

‘Kettling’ is a controversial antiriot tactic which has been used in the past by the Metropolitan Police. It involves surrounding protesters and prevent them from leaving an area for an extended period of time.

Cadwalladr and Bourne were separated from the other protesters when the protest escalated after a stand-off outside the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), a particular object of the protesters’ anger.

This year, the department will spend £1.6bn on poorer students, but the Treasury has announced that this support will be cut, and replaced with loans.

The demonstration, which marched from Student Central through the centre of London, passing Trafalgar Square and the Houses of Parliament, consisted of thousands of students chanting, “What do we want? Free education”.

James Elliott, one of the lead stewards of the National Campaign against Fees and Cuts – the organisation which arranged the protest – and student at St Edmund Hall, told Cherwell, “I think the demonstration was a great success and showed once again that the government need to listen to students on tuition fees and living grants.

“Their cut to maintenance grants is going to leave the poorest students graduating with the most debt – in what sense is that making the system fairer? I hope to see much more of these demonstrations until the government backtracks.”

The protest remained peaceful until paint and coloured smoke bombs were thrown outside BIS. One eyewitness reported that the police’s robust response triggered the more frenetic episodes of the demonstration, which saw students running through the streets around Westminster, with police in pursuit. Outside BIS, where the demonstration was due to end, smoke bombs hid some of the action from view, as police ran towards the building in increased numbers.

At the scene, police liaison offi cers could be heard alleging that criminal damage had been done, though Cherwell’s reporter could see no evidence of this. An errant smoke bomb did strike a police offi cer, however, as did paint thrown by protesters.

In response to the escalation, police split the protest in two, preventing those protesting just outside BIS from joining other protesters attempting to continue down Victoria Street. Some grew angry at this point, believing they were being kettled.

On this occasion, protesters were free to leave the area the way they had come, but many were keen to join the other group further down Victoria Street, and broke through the line of police in order to try and reconnect.

The pace of the demonstration then increased considerably, as students attempted to outrun attempts by police to cordon them off again. As some students ran, the protest dispersed, and some groups of protesters found themselves separated from the main body.

According to those attending, police asked protestors to get out of the road and onto the pavement and although most people did, there was not enough room and the police began pushing some of the protestors, one of whom was knocked unconscious after a police offi cer pushed her. Despite protesters shouting that they could not breathe, police allegedly told them there was nothing they could do and shortly after formed another kettle. 12 arrests were made, according to the Metropolitan Police.

Bourne told Cherwell, “The fi rst part of the protest was really fun, everyone was excited to go to stand up for such an important cause but I was disgusted by the police violence – it was so so bad! Despite this, it was defi nitely worth going; I am just hoping something will come of it. I am really glad I went, despite the police at the end, and I will still be going next year.”

Xavier Cohen, a third-year PPEist also at Balliol, who proposed the OUSU motion to fund transport for students attending the demonstration, commented, “I feel the demo was really important because cutting maintenance grants is a clear attack on the poorest – money people would have received for free will now become debt. The Tories have a clear aim to further marketise education and take the cap off tuition fees – it’s so important that we as students demonstrate that this is totally unacceptable and that we will fi ght these horrible policies at every step.”

Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA) President, Jan Nedvídek, told Cherwell, “We are fortunate enough to live in a country governed by laws, not violence. If you dislike a particular policy, fair enough: organise a debate, stand for Parliament, persuade people to vote for you and change that policy! Wearing balaclavas, destroying public property and shouting abusive things at people doesn’t get you very far in a civilised country. What I fi nd particularly disappointing is that the Shadow Chancellor encourages this sort of violent behaviour.”

Shortly before the march, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell delivered a speech.

McDonnell told protestors, “Your generation has been betrayed by this Government in increases to tuition fees, in scrapping the education maintenance allowance and cuts in education. Education is a gift from one generation to another, it is not a commodity to be bought and sold.” Green Party leader Natalie Bennett was also in attendance.

Despite the violence, Lucy Delaney, Vice President for Women at OUSU who helped to lead the Oxford trip, commented, “There was fantastic energy and it was really affi rming – as someone who works to represent and support students and their interests – to see people so fi ercely dedicated to getting their voices heard on crucial issues – the right to a free education, maintenance grants, decolonising education, ending racial profi ling, supporting those on low incomes, and supporting refugees and fi ghting against their incarceration and deportation.

“The police tactics, however, were despicable and needlessly violent. Many students, some of whom were attending their fi rst protest, were walled in and kettled with unnecessary force by lines of police – I narrowly avoided this myself. The police numbers were utterly superfl uous and clearly a scare tactic, and many of them were carrying guns. Several Oxford students were kettled, a few sustained injuries from police offi cers, and two freshers were walled in for hours. Luckily everyone made it home safe, and this display of police brutality, whilst frightening, has spurred many activists on to keep protesting and with renewed vigour.”

Kettling has been criticized in the past for its indiscriminate nature, detaining peaceful protesters along with violent ones. Critics also claim that kettling is occasionally used to deliberately encourage disorder, so as to shift the focus of public debate.

Cherwell understands that representatives of legal fi rm Green and Black Cross were giving out their contact details to protestors. The Metropolitan Police confi rmed 12 arrests were made but would not off er Cherwell further comment.

OUAC Freshers face Varsity

Ciara Downey
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OUAC Freshers face Varsity

For most Varsity sports at Oxford, the Varsity match is at least eight weeks into term, if not more, giving old and new members of the clubs the chance to prepare to face their long-standing rivals. For members of Oxford University’s Athletics Club, the year always begins with high-level competition: the Freshers’ Varsity match. Seemingly subscribing to the ‘trial by combat’ philosophy, the newest additions to the OUAC will have their merit tested in a match against Cambridge. The competition is considered by many members of the club to be the early highlight of the season.

As fun as competitions always are, especially going into the dead season of winter training as a precursor to indoor track, the Fresher’s Varsity match carries a little more weight than just any early-season track meet. Although the competition itself strives to maintain a friendly and relaxed atmosphere, it also provides the club with the opportunity to see who out of its new recruits is likely to become a strong competitor during the indoor and spring seasons.

Last year, two of the OUAC’s most influential athletes, including the team captain, graduated and left the roster with two very significant places to fill. Sam Trigg, 2014 captain, broke a field event record that had stood for 27 years, while Adam McBraida earned a record four straight victories in the hurdles at the Varsity match. Captaincy changeovers, especially after the loss of such significant contributors to the team, always leave an imbalance in the roster in their wake, and the same is true for graduating seniors who leave behind new records.

Although obviously none of the freshers are expected to put on those kind of showstopping performances during their first year as club competitors, being thrown into competition early does give the captain and president a solid picture of for what the additions might be able to do. In addition, it gives them the opportunity to place talented junior members in events that they might not necessarily have run in school competitions or focused on in practice. For example, one of 2014’s junior international members, Louis Rawlings, earned a dramatic victory in the 800 metres at the Fresher’s Varsity match. However, it was his victory straight out of left field in the 400 metres over Cambridge’s very over-hyped 400 star that really cemented his status shift from a Varsity team prospect to a Varsity team member. Therefore, the Fresher’s Varsity match allows for a fair, unbiased, competition- based trial system to see who might be the next 27-year record holder.

But the Fresher’s Varsity match doesn’t just provide early-season competition for the team members; it’s also one of the earliest competitions to attend for all members of the University. It’s a chance for all first years to see their friends compete in a high-energy, rivalry-fuelled match, and promises to be an exciting, goal-driven competition for spectators and athletes alike. 

Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford: Live Blog

Cherwell News Team
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Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford: Live Blog

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12.33 After some technical difficulties, we’re back online! Organisers are reading out a statement of solidapurity from RMF in South Africa.

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11.59 University security car arriving shortly before the protest.

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11.53 We’re just heading over to Oriel Square now to follow the protest. After a statue of infamous colonialist Cecil Rhodes was removed from the university of Cape Town earlier this year, the Rhodes Must Fall campaign has reached Oxford, and nearly 2,000 people have signed a petition demanding that Oriel take down what they perceive to be a glorification of an architect of apartheid.

Our crisis of home ownership

Freddie Hopkinson
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Our crisis of home ownership

According to an April 2015 report of the Office for National Statistics, the average UK house price last year was £267, 000 – the average salary was around £26, 500. The pursuit of ‘affordable housing’ has become a political football because an uncontrolled housing market is denying our generation the chance to become homeowners. Here in Oxford the problem is even worse, when last year Lloyds bank found the average cost of a house in the city to be £341,000.  We need to be aware that this is an issue on our very doorstep, in what has been described as the UK’s most expensive city. The asking price of homes has risen on average 28.3 per cent since the beginning of 2008 and it is us, the property-less, that have lost out.

Central to the Tories’ May electoral victory was the belief that a Conservative government could ease the affordable housing crisis and, this week, discussion of a Housing and Planning Bill has been its first step to achieving this aim. In an echo of Thatcherite policy, the Tories see the sale of housing association property at a discounted rate as a mechanism for transferring state resources into private capital- the status of home ownership into the hands of the individual. The government further plans to use the cash raised from these sales to extend programmes for the creation of 200, 000 supposedly affordable ‘starter homes.’

One of the major problems with the act is that in the short term it threatens to leave the most vulnerable exposed more than ever to the threat of homelessness. Since the 1980s a transition from the rhetoric of ‘social housing’ to the ‘affordable homes’ we are now promised has masked a transition in the state’s role in safeguarding the property interests of the least well-off. The move from state owned ‘social housing’ to a mixed patchwork of state subsidised and controlled ‘affordable housing’ masks a dramatic decrease in available support for council tenants. Whereas before, discounts of around 50 per cent on rates were not uncommon, moves towards the sale or rent of affordable housing at a discount of 20 per cent have significantly undermined the neediest. If the government seriously considers ‘starter homes’ in London at a price of £450,000 affordable, how will it relieve the housing problems of many low-waged Britons?

The issue of where these new affordable home will be built raises more problems with the act. The Treasury’s July publication, Fixing the Foundation: creating a more prosperous nation, stressed the role of eased planning laws for the construction of affordable houses on often post-industrial brownfield sites. The sale of social housing in central locations will push poorer tenants out of our city centres. From nurses to firemen, as we threaten to drive key low wage workers out into affordable houses on the peripheral brownfield sites of our towns and cities, we threaten to dislocate vital public services. Indeed, a report published by the London Chamber of Commerce (LCC) last week mentioned explicitly that a lack of central affordable housing was threatening the city’s global economic competitiveness.

Most significantly, the proposed act goes little way to stemming the major structural issues with our property market. Only last week UBS published a report stating that London was the most overvalued property market in the world- government intervention in the release of more property onto the market is unlikely to stop this. In fact, the government’s previous Help to Buy scheme has been accused of only further fuelling the property bubble in London and the South. Rather than helping to make property more affordable, government plans to sell off existing stock without guarantee of more central affordable housing risk making the status of homeowner even less attainable.

The real victims of continued change in the property market are our communities. As much as the government may be helping those rich enough to afford participation in its schemes, lots of people our age are having to wake up to a new reality: a future without home ownership.

Whereas before housing associations helped to underpin property standards for society’s most vulnerable, the new age of ‘affordable housing’ looks to perpetuate the breakdown of socially mixed communities. At present, the property market shows no signs that it will accommodate the government’s model of change for the housing market. In cities like Oxford in particular it is becoming harder and harder for us students to imagine owning our own properties.  Within our communities, the day of the truly ‘affordable’ home seems to have passed.

Debate: Should we remember the fifth of November?

Neha Shah
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0
Debate: Should we remember the fifth of November?

YES

Neha Shah

Thursday evening saw us celebrate Bonfire Night and remember the actions of Guy Fawkes, the despondent war veteran, angry about the promises the government had broken. Fawkes, along with a number of other men, was ready to take extreme action by blowing up 36 barrels of gunpowder underneath the Houses of Parliament.

The plan failed, however, and the veteran was seized and dragged before the king. He was tortured in order to produce confessions, and after a show trial, was taken to the yard outside Parliament where the politicians could all watch as the protagonists were hanged by the neck, cut down while still alive, castrated, disembowelled, and cut into pieces.

Despite injuries so bad that he could barely sign his own confession, Guy Fawkes was brave enough to jump from the scaffold before the executioner could stop him, breaking his own neck and saving himself the additional agony that the State wanted to visit upon him.

Imagine that a despondent war veteran was found today, with a bomb, underneath the Houses of Parliament. Many might identify with that veteran’s concerns. He might be frustrated that taxpayers have to pay for MPs on an annual salary of £74,000 to have an additional home, and that these MPs are receiving a ten per cent pay rise from a salary committee that they themselves set up. He might be angry that all of this happens while the government tell the terminally ill to get up and work, cut junior doctors’ basic pay and take away independent living allowances from the most vulnerable in society.

Given that we may well identify with the concerns of such an individual, why do we still celebrate the capture, torture and death of Guy Fawkes, instead of remembering his heroism, his strong anti-establishment stance and his refusal to accept the status-quo? After all, imagine what we’d do to that modern-day veteran if he was caught red-handed with his bomb under Parliament, and how it would compare to what we would do if he turned out to be a Muslim.

It is for all of these reasons, and so many more, that in today’s political climate, celebrating Guy Fawkes is arguably more relevant than ever. Although the Fifth of November was instituted as a holiday to commemorate the failure of the Gunpowder Plot and an opportunity to stir up anti-Catholic prejudices, contemporary celebrations have focused on his recast role an anti-authoritarian hero.

At the start of the twentieth century, he was the protagonist of children’s stories; by the end, he was the face of Alan Moore’s protagonist in V for Vendetta. His face has entered the popular consciousness as a prompt for questions about civil liberties and the relationship between citizen and state. Upon the release of the V for Vendetta film in 2006, David Lloyd, the artist who worked with Moore on the film, said that Fawkes “has now Moore on the film, said that Fawkes “has now become a common brand and a convenient become a common brand and a convenient placard to use in protest against tyranny.”

Two years later, in January 2008, hacktivist group Anonymous launched “Project Chanology” – a coordinated attack on the Church of Scientology’s website which they deemed to be censoring information. Rule 17 of Anonymous’s code of conduct, circulated to protesters before its “first real life public demonstration” states: “Cover your face. This will prevent your identification from videos taken by hostiles.” The Guy Fawkes mask, and its status as an icon for the law being taken into the hands of the people, provided just the consciousness” cover that Anonymous needed. Since then, the image of Guy Fawkes has been adopted by the Occupy movement, and Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has also donned a Fawkes mask. It has become a regular feature of many protests. The unbreakable spirit of Fawkes, in many regards, lives on. Surely that is worth celebrating.

But the occasion is also worth celebrating for those who do not view him as an anti-authoritarian hero, but instead as a Catholic for those who do not view him as an anti- authoritarian hero, but instead as a Catholic terrorist. Not, of course, in order to toast the death of Catholics, or even to view the burning an effigy of Guy Fawkes in good taste, but in far broader terms; it averted a national disaster.

For if the plot had succeeded in destroying Parliament, and slaughtering the entire English ruling class, the consequences for the British Isles would have been devastating, most particularly (ironically enough) for English Catholics themselves. There would probably have been civil war across England, with the Catholic minority being targeted more harshly than ever, perhaps even being exterminated as a reprisal for regicide. Even retaining the importance of the religious identity of the Guy Fawkes story, we can see an ongoing relevance, because the failure of the Catholic Church to re-establish itself in Great Britain was a small but crucial step to ending the Papacy’s status as a world power.

For me, Bonfire Night is certainly still relevant, not just in remembering the date, but what it stands for; the importance of our political processes, and the prevention of people from hijacking them through public apathy. Whilst on the rack, Fawkes famously said “a desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy,” and it is worth channeling some of this sentiment when thinking about contemporary political reform.

 

NO

We don’t really remember the fifth of November, do we? When the Comment Editors approached me with this question, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard it labelled ‘Guy Fawkes Night’ since I left primary school. Nowadays, it’s always ‘Bonfire Night.’ It’s the time of year when British people gather round at the back of a neighbour’s house and argue about how to light small missiles before setting fire to their garden shed. At least that’s how it was when I was younger. Even then, it was always ‘Bonfire Night,’ and often you don’t even see bonfires anymore.

For most, it used to be an occasion where we would celebrate some foiled plot to blow up Parliament, four hundred years ago. Where five-year-olds would wander the streets and knock on strangers’ doors asking for pennies in return for burning the effigy of a Catholic terrorist on a fire. Nowadays if a five-year-old wants to pretend to kill a terrorist without parental supervision, they’ve got Call of Duty; and Call of Duty won’t involve burning down half the neighbourhood with it. We have moved on from a society that celebrates mindless violence in the streets.

Instead, what’s left of ‘Guy Fawkes Night’ is bigger, and more soulless events, normally with an even larger and more soul-destroying cost. Groups of people gather at the local rugby or football club for ‘Fireworks Night’ where local ‘celebrities’ make guest appearances and local parents wish a rocket would strike them instead. There’s no link to the past anymore. As part of our growing process of disenchantment with the past the event means less and less. The displays are much more events to celebrate the lives of communities, than the history of the Gunpowder Plot. It seems Guy Fawkes has fallen out of vogue, and there doesn’t seem to be much reason to resuscitate him. It’s as if we have got to keep the festival, but not the troubling connotations that go along with it.

For starters, there are numerous other events that are hugely more important than an arguably minor plot that failed. Instead of a failure that helped provide a rallying point for anti-Catholic fervour for much of the centuries that followed, why don’t we have a national holiday like the Americans? They fire the defence budget of a small European country in the air on the 4th of July to celebrate their independence, their foundation of a nation against tyranny.

If you were to ask Britons the significance of 1st May, the Act of Union, or 15th June, the signing of Magna Carta, they’d most likely have no idea, and these dates are far more significant.

Compared to the national holidays of other countries, there is no positive message that comes from the Gunpowder Plot. The story of Guy Fawkes tells us about religious violence, our suspicion of foreigners, and outdated models of government; in short, nothing that you would want your children to aspire to.

If we really remembered what we celebrate on the fifth of November, it’d be the torture and execution of a rag-tag mob of failures. I’m not going to argue that celebrating torture and execution of traitors is wrong; many others will argue that. The Gunpowder Plot has just become rather insignificant. In the wider course of British history, Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators made no difference. Their attempts to overturn the Protestant establishment failed and, if anything, they made life even worse for Catholics. We shouldn’t remember the plot because, essentially, it characterised a period of religious bigotry and intolerance that we want to forget. We have moved on from persecuting Catholics – maybe we should move on from celebrating 5th November on these terms too. After all, fears of popery and wooden shoes are very 1688, and given the widespread distrust in Parliament, it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a handful of strange people wishing the plot succeeded.

The Plot is not particularly relevant to the modern nation we live in. In an age of iPhones and the internet, the slow pace of the narrative about Guy Fawkes struggles to hold our attention. Against the threat of modern terrorism, we are desensitised to quaint tales of seventeenth-century conspiracy. The fact it has become ‘Fireworks Night’ is perhaps a testimony to that. Terrorists are such a pervasive threat nowadays, not just to our institutions, or our politicians, but to our citizens as well. However much information Theresa May might want to store about your internet habits, she’s not threatening to exhume your corpse and posthumously decapitate it for ‘liking’ Pope Francis on Facebook. We are in some ways more civilised these days. Burning a dummy ISIS leader once a year isn’t going to have much effect beyond the nation’s jingoists. We just can’t really identify with the same world view as seventeenth-century Englanders.

I really don’t want to be a killjoy, and I enjoy traditions like Guy Fawkes Night, for all their ills. But, it’s just not relevant anymore, and you can’t force it to be so. It has already morphed into something different as ‘Bonfire,’ or the somewhat anaemically titled, ‘Fireworks Night.’ Thrown into competition with Halloween, it just becomes another consumerist celebration.

Perhaps in this, it has found its niche and will continue to be an event, albeit one separated from its original meaning. Whether we should or shouldn’t, I think we will remember Guy Fawkes in the back of our minds even if his links to ‘Fireworks Night’ all but disappear completely. Nowadays, we celebrate the fifth of November more as an excuse to make loud noises, rather than to celebrate quashing treasonous papists.

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