Two cars were ruined outside the Iffley Athletics track this afternoon around 2.45pm. Oxfordshire Fire Service said this evening the cause was unknown, but arson has been ruled out.
Traffic and pedestrians were held back by the police as thick smoke from burning tyres filled the air. A fire crew wearing breathing equipment quickly extinguished both vehicles, and the road reopened shortly afterwards.
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Models Louis Trup & Leah Hendre
Photographer Henry Sherman
Louis wears pink shirt and chinos by Runa.
Leah wears white shirt, red skirt and blue skirt by Runa.
Runa is a transparent, fairtrade fashion brand targeted at young professionals. Founded by students at Somerville College, Runa is a brand that aims to unite Western consumers with Colombian textile workers in a more meaningful relationship. For more information, visit http://humanistic-capital.com
BOOK – Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
Anything by Adiche is worth a read, but this has always stuck with me. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to crying at a book (sorry kids, Dumbledore’s exit didn’t do it for me). Set during the Nigerian-Biafran war, it follows the fallout for four characters from different sides of society. It’s so vividly written and doesn’t shy away from the characters’ mixed loyalties and the difficult moral positions war places them in.
FILM – ‘Navega’ by Mayra Andrade
At the moment my musical obsession is Mayra Andrade. She sings beautiful,
lively Cape-Verdean infl uenced music. I stumbled across her by accident and knew nothing about the style, but it’s enchanting. Her 2006 album ‘Navega’ and the song of the same name are still my favourites – it starts almost like a lullaby and gradually layers rhythms and instruments until it’s a dynamic, energetic bundle of life and dancing.
ART – Roby Ryan and Dana Tanamachi
I do web and graphic design in my spare time, so I follow graphic design more than ï¬ne art. Rob Ryan does incredible paper cut designs and screen prints which have this wonderfully whimsical feel. He’s now had his work featured on products for John Lewis, but his original papercutting work is still my favourite. Another graphic designer working in an unusual medium is Dana Tanamachi,
who works in chalk, doing hand-lettering and typography.
FILM – Public Speaking by Michael Scorsese
I recently watched this slightly mad feature-length Scorsese documentary on Fran Lebowitz. She’s got a wickedly dark sense of humour at times, but also a cutting clarity in observing the odd customs of society. It’s predominantly
conversation-based, mixed with footage of Lebowitz talking over the years. It will leave you wishing everything that tumbled out of your mouth came across that sharp-witted.
When news filtered through from the authorities at the Oriental Institute that the destination of our year abroad had been changed from Lebanon to Jordan, we felt a peculiar sense of relief and disappointment. Such was – and to a large extent, is – the situation in Lebanon, and in particular Egypt, that we welcomed the last-minute change to proceedings. However, those dangerous preconceptions one often has of a foreign country took hold as friends and relatives who had visited Jordan wavered somewhere between impressed and underwhelmed. “It’s a dump!” one told me. “Jordan is so boring!” claimed another. As we near the end of our first month in Amman, I can only disagree.
Managing expectations was always going to be difficult with our minds dead-set on what Cairo and Beirut had to offer and no one here will deny that, but after the Eid break and several weeks of adjusting to life in Jordan, we have all been pleasantly surprised. Amman, Jordan’s capital, is home to the ancient ruins of the Roman citadel and a wonderfully preserved amphitheatre, while shisha bars and cafes provide the city with its own Middle Eastern authenticity. However, the country’s real attractions lie elsewhere. We are fortunate that the ancient city of Petra, the highly recommended Wadi Rum, and the port city of Aqaba lie in store for us.
We have, though, already visited the viscous waters of the Dead Sea where people can be seen rather peculiarly bobbing like corks and covering themselves from head to toe in mud. Similarly remarkable was the image of the West Bank, staring at us from just a few miles away on the other side. We followed our Dead Sea outing with a trip to Madaba, often referred to as the ‘City of Mosaics’. Its impressive archaeological park and Church of St. George are perhaps the best examples of the city’s affiliation with mosaics, particularly the latter which contains the 6th century Madaba Map, the oldest surviving map of Palestine which is said to have been 25 metres long in its original form.
While we have been reassured by the abundance of attractions outside Amman and the countless bars and cafes within, Jordan’s true wonder can be found in its peace and neutrality. With neighbours like Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the country’s stability is quite remarkable. Comparisons are often crude and born out of ignorance, but one can see why Jordan is sometimes dubbed the ‘Switzerland of the Middle East’. Refugees, both rich and poor, flock here in their desperate attempt to escape the war and poverty engulfing their homeland, namely Syrians and Palestinians. A staggering 1/3 of Amman’s population is from Palestine, an estimate manifested in the prevalence of Palestinian taxi drivers in the capital city.
After years of widespread instability during the Arab Spring, Jordan has maintained its monarchy and has a parliament widely considered to be under the firm control of King Abdullah II, who in fact graduated from Pembroke College. In recent years, the country’s most significant outcry was caused by a rise in the price of oil from 6 Jordanian Dinars to 10 JDs per canister, which speaks volumes about Jordan as a whole. It is little surprise that Jordanians are sensitive to the prices of water and oil as they produce very little of their own, relying on imports from neighbouring countries, but there is a link between the country’s meagre resources and its longstanding harmony. Peace in Jordan cannot be explained in simple terms, but a combination of the healthy relationship between the people and the monarchy and the country’s lack of valuable resources are undeniably significant.
With no prospect of any imminent national security threats and a people full of love, warmth and friendliness, who could possibly complain? While accounts of rape and assault continue to emerge from Egypt and women in Saudi Arabia are castigated by the authorities for holding a national driving day to combat the laws banning them from driving a car, Jordanian women are encouraged by the monarchy to be educated and seek careers for themselves. It’s a shame that a country with press freedoms and a sense of gender equality cannot shed some light on its troubled neighbours.
Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford, has said in an article for the New Statesman that young people, in Britain are being “taken for a ride.”
In a comment to Cherwell, he stated that this discrimination extended to young people across the country, including students at Oxford.
In his New Statesman article, he said, “The young are discriminated against in ways in which it would be illegal to differentiate between men and women, or between more and less disabled people, or on the basis of race or religion.”
Although he emphasises that it is the poorest who suffer the most, he discusses in his article the issues that extend to students and graduates at top universities.
He writes, “What of the most successful of university graduates, the ones who go on to get a starter job in the City, and look to buy that tiny flat close to work? What will happen when they take out their 95 per cent mortgage and start repaying one twenty-fifth of the borrowed capital out of what they take home after tax? For a few years they might be able to do it, just – until interest rates rise.”
Furthermore, in a statement to Cherwell, Professor Dorling added that he believed that this concern also applies to students at Oxford: “I think it includes students at Oxford in that they are partly the target for the ‘help to buy’ scheme. A student who graduated from Oxford this summer might now be in a good job in London. The government’s scheme means that banks are being encouraged to lend them up to £600,000 to buy a flat on a 95% mortgage. These are loans that will be made to a few graduates starting on very good salaries that under normal circumstances the banks would consider too risky to make.
“The initial beneficiaries will be those who sell these flats to people like recent Oxbridge graduates. What then happens in a few years’ time when interest rates rise?”
He added, “Many people find it very hard to have any sympathy for young people who now have some of the best chances in life. Of course, if house prices rise and rise these graduates will think they have done well, but if there is a house price crash in London after the next election when the help to buy funding ends…. Who loses out most?”
James Blythe, Brasenose JCR President, said, “Anyone who is passionate about making sure an Oxford education is open to all bright young people, regardless of means, should also be worried about the cost of living. For many Oxford students, especially those who just miss out on the University’s generous bursary package, high accommodation prices can have a major impact on their quality of life and be a source of massive stress. Moreover, the high cost of living in Oxford risks putting many prospective students off applying to Oxford in the first place. The student union must continue to campaign vigorously for affordable accommodation for students in Oxford.”
Nathan Akehurst, a third year at Lincoln, commented, “One cannot regard Oxford students in aggregate – certainly many people here (and the vast majority in term time) lead lives that cannot be compared to the hundreds of thousands reliant on food banks and hit hardest by austerity.
“However, as an Oxford student coming from a single-parent unemployed family with our household income decimated by the bedroom tax and reliant on casual work to survive in the vacations, I certainly do feel that less well-off young people are affected by the issues Dorling raises regardless of which university they attend.”
One second year student at New College said, “I think that as he specifically states that the people worst affected are ‘the very poorest of the young’, it is probably not true that Oxford students are equally affected on average.
“Personally, I don’t feel especially discriminated against: as a young person you have to work your way to the top. He writes about rent and house prices being high: although this might affect young people, it is not necessarily a deliberate attempt to discriminate.”
She added, “Applying the term ‘discrimination’ to something like this seems a bit paradoxical, as most ‘discriminations’ are permanent, e.g. race or gender: everybody grows up at some point. As today’s children are tomorrow’s adults, and he makes out that all of us are suffering the same fate, ultimately it shouldn’t make any difference in the long run. But personally I think that the word discrimination is probably too strong.”
★★★★☆
Four Stars
Matangi is an important album for M.I.A; it’s her first major release since 2010’s disappointing Maya and the damning critique published by the NY Times in the same year. The article called Maya out on the opinions stated in through her lyrics and public appearances; she was accused of trivialising a complex political situation in Sri Lanka, of naïvety and hypocrisy in global issues, and of encouraging violence. All this has more than an element of truth, and I certainly wouldn’t advise anyone to look for political inspiration in Maya’s songs. But when listening to M.I.A, the words are somewhat secondary. Aesthetics plays a huge role in her life, and her ability to conjure images through music rather than words is stunning. Since her first projects in 2004, Maya’s style has been defined by its musical multiculturalism, clashing Western electro with Asian melodies and African rhythms. The mix is exotic and heady; aural pictures of lush tropics juxtaposed with growing industrialisation and political unrest abound. At its best, listening to M.I.A is like a rush of adrenaline, focusing your attention and forcing you to inhabit the world that she sings about.
The quality of her previous work, combined with Interscope’s endless delays to release has built a lot of anticipation for this album. Opening with the lumbering synths of ‘Karmageddon’, first impressions are that Maya may be back on form. However, title track ‘Matangi’ doesn’t hit as hard as you’d like it to, and we have to wait until the fifth song ‘Come Walk With Me’ to get something really worthwhile. Despite this, the whole of the middle of the album is excellent, with songs like the infamous ‘Bad Girls’, Weeknd-featuring ‘Exodus’, and ‘aTENTion’, which may be one of the best songs M.I.A has done since her early years. Unfortunately, the back end of the album drags on and feels somewhat lacklustre, but the rhythmic assault of ‘Bring the Noize’ brings an invigorating break.
Matangi is a worthy effort, and while it might not reach the disorientating ecstasy of 2007’s Kala, it is easily one of the most sonically interesting albums of the last 5 years and definitely worth your time.
Two former Oxford students have designed ‘The World’s First Smart Bike Lock’. The lock, named the LOCK8, can be operated remotely using a phone or key fob, should the user’s phone run out of battery, and contains a GPS tracker and sensors to prevent bike-theft.
Developed by Wadham graduate, Daniel Zajarias-Fainsod and Franz Salzmann of LMH, the lock is in response to both students’ experiences as victims of bike-theft.
The LOCK8 is a keyless lock which can be operated through the free LOCK8 app, whilst its multiple deterrent features ensure the security of the device.
The six sensors in the lock can detect motion, vibration, any attempts to cut the lock, and changes in temperature, whilst the 120 decibel alarm aims to ward off any persistent would-be thieves.
The creators write, “LOCK8 cables will be wired and if cut, trigger the alarm. We will produce multiple cable sizes, lengths and strengths. If you want to lock various bikes with one LOCK8 wired cable, this won’t be a problem. Remember: You can also use LOCK8 without the wired cable. Just activate the alarm by walking away.”
Push notifications mean that the owner will be informed instantaneously if someone attempts to steal the bike. The device is charged when the bike is moving using magnets in the provided wheel reflectors.
Daniel, biomedical-engineer and CTO of LOCK8, stated, “My bike got stolen from outside Wadham during matriculation – very inconvenient! Then in April, Franz, who was studying Russian and Eastern European studies at LMH, had his bike stolen. We were discussing the thefts when he said wouldn’t it be good to have tracking systems on bikes. I suggested combining the tracker with a lock. We started playing with the idea, eventually submitting a patent and finding investors.”
The LOCK8 also aims to make bike-loans simpler, enabling the owner to send the remote key to family members or to someone who may wish to rent the bike.
However, the product retails at around £99 and one student argued that his bike was not valuable enough to justify the extra expense. They commented, “I never lock my bike unless it is the nicest looking bike there — realistically who is going to steal it?”
Oone student from New College disagreed, commenting, “Personally I would be delighted at the prospect of a new smart lock — having to wrestle with my useless lock genuinely puts me off cycling short distances, and the embarrassment of looking like I am stealing my own bike is getting tiring.”
I never quite realised the irrelevance of my home country in world affairs until I told at least a dozen people how excited I was that Helen Clark was speaking at Merton College, and precisely none of them knew who she was. The closest anyone got was someone who asked if she was an Australian politician campaigning for gay rights, which considering she passed a Civil Union bill allowing legal recognition of same sex partnerships in 2004 isn’t that far off the mark. Apparently being Prime Minister of the international powerhouse of New Zealand for 9 years, however admirable, doesn’t quite make you a 21st Century Napoleon, Lenin or Churchill. She now heads the United Nations Development Program, making her the third most powerful person at the United Nations.
A strange misconception I find overseas is that New Zealand is a peaceful and harmonious society that is not plagued by many of the social ills suffered by other countries what many don’t know is that behind the veneer, New Zealand society has as many dark and ugly issues as any other nation, except that unlike in Britain, discussing major social or political issues is often seen as taboo. Most distressingly, this includes has one of the worst rates of domestic violence and child abuse in the developed world. As the first woman Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark has been critical in making women’s and children’s rights and welfare one of the most important aims of the UNDP, and she talked about her work in New Zealand when as PM, she led a campaign aiming at raising awareness of these issues in New Zealand society and leading a major culture change. In this she noticed that “a key way to change awareness was to involve men who had been previous perpetrators to stand up and admit they were wrong in an attempt to break the silence around domestic violence and stop the vicious cycle where abuse is passed from generation to generation.”
The keys with the developing world are causing a profound culture change in societies that often have deeply ingrained prejudices against the limitations of women; she notes that, rather than looked down on, “the power of women is often suppressed because it is feared as a key motor for social change” that risks upsetting traditional hierarchies of power.
Dispossessed youth, she notes, are one of the most dangerous elements in any society; whether it is Maori or Pacifica youth in New Zealand who feel profoundly alienated by a system they believe works against them who turn to gang violence or unemployed youth in Mali or Nigeria who turn to political extremism. “It is extremely important to involve community leaders at all levels, and make the political process of a country able to incorporate those who previously felt excluded.”
One of the most important and pressing countries in international affairs has been the international communities efforts to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, and I put the question to her of what the international community has done right, and what it has done wrong.
To this question she replies that the problem with Afghanistan is that, from the British Empire to the Soviet Invasion to the American occupation, it has constantly had foreign solutions to its unique problems imposed upon it at gunpoint. “What Afghanistan needs is solutions created by the Afghan people to its own challenges; we’ve seen those foreign solutions fail over and over again.” One of the major problems for international development she notes is the fragility of democratic institutions after a history of political and social instability. “Every country wants to have a Gorbachev enter, fundamentally change the system and then depart peacefully but very few actually get one; even the most well intentioned reformers end up having to be pried out of office with a very large crowbar.”
I finished by asking her what she felt was her proudest achievement, which turned out to be the important if colourless fact that “for 9 years, I presided over one of the lowest periods of unemployment in New Zealand’s history; people had jobs.” it’s far from a glamorous answer, but the most fondly remembered national leaders are often more important for what doesn’t happen in their countries than what does.
There is something eerie about meeting someone you spent your youth thinking was one of the most important people in the world. Christopher Hitchens has a thoughtful passage in his memoir where he remarks that one of the most enlightening parts of the Oxford experience is to meet such imposing figures face to face and realise how human they are after all. There is something strange about Helen Clark; she is incredibly lively and energetic, and beams with charisma; yet her answers are often rather wooden and rehearsed, as if she still retains the politicians innate distrust of the political interview; she once called a New Zealand journalist a “sanctimonious little creep” after what she considered a series of ambush interviews on a current affairs show. I ask her if she’s glad she left politics. ““Oh I’m still a politician; once you get into politics, you can never really leave”
Will Railton: Yes
First things first, I am not here to apologise for sexual violence and I will not defend allegations made against the university of cases in which victims have been made to feel like an inconvenience or wrong for seeking advice. However, I do think it is important to consider what the University is doing both to prevent incidents and to provide support for victims.
Cherwell’s investigation revealed that only 17% of the students questioned knew what support would be provided by the University. Yet, it is not that support is not offered. Rather, it is clearly not being effectively publicised. Probably because this advice is organised within colleges, through harassment advisors and peer support and some colleges will be more effective in advertising than others. The University does run a counselling service and OUSU also runs campaigns but college is likely to be the first port of call for many victims. This is very easy to remedy and would ensure that victims are aware of people they can talk to.
The unfortunate reality with sexual harassment and assault cases is that victims are reticent to inform any third party for fear of being labelled a “victim” in public. The University promotes various groups based in Oxford, which it does not run, providing a distance from their studies and college which some victims prefer. Rather than decry the promotion of these groups as outsourcing, it is important to understand that some will feel more comfortable speaking to an independent service detached from the university fabric.
There are promising schemes in operation which aim to prevent harassment by educating students on what consent actually entails. So many have made complaints about being groped in clubs that “acceptable behaviour” evidently needs clarification. Earlier this term, Wadham ran mandatory workshops for freshers, raising issues of rape, sexual assault and violence. Many of these sessions involved asking students to identify whether consent had been given in a number of university-based scenarios. A number of colleges have run such projects and are considering making them compulsory. Controversial though this is, it would certainly reach people who would never ordinarily attend; those unconcerned with the issue who are perhaps more likely to perpetrate the offences in question.
Prevention is better than cure here; 100% of cases are avoidable. While Oxford might be able to help its victims, it can do little to compensate for the respect lacking in society as a whole. This needs to be addressed through wider public discussion. What the University can do is educate students on what sexual harassment and violence are, provide sufficient support to victims by publicising its own services and those available throughout Oxford.
Robert Walmsley: No
The report into sexual violence in Oxford, by Cherwell, clearly shows that not enough is being done to address the issue. Considering out of 107 Oxford students surveyed, 83% stated that they were unsure or did not know about “any options at the University should you wish to report any kind of sexual assault”; there appears to be a serious problem of awareness about support services for victims of sexual violence.
The issue seems not to be that support organisations do not exist, but that they are not well-known. Unfortunately, the result of the lack of awareness of these organisations is much the same, as if they did not exist. No matter how good these services are, if no one has heard of them, then their benefit is largely wasted. Therefore, increasing the profile of these support services is something that badly needs doing. If students are unaware of where they can go to report sexual violence, then the inevitable result will be some acts of sexual violence will go unreported.
The debate about sexual violence should not only be about how sexual violence is dealt with after the event, but prevention as well. Students themselves have the biggest part to play in doing this, by creating an environment where such behaviour is unacceptable. It is worth saying some people seem to think there are different standards of behaviour outside of college walls, particularly in night clubs. The truth is there are not. Workshops in colleges are an essential part of getting students to think about consent and the clear distinction between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.
There is an also the problem, in Oxford, of unclear lines of responsibility. For example, where does the responsibility of colleges end and that of the University begin? It is not the case that colleges or the University do not want to address the issues associated with sexual violence, but without clearly demarcated responsibilities gaps in the provision of services are going to exist.
Many people assume, because they do not hear about sexual violence, that it does not go on. This is not the case. A disturbing aspect of the Cherwell investigation was that several respondents said their complaints were not taken seriously, by their colleges. When that is allowed to happen, it only discourages other victims from coming forward. Telling someone you have experienced sexual violence is a both a brave and difficult thing to do. Therefore, it is only right that we should make it as easy as possible for victims to speak out.
It is immensely important that both students and the University finally take ownership of this problem. The conclusion, we, as a University, need to reach is that we can do more and so should do more to tackle sexual violence and the other issues associated with it.
The new upcoming album from Beans on Toast, Giving Everything, is going to be “same old, same old. Sex, drugs and politics in the same three chords.”
I catch up with the self-proclaimed drunken folk singer – real name Jay – before his gig at Art Bar (formerly The Bullingdon), which he has had some experience of before, playing here as a teenager in a band back in 1999. He also mentions with clear fondness a tour he did with bands on barges sailing up the canals and eventually making it to Oxford.
He seems keen to correct some possible misconceptions. Songs like ‘The Price of Rice’, ‘Protest Song’ and ‘Dirty Paki’ have clear political themes, and Beans, somewhat predictably, took a particular dislike to George Bush while he was in power, but, he claims, “I’m still not interested in politics. I don’t shy away from people saying I’m a political songwriter, but I’m completely uneducated in it. I still have zero interest in what you might call political affairs. It depends on what level that is, whether it’s who’s in power and who’s not or the politics of which way a spliff goes round the room. I’m just here for the good times. Say what you see. I just sing about what I know. I’ve certainly never had an open interest in politics and I don’t think I ever will.”
He clearly takes a very humble approach to his songwriting, and recognizes that just because he’s written songs about things, “I’m not claiming I’m right in any of my opinions” and goes on to relate a story about a song called ‘The Great Big Fucking Hole’, in which he connected the hole in the ozone layer to global warming, only to be informed by several concerned fans that the two were actually completely unrelated and that the ozone layer had in fact been fixed. “But no one ever got thanked!” he insists. “We should’ve got together and celebrated that! A lot!” The purpose of this story, he explains, is to show that people shouldn’t take his songs too seriously. “I don’t take ‘em seriously!”
Giving Everything will keep things topical, covering topics from “Prince Harry, Glastonbury and fracking” to “the future of the music business”, and with Jay now in a committed relationship, there will be “less whimsical songs about getting laid and more love songs”.
Despite occasionally seeming to disapprove of elements of Britain’s drinking culture, Jay’s as much a fan of pubs as anyone else, if not more. He becomes introspective, searching his soul as he tells the story of how he “sent a text the other day saying ‘We’re in Wetherspoon’s if you want to come and join us’ before realizing he’d sent the same text to the same person about four or five times in the last week or so. If Beans on Toast stopped drinking, there would be no hope for the rest of us.
Later on during his set, Jay is his typical exuberant self, at one point summoning all the female members of the audience up on stage to dance with him, and spending the rest of the time roaming through the crowd with the microphone. A lot of his music sounds quite serious, but he clearly doesn’t take himself too seriously at all, and thinks you shouldn’t either.
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