the night to
hear the sky to
let the world run
through the veins
to let it all of it
run through
the veins
Image Credit: Debby Hudson via Unsplash.
Blog Page 194
His Dark Materials exhibition in Oxford museums brings Lyra’s world to life
Props from the BBC’s adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy have gone on display this week in Oxford museums.
Together, exhibits at Pitt Rivers Museum, the History of Science Museum, and The Story Museum create a fan’s paradise, with props from the show including the alethiometer, Lyra’s scuffed-on-an-Oxford-rooftop pinafore and the ethereal subtle knife. Free entry to the Pitt Rivers Museum and History of Science Museum encourages fans to immerse themselves into “Lyra’s World”, the title of the display.
The exhibition opens as the BBC’s third series comes to viewers’ screens. For fans, there seems no better way to celebrate than to see the amber spyglass, seed pods from the Mulefa World, and Mary Malone’s Ching Sticks at the Pitt Rivers. Indeed, the museum itself appears in The Subtle Knife and was used as a filming location in the programme.
Props shown at The Story Museum include the subtle knife, the dress worn by the witch Serafina Pekkala, and airmail letters written by John Parry to his wife, which are displayed beside Pullman’s specially commissioned and permanently exhibited alethiometer.
Meanwhile, The History of Science Museum offers a “What’s your dæmon?” experience to bring the much-loved stories alive. The experience ends by matching your given dæmon to particular “Women in Science”. Dr Silke Ackermann, director of the History of Science Museum has said how much of a delight it has been to finally celebrate the stories alongside “the stunning instruments in our collection that inspired Philip Pullman for many years”. Iconic costumes and Lyra’s alethiometer stand in line with astrolabes, astronomical compendia, and sundials.
As well as the exhibition, the Oxford Botanic Garden marks the tree of Lyra’s and Will’s midday rendezvous with a sculpture. His Dark Materials naturally encourages tourism for a global fanbase, through these collaborative displays across Oxford.
The displays will run until April 2023.
Image Credit: Ian Wallman
Ghosts of Christmas Past: strikes and parliamentary self-fictionalisation.
I can’t say I was thrilled to wake up on 1st December to discover that my only advent calendar this year would be the media’s very practical strike action timetable. This used to be the best month of the year when you were ten years old and it was acceptable to eat a load of chocolate for breakfast every day. It feels like we could not be further from this kind of December now, but perhaps there’s an unlikely point of comparison to be found.
There’s nothing magical about the way politics has been handled recently, but it is starting to recall that blending of fiction and truth which accompanied Christmas when you were younger.
With rounds of prolonged strike action drawing comment that we’re reliving the 1979 so-called Winter of Discontent, it’s hard to disentangle the truth of the present from emotionally loaded versions of the past. Then we have the fact that this is being dealt with by politicians who seem hell bent on creating a public personality ever since Boris Johnson made it, erm, cool. Combined, this is making for a political climate where narrative seems to be receiving at least as much focus as policy. Are these popular perceptions grounded in truth, or are they all mere fiction?
Strikes in the age of Amazon Prime seem anachronistic. It feels a bit like we’ve got used to teleportation only to wake up one morning and be told we’ve got to start walking to the shops again. The ultra-convenient has become such a norm that it’s weird to encounter weeks-long delays or to be told we just can’t get somewhere. But when a pair of lululemon leggings doesn’t make it before Thursday morning’s yoga class, maybe it’s a bit premature to declare that the nation has been gripped by strike-induced anarchy, identical to that of 1979. The way strikes left the country in chaos during the Winter of Discontent has given it an almost folkloric significance. It’s popularly remembered in images of rubbish piling up on the streets and the drama of its name alone means it’s always at the ready to be deployed to create a sense of dread. But perhaps that makes it all a bit too easy to grimly diagnose that history is repeating itself, trapping us in a cycle of doom. The facts tell a different story: 29.4 million work days were lost in the Winter of Discontent, while only 1.74 million days are predicted to have been lost by the end of this year.
Worse than the speculation that we’ve just lost 43 years of progress in one go is the apathy induced by the term ‘wage push inflation’. Now stay with me here. Perhaps I’m being unfair, but doesn’t it sometimes feel like this phrase is banded about to be intentionally obscure? It’s an effective way of putting a stop to arguments that we should just give people a wage they can actually live off. Nothing shuts people up like the danger of being caught out for not understanding a bit of economic jargon.
I don’t buy into wage push inflation as the reason why we should all stand against those taking strike action. The argument goes that if a company increases the wages of its employees, it will then pass this higher cost of labour on to the consumer in the form of more expensive goods. If things are more expensive to buy, the worker finds that although their wages are now higher than they were before, they still can’t buy as much for their money. So real wages decline once more. However, that’s only inevitable if the cost is passed on to the consumer: if the company weathered a dip in profits for a while inflation would be unaffected. And that’s only in the private sector. Public sector wage increases are less likely to cause inflation anyway, because they aren’t related to the production of goods or services for a consumer. Nursing is an example of this.
Whether or not we should increase strikers’ wages is a matter of political opinion, rather than economic fact. So there’s no real need to sigh and say we’re in a quagmire, unable to increase wages because of the rules of inflation, unable to escape our twentieth-century national precedents. It is a matter of choice.
Moving away from the twentieth century seems unappealing to some members of the Tory party, though, which is becoming swarmed with its many ghosts of Christmas past. No one has better Dickensian credentials than Jacob Rees-Mogg , lurking in the backbenches. Then there’s the run of Prime Ministers who try and build a public personality for themselves based on famous former leaders. Boris Johnson’s admiration for Winston Churchill was well documented, and his performative gravitas when making speeches was surely to try and make his rhetoric reach for his idol’s.
Next came Liz Truss, the sheep dressed in Thatcher’s clothing. It is no coincidence that when her critics levelled the critical label ‘human hand grenade’ at Truss, she decided to embrace it. It recalls a certain Conservative party leader being condemned as an ‘Iron Lady’ by a Soviet propaganda outlet in 1976. Thatcher adopted the title as her own, replying: “The Iron Lady of the Western World? Me? A cold war warrior? Well, yes – if that is how they wish to interpret my defence of values and freedoms fundamental to our way of life”.
Then there’s ‘the lady’s not for turning’ epithet, which Margaret Thatcher declared (and meant) after her own attempt to liberalise the economy in 1980 left many calling for U turns. In fairness to Truss I imagine resolve is a little easier to come by when your ideas are only causing a bit of public unpopularity rather than a visceral reaction in the market as well. It nonetheless made Truss’s humiliation even more profound. Somehow ‘the lady who was not for turning but then in a matter of days did, in fact, turn’ is just not as catchy.
Which brings me to the point that Truss’s emulation of her chosen twentieth-century forerunner was not just about postulation like Johnson’s had been, but about policy too. Now I imagine that Johnson’s advisors were hard pressed to convince him that Laissez-Faire, or doing as one likes, was an economic policy rather than a relationship and lifestyle choice. Trussonomics, on the other hand, was an experiment in the same market libertarianism which Thatcher had believed in.
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) was formed in 1955 to promote free market economics among politicians. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher clearly viewed it favourably, giving it credit for “creating the climate of opinion which made our victory possible”. According to the IEA’s own website, their proponents ‘believe that society’s problems and challenges are best dealt with by individuals, companies and voluntary associations interacting with each other freely without interference from politicians and the state. This means that government action, whether through taxes, regulation or the legal system, should be kept to a minimum’. This formed the bedrock of Truss’s economic policy. It is perhaps even more sinister that this thinking actually underpinned her whole presence of government, if slightly less directly. Jon Moynihan, director of the IEA, raised half a million pounds to fund Truss’s leadership campaign.
According to Nick Robinson’s Radio 4 summary of the Truss premiership, it all sounds a lot like a Tudor political coup. Much of the scheming for the mini budget took place at Chevening, in a big old building in the Kent countryside in the summer before she became PM. There Truss and her closest advisors discussed how to remove ‘treasury orthodoxy’ in order to cut taxes and promote growth as per the free market thinking she subscribed to. Ideally, this would entail a boycott of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) which George Osbourne established to make sure ministers’ economic plans were approved by an independent regulator before being put into place.
Truss and her friends at the IEA thought this was all a bit of a waste of time. They saw it as a restraint on freedom, rather than a necessary barrier between the public and untested ideas of, say, a tobacco and fuel industry funded think tank. Right. Why use forecasts when you can just put in a policy and hope for the best? Tanking the value of the pound and forcing the Bank of England to stage a £65 billion pound intervention just wouldn’t have been as exciting if we’d seen it coming. God forbid that it might have been avoided altogether.
Jon Moynihan is not a fan of Rishi Sunak, just falling short of blaming him for the Tory party ‘socialism’ which he feels undermined Trussonomics, in a Nick Robinson interview. So perhaps the government can be free of the regulations iconoclasm of the IEA for a while. Yet Sunak has links to right-wing think tanks of his own, having spent time at Policy Exchange before becoming an MP. And in response to the strikes, he has avoided discussion with the trade unions about pay thus far. His decision to call in the military and promote ‘new tough laws’ instead makes it clear that he is engaged in a Thatcherite war against the Trade Unions.
Rishi Sunak’s hard-line approach will be seen as the right thing to do for many, and perhaps it is. My worry is whether his attitude on strike action is made out of good political sense or out of a determination to emulate earlier policies for the image which is attached to it. Sunak is a Prime Minister with a lot to prove, emerging as disaster relief on a scene which many members of the public would rather have swept away in favour of a general election. I only hope he does so by striving forward, rather than continuing to chase his own tail in a bid to self-fashion in the image of a PM of the past.
Image: CC2:0 Via RMT
Art is a form of “resistance”: In conversation with Liu Wei at the Oxford Union
Pioneering artist Liu Wei gave an exclusive interview at the Oxford Union as part of the Union’s Michaelmas Art Festival on the weekend of Sixth Week. Born and based in Beijing, Liu Wei employs a remarkable number and variety of visual media in order to produce his artworks, which are often skeptical commentaries on the socio-political situation in post-Cultural Revolution China and beyond. As discussed in the Union interview, however, much of his work branches far beyond this, and has more recently taken to exploring ideas about social media, urbanisation, and what the future may hold in store for humanity.
With Union Treasurer Sharon Chau translating from Mandarin, Liu Wei told the Union about his creative practice, his artistic and philosophical inspiration, and the impact of current affairs on his work. The interview, led by Union Librarian Daniel Dipper, began with a discussion of the “pandemic themes” Liu touches on in his work in his 2021 show at White Cube. Artists have been variously impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic; for Liu, the pandemic, although a “massive catastrophe” worldwide, helped to facilitate a “massive space for art to be created”.
Liu feels that the pandemic exposed the abuse of power by governments, exemplified through the notable increase in surveillance of people, as he experienced himself in China. For him, art is a form of “resistance” in response to such repression – “we all should have the freedom to commit crimes”, he tells the Union. This attitude of subversion is seen in many of his artworks and the media he uses to create them; his sculpture Indigestion II (2004) is a mound of excrement teeming with half-eaten toy soldiers, whilst Love It! Bite It! (2005) is a model city made out of dog chews, both commentaries on grotesque consumption.
Indeed, Liu is particularly conscious of the influence of urbanisation and technology on our lives in the modern day, and seeks to examine this through his art. He points out the duality of the need for art to both “incorporate and transcend” this increasing dependence of humanity on technology and social media, and believes that the purpose of art is not merely creation, but it also functions as a “salvation” in our modern world, to change the way we understand and live our lives. Liu’s inspiration comes not only from observing the world around us, but also from a deep engagement with philosophical writings, especially those of 80-year-old Italian humanist philosopher Giorgio Agamben. Liu refers to Agamben’s influence multiple times during the interview; he explains that he sees the philosopher’s work as “poetry”, and that it has encouraged him to think about the beauty and aesthetics of art.
As well as exploring the effect of distinctly modern phenomena on humanity and the world, Liu’s work is striking and recognisable for its depiction of the human body, seen in works such as his painting It Looks Like a Landscape (2004) and his video installation Hard to Restrain (1999). He tells the Union that he is concerned with the “disappearance of the body”, which, he explains, is caused by the rise in social media and concerns over data privacy. Liu is pessimistic about losing the body to a wholly technological future civilisation, and this comes through in the fusion of sculpture and the human body in pieces like his Nudity series (2021). Referencing the story of Adam and Eve, Liu emphasises that “everything in art is about the body” and that the naked body is not something which ought to be hidden or considered shameful. Liu’s depiction of naked bodies coincides with the rise of the portrayal of the uncomfortable nude across the art world in the last century, as seen in works by his Western counterparts such as Lucian Freud and Jenny Saville.
Although based in Beijing – he flew to the UK specifically to deliver this interview – Liu’s artistic reach is worldwide, with his work exhibited in places including at the Venice Biennale, at MoMA New York, and even here at Modern Art Oxford. When asked how he feels about the fact that his art is now exhibited all across the world, Liu’s response is modest and brief – “really dumb”. Whilst he is grateful for the exposure his art receives, Liu believes that the context an artwork is seen in is crucial to its reception and for a piece to have maximum impact. Indeed, Liu is a distinctly self-aware artist, revealing that he constantly asks himself questions when creating his artworks; what is art? What is beauty? How can he improve his art?
Speaking on the significance of art in the modern day, Liu’s sentiments are similar to those of other artists. He insists on the ability of art to make our lives unique and to distinguish us from each other in a capitalist world bound up in the rapidity and homogeneity of the 9-5.
An artist who is manifestly conscious of his own practice, Liu Wei creates compelling and perceptive works of art responding to the contemporary nationwide and global state of affairs. He wants his art to “surprise” people – and it can be safely said that he has succeeded in doing so.
Image credit: Jim Linwood (CC by 2.0)
The House of Lords – Necessary reform?
A recent YouGov poll[1] confirmed that the most important issues for Britons are; the economy, an overstretched NHS, and a beleaguered immigration and asylum system. Unsurprisingly, major constitutional reform is not high on the list of priorities for the average voter.
Yet the Labour Party has placed major constitutional reform on their agenda for the UK. The leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer, and former Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown, have joined forces to make the abolition of the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the UK’s parliament, a “radical” centrepiece of the Labour Party’s 2024 election manifesto[2]. Sir Keir has described the House of Lords in its current incarnation as “indefensible”[3] and pledged his commitment to abolition “as quickly as possible”[4]. In its place would stand a democratically elected assembly of nations and regions.
The issues with the House of Lords
Admittedly, there is credence to the criticism that the Lords has become unjustifiably bloated in size and its composition unrepresentative of the UK. For instance, the size of membership is north of 800[5], which makes it globally second only in size to the Chinese National People’s Congress (which caters for a country of over a billion people), and the size dwarfs the 100-member strong US Senate. Not to mention that the average age of a sitting peer is 71 years[6].
There are also undeniable problems related to the manner of appointment. Despite the enactment of the House of Lords Act 1999 by New Labour, which removed the entitlement of most of the hereditary peers to the Lords, there remain 92 peers who trace their role in the legislative process of the UK to their birth[7]. The current system also places no real limits on the number or quality of members who may be appointed to the chamber by the prime minister. Despite the existence of the independent House of Lords Appointments Commission, which vets party political nominees for propriety, the vetting criteria is relatively narrow and the recommendations are not binding on the prime minister [8]. For example, in 2020, Boris Johnson could simply overrule the concerns raised by the Commission over the appointment of Peter Cruddas [9]. These shortcomings have ultimately led to concerns that appointments to the Lords have been “rather profligate”[10] and led to “unchecked political patronage”[11].
Advocates for abolition also focus significantly on the need to allow the nations and regions of the UK to be better represented. But, it is not clear that a democratic upper chamber, like the one in Labour’s proposal, would be able to deliver on this ideal. Voter engagement in the UK is consistently at a level lower than at most points historically[12], casting doubt on whether there is an appetite for yet more elections. One would need to carefully define how the chamber would interact with the devolved assemblies so that there is not a conflict of responsibilities, and there would be a danger that the party-political candidates nominated would simply duplicate the current diversity of sitting MPs, which one may argue is not adequately representative.
The case for retaining the House of Lords
Yet, there are more fundamental critiques of the case for abolition, especially in light of the idiosyncratic role that the House of Lords serves in our constitution. It is precisely the Lords’ uniquely unelected character and sui generis composition that enables it to enrich our dynamic political constitution.
Firstly, the House of Lords is conventionally known as the ‘revising chamber’, given that its primary remit is to scrutinise and amend legislative bills drafted by the government. In this manner, it serves as a pivotal check on the power of government and functions as an effective counterbalance against elective dictatorship by preventing bills from being passed with minimal scrutiny by the party-political House of Commons. An elected upper chamber would upset the Lords’ remit in balancing the House of Commons. Currently, and indicative of its mature average age, the Lords is composed of a panoply of personally distinguished experts in their respective fields, from politics, the arts, finance and manufacturing, which can lead to debates of high quality and a broad level of intellectual firepower. It is this that makes peers uniquely positioned to temper problems with proposed legislation, maximise legislative effectiveness, and hold the government to account in a way that elected representatives may not be able to do. This is epitomised by how the Lords’ Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee was able to prevent a statutory instrument from being instituted by the government that would have slashed billions of pounds of welfare payments without a debate on the issue in the Commons[13].
Secondly, the unelected nature of the Lords facilitates independent thinking as members are free from the constraints of party whips or the ever-present threat of re-election, both of which affect the decision-making of MPs. Indeed, currently about a quarter of the Lords’ members sit without party political affiliation – ‘crossbenchers’[14] – and even the ones affiliated with a party need not worry about defying the government for threat of expulsion given their security of tenure. These facets of independence combine to enable the non-partisan scrutiny of government bills, less rancour and more collaborative debates, and concerted cross-party work, allowing peers to obtain a more nuanced understanding of the minutiae of bills and how the law will impact the UK. For example, in 2020, the Lords defeated the government and the House of Commons in its bid to enact the Internal Market Bill on the grounds that the provisions would break international law and erode the UK’s international standing[15]. An elected chamber poses a distinct risk of sacrificing this expertise. In all likelihood, the electoral system, with its campaigning, canvassing and electioneering, would encourage seasoned political operators (former MPs and Ministers) of the major parties to run for election, leading to the most politically astute candidates or best campaigners, not necessarily the most competent, winning on party-lines at the expense of the most expert and nonpartisan professionals. This political bias could limit the industry-based capital of a second chamber.
Thirdly, Labour’s report has not made clear the precise power distribution and relationship that their second chamber would have with the House of Commons; this is problematic because a new chamber could challenge the primacy of the House of Commons. The members of the new chamber would have just as much legitimacy as the members in the Commons, which could lead to the expansion of the chamber from a revising one and the upsetting of numerous political conventions constraining the Lords. Hence, the proposal could risk legislative inertia from longer delays and the frustration of the elected government’s legislative agenda due to blockages.
A more pragmatic approach to reform
Instead of expending vast amounts of political endeavour on abolition, a more pragmatic approach would be to enact targeted reform to the existing model which would neatly preserve the Lords’ constitutional effectiveness.
Firstly, as opined by the Lord Speaker’s Committee in 2017, its size could be capped to around 600 members, which would make total membership slightly less than the House of Commons but large enough to allow it to maintain its current level of activities and expertise[16]. This is a sensible idea and akin to what happens in most legislative chambers globally. If appointments could only be made when there are vacancies or prime ministers could only appoint members from an annual party allocation, the numbers would remain stable and appointers incentivised to only ennoble those genuinely intending to make a contribution to the House. This limit could be complemented by a mandatory retirement age, modelled on the compulsory retirement age of 75 years imposed on the judiciary[17]. The corollary would be the continued space for new members, refreshing the Lords’ expertise with up-to-date business insight, and the maintenance of public confidence in the health and capacity of members to work.
Secondly, the House of Lords would greatly benefit from a more demanding appointment process and a more robust appointment commission. The independent House of Lords Appointments Commission could be endowed with a statutory mandate to veto ‘unsuitable’ nominations by the prime minister and political leaders. Buttressing this power should be more demanding propriety criteria, which could include requiring nominees to demonstrate a sufficient willingness and capacity to contribute to the work of the House of Lords. The robustness of the appointments process could be further reinforced by imposing on the Commission the duty to take account of the total number of appointments, overall size, and composition of the House (including peers’ political affiliations, geographic region of representation, and industry) when nominating members. These measures would take a leap forward in fostering a more fair and meritorious system and ultimately benefit the quality of law-making. It would lead to a broader pool of talent at the public’s service and enhance the legitimacy of the chamber without undermining the positive contribution that it makes to the UK.
It is, thus, accepted that the House of Lords is imperfect and would undoubtedly benefit from constitutional reform. However, Labour’s answer is regrettably to use ‘a sledgehammer to crack a nut’.
Image: CC2:0//Roger Harris via Flickr.
“Refreshingly ambiguous” – Review of Wishbone
It would be most people’s worst nightmare to break up with a partner only to immediately find out that they are bound to seven days of each other’s company in the same apartment. It is in these very circumstances that Ti and Ro, the protagonists of Peach Productions’ Wishbone, written by Coco Cottam and performed at the Burton Taylor Studio in sixth week, suddenly find themselves, when they test positive for COVID-19 hours after Ro breaks up with Ti. Giving the audience a glimpse into seven days with Ti and Ro, Wishbone offers an insightful and tender portrayal of the complicated emotions tied up in a relationship which is far from perfect, but too good to lose, and what happens when a couple is forced to confront these feelings together.
The play opens with Ti (Rosa Calcraft) and Ro (Kaitlin Horton-Samuel), who are dressed in flowing skirts and glittering shirts, moving to music on a stage shimmering in dark blue light. An interpretative dance sequence sees them coming together and splitting apart again, by turns intimate and hostile, delicate and violent, so that it is unclear as to the nature of the relationship of the two flitting figures; an image which prescores the play’s exploration of the changing tides of the characters’ emotions. The music accompanying the dancing is Sound Designer Julia Males’ remix of a classic Schellenberger piece with the introduction to WTC by contemporary alternative trio Unloved; its jolting beat complements the dancers’ alternately abrupt and fluid movements. There is something electric in this opening, appropriate to the electricity we come to discover still fizzles between the two, no matter how much they may try to deny it.
Cottam’s original script is as engaging as it is honest. Arguments and simmering anger are balanced with intimate dialogues, and conversations about apparently mundane topics like a chicken sandwich are compellingly humorous. Lydia Free’s direction subtly brings out the complexities of the characters’ feelings of resentment, nostalgia, love, and anger, and draws out the script’s most poignant moments, fusing Cottam’s lyrical writing with the magic of the visual and auditory components of the play. However, as dynamic as the play is, it remains grounded in truth – as an audience, we felt that we were being given a privileged look into the lives and conversations of a real (ex-) couple.
This was certainly aided by the onstage chemistry between Horton-Samuel and Calcraft, which was some of the best I have seen in student theatre. The actors bounced off each other, meeting energy with energy, making their interactions wholly entertaining to watch. Horton-Samuel’s Ro is down-to-earth, straight-forward and resolute, but Ti is clearly her weak spot. Calcraft makes for a bubbly Ti, and believably delivers her lines with notes of humour and exasperation.
In days 1 to 3, indicated at the beginning of each scene by text projected onto the back wall, we witness why the two might be crushingly incompatible, a request to spread some jam on bread quickly escalating into a row. Many of their exchanges are in raised tones, Calcraft and Samuel-Horton convincingly portraying the catharsis of finally being able to express months of pent-up frustration. Equally, in days 4 to 6, we witness why the two work so well together. In a lengthy phone conversation, Ro explains her feelings about Ti, saying how she is experiencing ‘the ache’ about their break-up – but she emphatically reiterates that ‘it’s not love’. We doubt this, as we see an increase in their physical proximity as the play progresses, and they transform from being aloof with one another to being more tender and intimate.
By Day 6, it seems like they might almost choose to stay together after all, snuggling in bed, laughing, and remembering happy times, like their first giggly meeting at a life-drawing class. It is heart-warming to see. The delicate pink and white tapestry suspended on the back wall of Izzy Kori’s set softly underscores the tenderness and beauty which, despite everything, is at the core of Ti and Ro’s relationship. At the end of Day 6, Ro asks, ‘what happens tomorrow? What happens to us?’, a nod to their life after their period of compulsory confinement ends. The audience is wondering the same thing, but all Ti replies is ‘I don’t know’.
Wishbone’s ending is refreshingly ambiguous. Whether Ti and Ro end up staying together or not is unclear – it could genuinely go either way, as the play has so successfully shown. The symbol of the wishbone serves to underline this sense of the uncertainty about their future; Ti and the audience both are keen to know what it is that Ro wished for with the wishbone earlier in the play, and what it could mean for her and Ti’s relationship. As Peach Productions’ first show, Wishbone was a sold-out success – and with good reason. The introspective script, paired with strong and nuanced performances from the two actors and suitably graceful visual and auditory elements rendered the play a beautifully crafted piece of theatre.
Image Credit: Coco Cottam
Oxford Vice Chancellor receives Damehood for services to education
Vice-Chancellor Professor Louise Richardson has been awarded a Damehood for her services to Higher Education.
Dame Richardson received the honour of a Damehood from King Charles at Windsor Castle on Wednesday, December 14. The award ceremony follows her being named Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (DBE) in June 2022 in recognition of her distinguished career as both an academic and a leader of various universities. In a statement released after the announcement of the 2022 Queen’s Birthday Honours, the Vice-Chancellor expressed her delight at receiving the award and was honoured that her and her colleagues’ work, as well as the field of High Education in general, was recognised in this way.
Dame Richardson began her career as a professor of political science with a focus in international security and terrorism at Harvard University. There she received numerous awards for her excellence in undergraduate teaching. She made history in 2009 and 2016 when she became the first female Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of St. Andrews and the first female Vice-Chancellor of Oxford respectively. During her tenure as head of Oxford, she has worked to secure important donations to the university, such as the £150 million donation from Stephen Schwarzman to fund humanities research. Under her leadership access schemes have also increased, including a pledge to admit 25% of British students from underrepresented backgrounds by 2023 and the creation of the Astrophoria Foundation Year programme. Her management of the university during the COVID-19 pandemic was also crucial for the development of the Oxford-AstraZeneca and other therapies for the disease.
Her work at Oxford included vital institutional changes, but did not erase Oxford’s often controversial past. Dame Richardson has spoken out against renaming buildings and demolishing statues of controversial figures like Cecil Rhodes, arguing that we should not hold historical figures to our constantly changing and oftentimes hypocritical modern standards. In an interview with Cherwell earlier this year, she reiterated her stance on free speech, stating that no student at Oxford should have a “right to not be offended” and that discomfort with one’s ideas was a fundamental part of personal and academic growth.
In January 2023, Dame Richardson will begin a new position as president of the philanthropic fund, the Carnegie Corporation of New York. She will be succeeded as Vice-Chancellor of Oxford by Professor Irene Tracey.
Image credit: OUImages/John Cairns
Voter Identification: A dangerous pathway to unnecessary discrimination
As Britain enters its so-called ‘winter of discontent’, the biggest change to our electoral system in decades quietly passed through the House of Commons to little fanfare on Tuesday night. From now on, everyone voting in the UK will be required to bring with them a form of legal identification. It might seem like a harmless and sensible change on the surface but the potential problems run far deeper.
First and foremost, it is important to consider why the Conservative party claims that these latest measures are necessary. The only practical reason that they have come up with is to put an end to ‘voter fraud’. The reality though is that this barely features in UK elections, this new policy is, as Angela Rayner put it, “a solution searching for a problem’. According to the House of Commons Library there have been just four convictions of voter impersonation in the last decade. During that time there have been 242 484 668 votes cast across elections in the UK (that comes in at 0.0000017%). Newcastle University’s Alistair Clark conducted a nationwide survey that found just 0.7% of poll workers had any suspicion of voter fraud at their stations. So, given that voter fraud is clearly not a significant issue in this country, one is left wondering what the true motivation is for the Tories.
The biggest problem with ID requirements is that they are inherently discriminatory. Although they might be commonplace in other countries in Europe and across the world, these places also provide their citizens with ID cards. If it wasn’t for Conservative opposition during the Blair years, the chances are that we would have it here too. As a result, voting is restricted to those with passports, driving licences, and other paid forms of identification that 4% of the population (1.9 million people) don’t have. Not only does this lock those people out of the democratic process but those without are disproportionately younger and poorer, thus skewing the electorate in favour of the Conservative party. For an example of this, one need look no further than travel passes. If you are over the age of 60 you can use your travel card as a form of official identification but for those under that age, they are invalid. The reality is that this policy is clearly one instituted as an easy win for the Conservatives that pleases their supporter base and goes unnoticed by much of the opposition. Ideologically, it is completely incongruous with a party whose official policy is still against ID cards.
Even among those who have photo IDs, countless studies and trials have shown that when these laws are introduced, electoral participation falls. Northern Ireland introduced the policy in 2002 and supporters point to its success. However, subsequent elections saw turnout fall by 3%. In 2019, people in 10 local areas were required to bring identification to vote as part of a pilot scheme. These small-scale schemes saw hundreds turned away and 0.7% of them failing to return with suitable ID despite the fact that they had access to it. In an environment where electoral participation is looking to be maximised any restriction or added difficulty in the democratic process is surely counterintuitive.
Aside from the clearly dangerous slippery slope of making the fundamental right of democratic participation more difficult, there are clear practical issues with the policy’s implementation. These have been identified and outlined by the Electoral Commission. The government is insisting on implementing these changes for the local elections in May 2023 despite the fact that councils across the country have warned that they have ‘insufficient time’ to prepare. After disastrous late changes to rules ahead of the Scottish local elections in 2007, the Electoral Commission recommended against any alterations within six months of polling day. Elisa Irvine is the head of administration at the Commission and said, “We have raised concerns with the UK government that the delays we have seen to date, and the timetable for introduction, mean that these important considerations may not be fully met when the new policy is implemented.” The fact that the commission itself is calling so clearly for a delay and reconsideration of these proposals should easily be enough to cause concern. The training of officials and introduction of the technology to make the systems workable are estimated to cost £180 000 000 over the next ten years – a cost coming at a time when the country is in a more dire economic state than at any point in recent memory.
So, this policy represents an expensive and unworkable solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, rushed through parliament to little fanfare in an attempt to find an easy win for the Conservative base. Even more worrying though is its discriminatory nature and the dangerous restriction on the democratic process that it represents.
Image: CC2:0//via Wikimedia Commons
The Silenced Majority: The Forty-Year-Old Conspiracy to Abolish American Democracy
People across the world were rightfully horrified when a mob of angry Trump supporters descended on the U.S. Capitol on 6th January 2021, attempting to overturn the 2020 election. But this brief and spontaneous act was harmless in comparison to a much more covert, forty-year long, institutional plot to overthrow American democracy. And it might all come to a head this week in the Supreme Court case, Moore v. Harper.
As of now, state legislatures set the rules for how both federal and state elections are conducted. They determine how people register to vote, when polls open and close, and what ballots are valid. They also have the power to redraw the boundaries of electoral districts every ten years to account for shifting demographics. This is a tremendous amount of power to give elected lawmakers—especially since the rules that they set have direct bearing on their own re-election. They can redraw district boundaries to favour their party by ‘packing’ and ‘cracking’. ‘Packing’ involves concentrating all voters who oppose them into a single district, while ‘cracking’ thins out any remaining opposition voter power by dividing it across many districts. State legislatures can also make it more difficult for people to vote by shortening voting times, suddenly moving polling locations, and altering the rules of registration at the last minute. Republican lawmakers have wielded these two tools—gerrymandering and voter suppression—with expertise. For example, in the 2018 state elections, the Republicans won the most seats in both Wisconsin and North Carolina, despite the Democrats winning a majority of the popular vote. Since all their support was ‘packed’ within one gerrymandered district, most votes for Democrats were ultimately wasted.
So far, these powers have been somewhat checked by governors and state judges. Both North Carolina and Wisconsin have Democratic governors who have vetoed Republican attempts at voter suppression, and State Courts that have blocked redistricting maps on account of racial gerrymandering, arguing that it violates the constitution. But now, the North Carolina legislature is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to eliminate these checks on their power. They are citing the so-called ‘independent state legislature theory’, a misreading of the U.S. Constitution that gives state legislatures near-unlimited power over how elections are conducted. The Supreme Court will hear this case, dubbed Moore v. Harper, this week on December 7th. If the state legislatures win, they will be able to redraw district boundaries however they want and pass as many laws suppressing voters based on race, gender, and political affiliations as they please. They may even be able to nullify their state’s popular vote in presidential elections—something Trump attempted to do in 2020. Governors and state judges would be made powerless, state constitutions would be made worthless, and the United States would be made into a Putin-style regime, where instead of voters choosing their leaders, leaders choose their voters.
It is difficult to imagine the Supreme Court suddenly ruling in favour of such a blatantly anti-democratic effort. But this has been a long time coming. Since 1992, Republicans have only won the popular vote in a presidential election once, and as the country gets more and more diverse, the Republican voter base of white men will continue to shrink. The Republican establishment knows this. After the Democratic victory in the 2022 midterms, Republican leader Mitch McConnell told the press that he “never predicted a red wave”, and that moderates and independents were “frightened” by his party’s extreme stances on abortion and social security. Rather than attempting to moderate and reach out to a broader base, the Republicans have embraced minoritarian rule, doubling down on defending undemocratic elements of the American political system, relying on legalised bribary to win elections, and filibustering the policy goals favoured by a majority of Americans when they lose.
The Supreme Court has been more than happy to accommodate these efforts. In the 2000 election, when the results in Florida were incredibly slim, the Supreme Court halted a recount (which would have resulted in a victory for the Democrat), and instead handed the presidency to George Bush. In the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission decision, the Supreme Court ruled that campaign finance laws somehow violated the right to freedom of speech, allowing large corporations to spend an unlimited amount of money on election campaigns. And in the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, which overruled a part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which prohibited states that historically discriminated against African Americans from changing election rules without federal approval. With this cases in mind, it is difficult to imagine the Supreme Court ruling against this new effort to further America’s institutional decay.
The Supreme Court wasn’t always a hodgepodge of the worst reactionaries in the country. In fact, in the 20th century, they made some of the most progressive rulings, including ending segregation in Brown v. Board of Education, creating the Miranda warning in Miranda v. Arizona, and of course legalising abortion nationwide in Roe v. Wade. But these decisions sparked backlash. In 1982, a group of conservative law students founded the Federalist Society, a reaction against what they deemed ‘judicial activism’, their term for rulings in favour of basic civil rights. They advocated an alternative judicial philosophy called ‘originalism’, which argued that judges should interpret the U.S. Constitution with reference to the ‘original meaning’ intended by its writers, rather than as a living document. The Federalist Society quickly became a factory for conservative jurists, and the Republican administrations of Reagan, the Bushes and Trump eagerly accelerated their careers, placing them in some of the highest legal positions. Judges were increasingly appointed based on ideology, rather than merit.
As of 2022, six out of nine Supreme Court justices once belonged to the Federalist Society – five of which were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. With Supreme Court appointments being for life, it is unlikely that this number will decrease any time soon. And in the meantime, they have done and will continue to do whatever they can to undermine American democracy. Returning to the upcoming Moore v. Harper decision, Trump-appointed justices, Brett Kavanagh and Neil Gorsuch, have explicitly endorsed the independent state legislature theory, and Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, appointed by the Bushes, have an abysmal record on voting rights. Chief Justice John Roberts has become less conservative over time in an effort to restore some legitimacy to the court. But even if he joins the three liberal justices, unless he can bring one of the five conservative justices with him, it is likely that December 7th will be one of the most infamous days in American history.America is often viewed by Europeans as a very right-wing country—but it is not the American people who are right-wing. In the midterm elections, they firmly rejected Trump, draconian abortion laws, and election denialism. Yet against their will, conservative elites have entrenched themselves into multiple levels of the American government, from lawmakers who gerrymander election maps to lock themselves in power, lobbyists who obstruct legislation combating climate change, and conservative justices who are all too willing to stand by and let democracy slowly be strangled. While QAnon-spouting Trumpers certainly are frightening, these black-robed theocrats send a shiver down my spine unlike any other.
Image Credit: Kjetil Ree/CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
The palace gates are opened: watching Spain vs Morocco live from Rabat
RABAT, Morocco – Not knowing a single soul in the entire country, I was sceptical about what lay ahead of me. Pressed against the window, a stocky Moroccan man was seated next to me, his name was Imad. We soon began talking and got along quite well, so much so that he offered for me to stay with his family. Another man, on the end of the row, quickly butted in, also offering to host me. They asked me about my travels. I barely knew the answers myself but, in short, I was to attend Darija (Moroccan Arabic) classes for three months, whilst polishing my French.
After haggling for some time with a taxi driver, I arrived at a Riad in the Old Medina: the souks were narrow, busy and bustling with an array of colours, smells and characters.
Several weeks later, I wanted to start fending for myself, so I moved to a more residential quarter – l’Océan. Rabat, compared to Fez, Casa Blanca and Marrakech, is fairly calm – a small costal hub that was once a port for Berber pirates. Although it is the country’s administrative capital, rabaati life is relaxed, close-knit and always behind schedule. The one occasion you can guarantee punctuality, however, is when the nation plays football.
It is the first time Morocco has ever reached the semi-finals of a World Cup. For many, the Atlas Lions represent not only the Arab world, but all of Africa; the weight of a continent is spread across their shoulders.
Last week, I was fortunate enough to experience Morocco’s football enthusiasm in their relentless match against neighbouring Spain. Hours and hours before each previous game, Moroccan fans could be found excitedly blowing horns and waving flags. But, on the morning of the 6th, against the Red Fury, the ambiance in the city was somewhat different. There was an eerie silence, with an occasional dima maghrib, as people paced down the streets, finishing up business for the afternoon – nervousness would be an understatement. Every single café, tearoom and bar in Rabat was jam-packed from the moment they opened their doors at 8am. Finding breakfast and a coffee was near impossible. With no place to watch the match, by some miracle, my friend Hamada called me 20 minutes before kick-off, urging me to join him and his new girlfriend. So, I marched over to the regal zone of the city known as Hassan, where I was met at a restaurant-bar named Les Deux Palais. With just ten minutes before the match started, there were no chairs left. Hamada worked tirelessly to find us a seat. By chance, a group of men were outside smoking the last bits of what they will, when they saw our struggle and simply asked “sblyoonee?”, my friend replied, “la, ngleezee.” Magically, an armchair appeared in front of me.
The secluded bar was rather uninviting from the outside; each time the grand cedar doors opened, a thick cloud of smoke was let out. Inside, it was a ruckus, everyone was fidgety and restless, making anxious small talk to try and calm their nerves. Five minutes before kick-off, the doors were bolted shut, Les Deux Palais was well beyond its capacity. Most people were eating tapas; my friend and I tucked into a tortilla on our laps. As the national anthem rang out, a sea of red and green swayed gently from left to right. The whistle was blown, and everyone sharply found their seats.
In the first few minutes I was probing for predictions. Normally, the fans are optimistic about how many goals the Lions will score, this time however, everybody was clueless, “any goal will be a blessing, inshallah”, Rania El Hibari; “our team is super strong brother, but I cannot comment. I have no idea what will happen in the next 90 minutes”, Ahmed Chmichat.
The first half was indeed tight; there was lots of applause and high pitch weleweleweles. Morocco had its first chance with Nayef Aguerd but there was no success; Marco Asensio of Spain narrowly missed a goal. At halftime, Morocco were on the ropes as Spain had greater possession and presence in their opponent’s box. Hope was still not lost though; after all, Morocco scored its two winning goals against Belgium in the final 15 minutes. Later, Spanish midfielder, Dani Olmo, would make an attempt, but Yassine Bounou would bat it away. With the match going into extra time, a penalty shootout was looking more and more likely. For the fans watching in Rabat, it was a sickening wait, for I, a foreigner, it was thrilling.
Morocco’s first goal was sweet and sure as Abdelhamid Sabiri pounded the ball into the centre of the net. Pablo Sarabia for Spain then attempted to place the ball in the bottom right corner, instead hitting the post; 1-0 Morocco. Hakim Ziyech then secured Morocco’s second goal with yet another powerful shot; 2-0. Next, it was Bounou’s chance to shine as he quickly jerked before diving to his left to deflect a Spanish shot. Badr Benoun then tried to slowly tap the ball in, but it was brought to an immediate halt by Unai Símon. Again, Spain had no luck against Bounou as he palmed away another shot. Finally, it was down to Achraf Hakimi who would bring the match to a close and score the third goal for Morocco’s win.
Shortly after, the entire city took to the streets in revolutionary fashion. It was a race to Morocco’s Telecom Tower in Hay Riad. On our way, people of all ages were hanging out of cars singing to Raï and Chaabi, draped in flags and waving at pedestrians dancing in the road. On this one occasion, the guards outside the Palais Royal removed the barrier to the road adjacent to the King’s garden, saluting us as we sped past. Outside the Telecom Tower supporters were waving red flares; letting off fireworks; climbing up flagpoles; and beating drums. Even the King made a surprise appearance. Everyone was in high spirits and car horns rang out into the early hours of the morning.
In football, yes, but in life in general, Moroccans are extremely proud and friendly people. They kindly shared their victory with me and will do so with every other country not remaining in the World Cup. Even if they do not win, their progress to tonight’s semi-final has been enough to build a new confidence for underdog countries in tournaments to follow. Dima maghrib.
Image: Alfie Williams-Hughes