Thursday, April 24, 2025
Blog Page 1633

Review: Dark Days

Anna Dominey
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Review: Dark Days

The high standard of Oxford student productions raises expectations of fledgling theatre companies to a level that may appear unrealistic to those outside the bubble, but the reality of such an endeavour can involve risks, difficulties, and inevitable mistakes. Unfortunately, Dark Days, the opening collection of sketches in Almost Random Theatre’s (est. May 2012) three-night run painfully demonstrated such setbacks, despite appearing at first sight to offer an impressive medley of talented, experienced actors and writers.

There were instances of compelling, thought-provoking writing, as well as examples of enjoyable and intelligent acting – the problem was that these two vital ingredients of good theatre largely failed to coincide. The interesting scripts were poorly rendered, while the engaging actors were wasted on dull writing. For example, the first sketch, The Intricate Workings of a Sherbet Lemon, was impossible to enjoy due to Kyran Pritchard’s I’m-doing-my-acting-voice, while Steve Walker’s poignant and convincing performance in Confessions of an Addict was incongruous with the bad jokes included in his speech about why he’d joined Readers Anonymous. This lacklustre combination resulted in an evening which failed to make an impression; no sketch was totally catastrophic but none was particularly entertaining.

The closest any piece got to contradicting that verdict was Wolf, written and performed by Gwilym Scourfield. It greatly exceeded expectations because the concept, an account of the story of Little Red Riding Hood from the perspective of the baddie, has been set as creative writing homework for Key Stage Three students throughout the country. I was therefore preparing for something tired and littered with clichés, but was pleasantly surprised by Scourfield’s lively, amusing monologue. He managed to weave contemporary references and clever puns together with appeals to age-old truths and stereotypes while remaining unexpectedly original. His acting was skilful, but was tragically let down by the fact that the whole monologue was read off a script, a factor which frustratingly ruined what was easily the best piece of the evening.

Perhaps this gaping flaw can be seen to represent what was wrong with the evening as a whole, in terms of a lack of thoroughness, which would have enhanced the whole theatrical presentation. For if the better actors were working with the better-written pieces (and the remainder done away with), and if the awkward musical interruptions and atrociously staged slap were edited out, the performances could have been impressive.

Overall, this young theatre company displayed some promise on which it should have capitalised much more. The company is clearly still attempting to forge an identity, and one way in which they would be well advised to progress in this respect would be to abandon completely their jarring ‘improvised comedy’ attempts and focus solely on drama. With time the company will hopefully improve drastically on what it currently has to offer, which the audience tangibly found underwhelming.

TWO STARS

Holidays Under 200 Pounds

Greta Keenan & Gurpreet Narwan
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Holidays Under 200 Pounds

If there’s something that living on this Island has taught us, it’s that ‘The British Summer’ is a generous but inaccurate term for the three months wedged in between Trinity and Michaelmas. Hard-working and diligent academics deserve more than highs of 15 degrees, so Cherwell Lifestyle have taken it upon themselves to help what little is left of your student loan go a long way. Our ‘Holidays Under 200 Pounds’ will offer you the ideal package- Sunshine that won’t burn a hole in your pocket.

 

City Break: Barcelona, Spain

Price: £148.00 pp

If you find Parisian chic unimaginative, Milanese cafe culture clichéd and think that the Amsterdammer’s American English is flirting with the bad side of cute, then it’s the Catalans that will put the fiesta back into your summer. Now that the Spanish are Euro 2012 Champions, the party’s only just getting started.

Easy Jet’s ‘Late Summer Deals’ provide a two night stay at a 4 star hotel, 10 minutes from the famous Las Ramblas, as well as return flights from London Gatwick to Barcelona at an affordable £148.00. Admittedly, you’ll probably need to double that when you consider spending money. Barcelona isn’t cheap and has no time for those who are.

 

Group Holiday: Sliema, Malta

Price: £139.98 pp

Lads on tour 2k12? Then the north east coast of Malta is calling your name. We found a rustic town house, complete with roof terrace and plunge pool on www.homeaway.com. It’s situated 500 meters from the beach and within easy walking distance of St.Julians – famed for its restaurants, bars and coffee shops. The centre of Malta’s night life- the Paceville area is also a mere stone throw away.

With room for up to 10 people, it’s perfect for a group holiday. Even better is the £48.00 per person price tag. Couple this with £91.98 return flights from London Stansted on Ryanair.com and you’ve got a £139.98 late September getaway. Whether it’s the appeal of approximately 5 Park Ends (complete with a crew date to start the night and a kebab to end it) or a week away in the Mediterranean; the choice is simple.

 

Beach-relaxation: Can Picafort, Majorca

Price: £172 pp

If you’d rather trade the LADSLADSLADS#UNIBANTER culture for a spot of quiet beach relaxation, then look no further than this secluded beach resort in Majorca. Cherwell’s Lifestyle has found a set of 3 star, self-catered apartments, ‘The Africamar Apartments’ on the bay of Alcudia, just 200 meters from the beach. With this in mind, what are you waiting for? Pack up your beach towel, tanning oil and Fifty Shades of Grey; you’re guaranteed to be freshly bronzed and ready to face the Michaelmas frost.

 

Party-Island: San Antonio, Ibiza

Price: £196 pp

If you’re looking for guaranteed sun, sand and sex this summer, there is no rivaling the world-famous party island, Ibiza. We’ve found a cracking self-catering hotel, Costa Sur Hotel, situated in San Antonio Bay, 100m from the beautiful sandy beach. The centre of town is about a 40 minute stroll along the beach, or a shorter taxi ride away, leaving you free to enjoy both the serene daytime and wicked Pacha nightlife. However; for those unwilling to travel further afield, San Antonio offers it’s own evening entertainment including Irish bar Paddy’s and Linekers; a club crawling with Brits, you’ll forget you’re in a foreign country.

Batman’s Moral Maze

Nick Hilton
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Batman’s Moral Maze

[This article contains plot details from The Dark Knight Rises. The film is worth seeing, so avoid if you don’t want spoilers.]

‘Take control’ Bane roars to the crowd at the Gotham Rogues stadium (played by the real life Pittsburgh Steelers ground and fans). Take control. The Dark Knight Rises is a film about precisely that: anarchy and control, the two opposing forces that govern human existence. In a week that has seen tragic events taking place in Denver, it is worth looking at the moral maze that exists within the fabric of the latest Batman movie, a film that marks a seminal moment in the politicization of the blockbuster.

The ‘rise’ motif is as crucial to the characters of The Dark Knight Rises as it would be to a group of ED sufferers. It is in the title, it is chanted, it is said. Broken Bruce Wayne has to rise from his grief to become Batman again, Gotham has to rise from the ashes of anarchy to become a cohesive city, Catwoman has to rise from common thief to hero, Gordon has to rise from idealist to soldier. It means, above all, social mobility- the rich and powerful fall, so that the little man can rise. Or so, at first glance, it seems.

It is important that the film is not entirely decontextualized. There’s a reason why Christopher Nolan choose to shoot the film’s climactic clash between police and rebels on Wall Street (even though that’s not supposed to be part of Gotham’s geography). The global financial crisis has turned bankers and their bonuses into villains that hold the same public status as war criminals and dictators. The currency of their crimes is, however, just that: currency. Money is at the heart of this film, as it has always been in the Batman franchise. Bruce Wayne is, after all, a billionaire who runs a company that, amongst other things, deals arms. Bruce Wayne is corporate; his moniker bedecks his company (Wayne Enterprises) in precisely the same manner as the great capitalist superhero, Tony Stark (Stark Industries).

On the face of it, the agenda seems quite liberal. ‘Did you think that you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us?’ whispers Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman. Wayne and the Gotham elite are certainly shown to be ‘living large’ in their ostentatious parties (that Wayne himself openly criticises) but he is, after all, being given this piece of moral advice by a professional thief. The ‘Occupy’ movement, which has been widely referenced in relation to the movie, would describe the bankers and corporations as thieves and cast them in the role of the villain. Indeed, one of the most important villains in the film is John Daggett, a relentlessly corrupt businessman trying to take control of Wayne Enterprises. He is a thief and Nolan is unflinching in his condemnation. Catwoman is a thief but she is also the heroine of this tale, which poses the question: is it the victim of theft that decides whether it’s a crime or not? Is it morally justifiable to steal from the wealthy (she steals the family heirloom of an orphan- cold, no?), but not morally justifiable to commit large-scale corporate crime that could affect the poor?

Even Bane, a man who is seen repeatedly cracking the skulls of bystanders, is treated in a more favourable light that Daggett. The Batman series has put a lot of focus (particularly in The Dark Knight) on the fact that Batman refuses to kill his victims, an admirable moral sentiment. So why doesn’t Bane’s violence have more of an impact? Where’s the staunch condemnation of his actions? He is repeatedly referred to as ‘the mercenary’ (as is Liam Neeson’s Ra’s as Ghul) raising immediately the subject of money- he is the villain of the story so long as the audience thinks that he is acting simply for a sack of cash. As soon as Nolan reveals, however, that he is not the film’s primary villain and that his motivation is love, rather than money, our sympathies shift; we pity the monster, he becomes the antihero. Are we supposed to forget all the people that he killed? Are we supposed to forget that, in an earlier scene, he has crippled the stock exchange and devalued currency in the same way as the corporations that the film is demonising?

But is the film really demonising the capitalist ideology? Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a number of roles in the film but his most important one is as a moral barometer. Batman is obsessed with vigilante justice, Bane is an anarchist, Catwoman is a thief but John Blake is an honest cop and, what’s better, he’s an orphan. Wayne Enterprises used to support his boy’s home but has since stopped its donation. Why? Well, as Alfred tells us, a company needs to make profit before it can give something to charity. Oh. So suddenly the machinery of capitalism is not quite so bad, in fact it’s the only thing in the city that can ensure that orphans are properly housed, above and beyond the role that government plays. Small government, big business, gets the job done, right? Not sounding very liberal now.

But, perhaps, it’s just that the film is anti-anarchy, of any sorts. But, rather than simply restoring democracy (or, indeed, remotely focusing on that part of society), the film champions the resurgence of a police state, governed by unelected officials. By the end of the film the audience is expected to cheer at a scene where the police officers are shown standing with truncheons pointed at criminals’ heads. We are expected to be excited by the knowledge that order has been restored. And who restored order? A billionaire, using weapons he has been privately developing. The NRA might be interested in holding up the Batcave as a symbol of how to successfully defend your home.

It’s left, therefore, to Catwoman to provide us with a liberal moral agenda (supposing we’ve all got over the fact that she’s a thief and killer). Yes, some wealthy people, like Daggett, deserve their comeuppance, but not for simply being rich. He buys Bane’s loyalty and is betrayed as a result, because money cannot motivate someone like Bane. Talia al Ghul earns Bane’s loyalty and he is willing to die for her. Thus, the film’s most important liberal message is taught to us by characters who spend most of the movie plotting a holocaust of Gotham’s 12 million inhabitants. Put that in your ‘Occupy’ pipe.

The Dark Knight Rises is a film that does not offer any real world ‘hope’. Yes, Batman is a symbol- ‘Anyone could be Batman’ says Bruce Waye- but it’s crucial to the story that he’s a billionaire. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s honest cop can (and, perhaps, will) bulk up and fight crime but, without the money, he can’t afford a flying tank. Corporations might’ve brought Gotham to its knees but, according to Nolan’s dystopic vision of the future of a technology driven society, they will also provide it with charity, energy and, most significantly, save it from being blown to pieces by an atomic bomb.

Travel Blog: Shenzhen, Yangshuo and Ping An

Rachel Savage
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Travel Blog: Shenzhen, Yangshuo and Ping An

So, two weeks in China and my overriding impression? People. Lots and lots of people.

It’s a cliché of course, but true in a very in-your-face way. Take Shenzhen, a city I’m ashamed to admit I’d barely heard of before the Family Savage decided to bring their never-ending arguments concerning table manners, body odour and other personal delights to our friends’ apartment.

Shenzhen was a fishing village at the end of the 70s, around which time Deng Xiaoping, China’s post-Mao reforming leader, chose it as the destination to make his famous ‘Poverty is not socialism. To be rich is glorious.’ speech. Now it has a population somewhere in the region of 3m-15m people (numbers vary widely due to whether/how you count workers who live there unofficially, due to China’s infamous hukou system, which prevents many migrants from registering there permanently and accessing public services). The block our friends lived in had four flats on each of the 25 floors, and 30 blocks in their compound. Multiply 10,000 or so people by the countless similar compounds that line Shenzhen’s artificially-wide, tree-lined avenues, and that’s a whole lotta baby-making, even given the One Child Policy.

Seems Shenzhen took Deng pretty literally then. But while it was lovely to be shown around by our unfailingly patient hostess-cum-tour-guide Eva, Shenzhen on the whole left me a tad unsatisfied – all the new development seemed to have sprung up without any real soul. Not that it wasn’t fun – particular highlights include a foot massage which turned out to be a whole body workover, while my unsuspecting parents emerged from their ‘shoulder massage’ two hours later, distinctly traumatised after a Chinese doctor had treated them to ‘cupping’, which left them with what can only be described as large, circular, purple lovebites, my Dad’s covered in orange blisters.

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One of our friends gets a ‘pedicure’

The other highlight was a night out in the swanky and very new Oct Bay area, where we met a Canadian guy who my Dad had been to business school with, who had up-shipped to Shenzhen a decade or so ago.The best/most embarrassing part of the night, at a bar called CJW (Cigars Jazz and Wine) with live covers by a band from Detroit and LA of everything from bossa nova to David Guetta, was my Dad and Eva christening the dancefloor. One of my Father’s signature moves involved getting down on one knee. My sister and I weren’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

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The Civic Centre in Shenzhen

After Eva warned my Mother that Chinese bus journeys involved people smoking and eating pungent food day and night, we were persuaded to fly out of Shenzhen rather than risk a smoky, neck-cricking ride. Next stop was Yangshuo, a town set on the Li River amidst the bizarrely-shaped limestone karsts beloved of traditional Chinese paintings. I was glad to stay out of town (with air conditioning and soft beds, hurrah!), as the centre resembled Bangkok’s Khao San Road, only with almost all of the Westerners replaced by Chinese tourists. Out of the numerous, identikit bar-clubs on offer, the one we ventured into on my sister’s 20th birthday had the standard tacky chandaliers and coloured lighting, complemented by wailing female singers and footage of swimming at the 2008 Olympics.

The two days in Yangshuo were spent getting hopelessly lost in paddy fields and village backstreets, in part due to enthusiastic locals both following us and pointing us every which way as we cycled through the beautiful countryside. Falling off a path into a paddy field was definitely not my finest hour, but seeing the ‘other side’ of China, albeit close to the tourist trail, was fascinating.

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The ‘night life’ in Yangshuo

We then attempted to go further off The Beaten Track, but while the accommodation definitely got more rustic, the Chinese government have definitely been reading the Lonely Planet, and we had to pay around £6 to enter both the villages we stayed in. The first, Ping An, had postcard-perfect rice paddies that look like contours on a map, while the second, Chengyang, had ancient wooden architecture with intriguing names like ‘Drum Tower’ and ‘Wind and Rain Bridge’. 

What else, then, did I learn from my jaunt through a small southern corner of the People’s Republic? That the food is a lot tastier, healthier and less sweet ‘n’ sour than the Chinese back home. And while we think we avoided consuming anything remotely exotic on the trip, we did come face to face with half a dead dog hanging up in a market in town while shopping for ingredients during a cooking course, and I actually found myself pitying enormous rats that were sitting in cages outside restaurants, waiting to be picked and cooked.

Secondly, that the language barrier makes for exhausting travel. While China is coming to terms with itself as a global power, and there are adverts calling for English teachers everywhere, this hasn’t really filtered down to, well, anyone, and the huge majority of people speak only a few words of English, if any. Of course their efforts vastly outweighed the family’s pitiful Mandarin, though our sign language was superb, if I do say so myself.

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Rice paddies above Ping An

Finally, I learnt that while the highlights I have described above do (and here come the clichés again) make travelling worthwhile, you can never escape the pitfalls of foreign travel. These clustered in our final leg before heading back to Hong Kong, in Chengyang, and included a toilet that smelt somewhere between burning rubber and raw sewage and featured a friendly 10cm long spider, and getting stung just below my eye by a large wasp/hornet, which was not only excruciating, but makes me look like I’ve been in a fist fight. Oh, and getting a seat instead of the beds we’d booked for the night train back to Shenzhen, and having to spend 12 hours with my neck at 90 degrees (well it felt like it!) and a Chinese man snoozing against my back.

And now onto Japan from Hong Kong, but those will be other stories if you’ve got the patience to check ‘em out and I can tear myself away from reading The Hunger Games for long enough to write them: check out my blog at www.thesavagegirl.blogspot.com.

65% of state schools send no students to Oxbridge

Xin Fan
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65% of state schools send no students to Oxbridge

Almost two-thirds of all state schools in England did not send a single student to Oxford or Cambridge in the UCAS year 2009/10, according to newly released figures from the Department of Education (DfE).

Part of the government’s ‘transparency agenda’, the destination data was released for the first time in a bid to increase the amount of information available to parents.

The disclosed figures apply to the cohort of students who have just completed their third year at university.

Schools Minister Lord Hill said, “We are opening up access to this new data so people can see how different schools and colleges, and local authorities, perform. It gives parents greater information on which to base decisions.”

A mixed picture

Overall, 1,395 institutions (64.5%) sent no pupils to the ancient universities, out of a total of 2,164 English maintained schools and sixth-form colleges surveyed.

The local authority that sent the highest proportion of its school leavers to Oxbridge was Reading (7%), followed by Sutton (3%). The national average was approximately 1%.

When looking at Russell Group rather than just Oxbridge entry, however, the top regions were the North West (12%) and Yorkshire and the Humber (10%).The national average for entry to these twenty universities was 8%.

Lord Hill remarked that it was “interesting to see how well some schools and colleges in more deprived local authorities do in terms of students going to our best universities”.

Oxford students’ assessments of the figures were mixed. Hertford historian Rhys Owen was pleased to see “increasing” social mobility. “There is a very wide range of authorities doing well, many of which we might not have expected. It is true that access to Oxbridge is still very London- and South East-heavy, but it shows moves in the right direction.”

Conversely, St Anne’s access rep Joe Collin, who previously attended a Birmingham comprehensive, felt the data highlighted a negative “cycle” whereby “year after year, no one applies from these schools, so students there don’t see anyone they know attending. As a result, they think people like me don’t go to places like that, when they could not be further from the truth”.

Data needs “proper context”

However, proportional figures may not be entirely conclusive. A Sutton Trust report earlier this year showed that one state school, Hills Road Sixth Form College, sent on average 68 pupils a year to Oxbridge in the last three years.

In comparison, the largest proportional contingent from an individual school, Colchester Royal Grammar (16%), amounted to 24 a year in the same period.

A spokesperson for Oxford University warned that the data, if not contextualised, could give misleading conclusions. She criticised the DfE for “not including any useful attainment data-by-school that would put the destination data into its proper context”.

She added, “Admissions figures in themselves do not mean anything without context: most importantly attainment, but also how many people actually apply. Of those 1,395 schools, for example, how many of them fielded any AAA+ candidates? The DfE doesn’t supply this information, but it’s critical to helping understand why those schools don’t send anyone here.”

“Despite the enormous amounts of time and effort we spend on outreach, headlines like the ones these DfE releases produce only tend to reinforce the false perception that Oxford isn’t open to everyone – discouraging those we most want to reach from applying in the first place.”

OUSU Vice President for Access and Academic Affairs, David Messling, concurred, commenting, “Releases of this kind aren’t going to shift perceptions of Oxford. But events like last week’s creation of the Moritz-Heyman scholarship are.

“Oxford has some amazing stories to tell about life-changing opportunities available to students on grounds of academic ability and potential, and we are trying our utmost to make sure that these are the stories that reach schools.”

A Walk on the Wild Side

Benjamin Bronselaer
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A Walk on the Wild Side

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Travel blog: A weekend in Manchester

Sarika Sharma
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Travel blog: A weekend in Manchester

Although travelling halfway across the globe to be literally in Burma has the novelty, ‘cultural exchange’ factor and the appeal of the sheer uncertainty that considerable distance, decent weather and perhaps a language barrier offers, it is difficult, costly and not necessarily, in my view, more valuable than venturing a little closer to home. Think of the carbon footprint! And it is especially wasteful when your view of life in the UK is narrowly limited to only a few cities: London, Birmingham and Oxford, like mine is. While stuck on rainy home turf having just escaped the Oxford bubble I took the opportunity to visit the city of Manchester for the weekend under the hospitality and guidance of a charming local.

What attracted me to Manchester in particular is how the city is prominent and even mythologised within wider British culture. It is the city of Manchester United and Manchester City, two world leading football clubs that are responsible for huge amounts of UK tourism; it’s definitely a city that attracts considerable glamour, WAGs, and the young and the reckless. It is also a city of learning, featuring outstanding museums and universities, and is home to one of the largest student populations in Europe. Manchester has spawned an incredible music scene and bands of the calibre of The Smiths, Joy Division, The Hollies, Buzzcocks and the Bee Gees… the list goes on. Readers should be aware at this point that I am a big fan of The Smiths, as is my charming local guide, so this trip was inevitably going to serve as a form of musical pilgrimage. Yet Manchester also played a part in a less glamorous narrative of British history as a key site of the Industrial Revolution: its shocking 19th century conditions inspired the likes of Marx and Engels to act as revolutionaries. It continues to encompass some of the most deprived boroughs in England. Of course all cities including my own, London, are not without their tensions, particularly in recent history during the terrifying frenzy of consumerism and anger that was the riots, so I wondered how ‘gritty’ Manchester would really  feel. My family are from India but I have always lived in West London, enjoying the freedom offered by such a diverse and multifaceted place and its lively cultural beat; all aspects which form my criteria for a top city and which I hoped the weekend might offer. So on Friday I arrived in the stunning city, drinking in the visual impact of big statement architecture in glass and cool metals that could not have been more than ten years old, juxtaposed with warm, lightly tarnished Victorian red-bricked facades.

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Manchester by Night

We began the night at the Temple: Not a place of worship as such but a tiny bar in a converted public toilet, filled with various types including an androgynous man sporting a wig, all conducting themselves very politely. It offered a quirky selection of beers and many an alternative anthem from the jukebox. Then on to a few other bars in the Oxford Road area, all of which were atmospheric, cheap and within easy walking distance, so you can experience an enviable range of bars and clubs in one night compared to what you can achieve in London. But this was all to warm us up for the main event at the Star and Garter: Morrissey Disco. Founded in 1994, this night consists of nothing but Morrissey and The Smiths tunes, all night long. Unsurprisingly, everyone was oscillating wildly like sweet and tender hooligans who never ever want to go home because they haven’t got one, anymore.

By day, we drove round town to get a taste of life on the outskirts of Manchester city centre. Admittedly much of it was a bit sleepy, and Tesco has clearly asserted itself as aggressively as it has where I live, but there are many interesting places, beautiful parks and a thriving community spirit. There was no shortage of great places to eat or drink: Rusholme has got Wilmslow Road, a curry mile with many Asian and Middle Eastern restaurants and the Blue Cat and Town bars in Heaton Chapel are sophisticated and offer great service, with the added bonus that Town is a regular haunt of Primal Scream’s Mani. In Burnage, the quiet childhood home of Noel and Liam Gallagher, we popped into an amazing bargain record store called Sifters. The area of the four Heatons held a packed community event in Heaton Park, with live music, fairground style games, and even a somewhat fierce bake-off  – genuine, clean fun for kids big and small.

The city felt busy but never over-crowded, and it has numerous green spaces and squares where people stop to congregate. One of these areas is outside the new Football Museum at the Urbis building, another of Manchester’s buildings situated by a polar architectural opposite, Manchester Cathedral. Urbis was part of the spurt of regeneration after the 1996 IRA bombing of Manchester, which explains the big shiny glamour. By contrast roaming the city’s Northern Quarter feels much like being in a calmer version of London’s Hoxton where you can find laidback restaurants, thrift and record stores as well as places like the interesting art space and social community hub Nexus. It was here on Sunday that we saw The Condition of the Working Class In England, a community devised play inspired by Engels’ 1844 book of the same name. Using devised drama, dance, film, music, poetry and a fair bit of satire it explored the lives of the working class today and discontent with capitalism through the ideas and perspective of the actors’ own lives, a reminder that despite an improvement in conditions since 1844 there remains an unsettling gap regionally between rich and poor, and indeed nationally between North and South in England. Their impressions of Cameron and Clegg would have anyone of any political affiliation in fits of laughter. More seriously, if a sense of the working class in Manchester city centre is obscured by posh retail outlets, swanky bars and tourist attractions, the actors at this local event spoke out about issues of classism, prostitution, racial and sexual abuse. It was the captivating and fascinating voice of opposition to politically correct analysts seen on the news devising graphs and explaining recent downward economic trends, thereby abstracting from and neglecting the reality of the ordinary person’s day-to-day existence in poverty. We ended Sunday night at Big Hands, the sister bar to Temple, listening to music from Bowie, Dr. John and Tom Waits. It was a relaxing conclusion to an incredible weekend… That was until I chundered everywhere! (Just kidding.)

Tour de France: a real bore? Think again!

James Nottage
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Tour de France: a real bore? Think again!

Amid the thorny peaks of the Alps, a British sportsman is on the cusp of making history. Serious history too – if Bradley Wiggins continues as he’s been going over the past  two and a half weeks, he will be the first British rider to ever win the Tour de France.

This majestic race has never quite made it into the British sporting consciousness however, and this achievement is likely to go, if not ignored, then certainly devoid of the full panoply of celebration it surely deserves. Part of this lack of interest bears a direct relationship with the lack of British success.

Track racing, come Olympic time, is seen as one of the marquee events – due no doubt to the dominance of Chris Hoy and Wiggins himself over the last two Games. Indeed, Mark Cavendish’s exploits last year (winning the sprint competition in the Tour, as well as capturing the World Championship) landed him the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year award.

Well, it largely drifted by me as well until this year. I had heard of Wiggins and Cavendish of course, and before that was vaguely aware of the Tour, mainly through the vast presence of Lance Armstrong and the frequent doping scandals – the only two avenues through which it seemed cycling seemed to make the papers.

But this year I decided, what with Wiggins now in the ascendency, now was the time to give one of world sport’s mega-events a go.

I’ve haven’t looked back: it’s taken less than two weeks for me to turn into a cycling bore, and I’m here recruiting. Full immersion is the best strategy to get to grips with an alarming array of terms of art and names from all over the globe.

Once you’re initiated it’s captivating viewing. There’s no comparison with the torpor of track racing – the Tour is alive in a way that other forms of racing like the keirin or madison somehow fail to be.

First and foremost it’s a forbiddingly tough test of physical and mental endurance. Two thousand miles and twenty-one days are the key figures to bear in mind here. Spurious comparisons to marathon-series are often made but the feat is phenomenal enough to stand alone, and the attrition rate of the Tour speaks to this as finishers are always a fair number fewer than starters – and this from those at the very peak of endurance cycling.

There’s a great deal of variety too. Stages, and riders, are not identikit: there are the long flat rides; cruel, thigh-pummelling mountain stages (although the mountains aren’t unique in punishing the thighs – the whole event could’ve been designed as a cosmic joke on quadriceps) scattered across the Alps and Pyrenees; and shorter individual time-trial stages that provide the fast men like Wiggins a chance to rack up a lead.

Diversity in riders comes from excelling at different styles of stage – Cavendish is a sprint man, for instance, his weakness at the climbs meaning he can’t challenge for the overall prize, the famed maillot jaune or yellow jersey, instead gunning for the sprinters’ green (the king of the mountains wears a tasteful red polka dot number).

France has rarely looked better than filmed in HD from helicopter as the race traverses it, and then back again. The course changes each year, providing ample amounts of landscape shots to keep the tourism board of each department happy.

The French, on the other hand, don’t come out of the race altogether positively. Full points for enthusiasm: the sidelines of the race are thronged at almost every point, providing what must be an inimitable atmosphere as normally there are no barriers between riders and crowd.

The lack of barrier leads to the issue though, because encroachment is common. Vast swathes of the French youth population seems to have no higher ambition for the month of July than to run alongside Vincenzo Nibali and knock him off his bike.

So what are Bradley Wiggins’ chances? He has enormous obstacles ahead of him and there’s no shortage of high calibre opposition either. But the man from Kilburn is currently in the overall lead, and with a crack team behind him (or more accurately for most of the race ahead of him) he seems odds-on to march down the Champs-Élysées, claim his umpteenth kisses from the good ladies of Carrefour, and win the whole thing.

So tune in now or risk missing the opportunity to miss genuine sporting history being made. Look out for the acerbic Brit in yellow with the ludicrous sideburns. He could well be the country’s next sporting hero.

Foreign interventionism doesn’t deserve its bad rep

Tom Beardsworth
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Foreign interventionism doesn’t deserve its bad rep

On a lazy Monday last week I watched Shooting Dogs – one of those films I’d always wanted to watch but never gotten around to. For those who don’t know it, the film documents one of the worst atrocities of the Rwandan Genocide at the Ecole Technique Officielle, near Kigali. Following a lengthy siege of the school by extremist Hutu militia, the film ends with the meagre UN contingent evacuating to the airport, conscious that in doing so they were condemning the 2000 Tutsi to a machete massacre at the hands of the militia – which duly occurred.

The poignant aspect of the film is that officially, there was no dereliction of duty on the part of the UN soldiers – their mission was based on observation; they had undergone no commitment to protect anyone. But when Tutsi families sought refuge in the school grounds, the soldiers became their de facto guardians.

The story, I think, is morally analogous to the West’s relationship with the Syrian freedom-fighters.

The struggle of the Free Syrian Army is an embarrassment. Not to Bashar Al-Assad, to whom the revolutionary movement has now become a mortal threat, pushing the Red Cross to officially designate the conflict as a civil war. The Syrian people’s struggle is an embarrassment to the Western and UN leaders, who stand by limply as the Assad regime orchestrates indiscriminate slaughter.

‘If we can act, we should’ is not the only consideration that should apply before launching into conflicts abroad, but it should be the main one. Inaction can be as morally reprehensible as ill-fated action. I get riled up when anti-Iraq war advocates take the moral high-ground because, as the late Christopher Hitchens put it excellently, to oppose the war on strict moralistic terms requires one to defend the preservation of a tyrannical, murderous, brutalising dictatorship.

Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t the only reasons that the doctrine of interventionism became discredited under Blair/Bush. The political requirement for Bush to do something, and Blair’s acquiescence, were used to justify the principle, rather than the principle being used to justify the action. Consequently the doctrine was applied inconsistently. If a principle is applied in a haphazard manner it breeds cynicism – in this case characterised by a retreat to national concerns, less fraught with moral dilemma.

The losers in this are the Syrians. Whilst a Cameron-led coalition intervened to provide air and artillery support to Libyan rebels, more would be required to topple Assad – possibly even ground troops.

The lazy opinionator will chastise me for my naivety: ‘how can you justify blundering into Syria after the catastrophes of our other Middle Eastern misadventures!?’ The truth is that the mistakes we make after a period of national distress are often characterised by caution rather than belligerence. We would not have been as patient with 1930s Appeasement were it not for the terrors of WW1. Food for thought.

Despite both sides’ interests, the Coalition is fragmenting

Ben Rosenbaum
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Despite both sides’ interests, the Coalition is fragmenting

On July 10th, the coalition suffered its biggest rebellion so far when 91 Tory MPs voted against Lords reform at its second reading. The government won the vote, but the bill’s future is in doubt after plans were dropped to timetable it before the summer recess. To the majority of the country, July 10th will have been as insignificant as any other day in Westminster, but it could have important long term effects on the health of the coalition and the country.

After the vote, Sir Menzies Campbell strongly implied what many had already predicted; that the Liberal Democrats will refuse to back the boundary reforms, a major Conservative policy, if the Tories don’t support them on Lords reform. The proposed boundary changes are expected to reduce our current electoral system’s bias towards the Labour party, and the Conservatives could gain up to 20 seats. However, Nick Clegg’s party, despite being treated much more unfairly by our system in terms of votes per seat, is actually predicted to lose several MPs. There is a feeling among the Liberal Democrat backbenchers that they have made political sacrifice after political sacrifice for the sake of the coalition, tuition fees being the famous example, yet they have achieved little more than a failed AV referendum. At the same time, Tory backbenchers have hardly had to forgo any of their political principles, and the Conservative party has in fact implemented a large part of their manifesto. It is almost unthinkable that Liberal Democrat MPs will march down the division lobby corridors for Tory boundary changes, some of them literally walking to the end of their careers, without a positive legacy to leave behind.

It now seems unlikely that Cameron, a man with ever diminishing political capital who has no appetite for a long battle with his backbenchers, will be able to whip his party into line on Lords reform. This will be immensely damaging for relations inside the coalition, but for its own sake it must remain united in government. The coalition was formed in the name of economic and political stability, and to split over Lords and boundary reforms, issues that are close to insignificant to the electorate, would be political suicide. With a July 18th MORI poll giving the Labour party a 13 point lead, it seems an early election would hand power to a resurgent Ed Miliband.

It is clear that neither the Tories nor the Liberal Democrats can afford to let the coalition fall until it is politically acceptable to do so, which is likely to be the General Election in 2015. However, the infighting and tit for tat nature that we are seeing at the moment and will only see more of as time goes on could turn the electorate against coalitions for a long time to come. There is obviously no appetite for a Con-Lib agreement; a Yougov poll on the 14th July showed that only 5% of Tory voters and just 11% of Liberal Democrats want the coalition to continue beyond the next election. However, the anti-coalition mood of both Westminster and the country make it significantly more likely that Ed Miliband, should he win the most seats but not an outright majority, will attempt to rule as a minority Labour government, although a Labour majority is of course more likely now the boundary reforms look doomed to fail.

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