Friday 12th September 2025
Blog Page 194

McCoys Kebab van returns to Pembroke Square 

Rufus Hall
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McCoys Kebab van returns to Pembroke Square 

A popular kebab van, McCoys Express Food, has returned to Pembroke Square. 

The van had previously closed whilst waiting for the Drivers and Vehicles Standards Agency to grant its operating licence. 

Mccoys advertises itself on Facebook as “Oxford’s favourite kebab van.”

The return may prove controversial however, as Pembroke College, situated on Pembroke square, has made attempts to have McCoys moved since 2003. 

The college previously claimed that students “run the gauntlet to get home as revellers flock around the van”, citing those that buy food from the van after a night at the pub or club.

Last year, the college failed again to get the kebab van moved. Instead, McCoys was able to announce on Facebook eight days ago that it is “coming back with a bang. Hope you guys are hungry.”

The van operates seven days a week between 6.30pm and 4am. Upon its return, it will also offer a delivery service between 6.30pm and 2am. 

McCoys has also announced that it will be adding mozzarella dippers to its menu. 

When asked, a Pembroke student commented that students are generally excited about the return, particularly because of its convenience for the college. The student felt that the noise complaints were not a serious problem.

Strike action cancels oral language exams for finalists

Cecilia Catmur
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Strike action cancels oral language exams for finalists

Oxford University Modern Languages oral exams have been cancelled for final year students due to strike action.

Students were informed of this cancellation on the afternoon of 5th April following confirmation from the University and College Union (UCU) that a marking and assessment boycott (MAB) would begin on Thursday 20 April.

The University assures students that “the Faculty’s decision has not been taken lightly and that the cancellation of the FHS Oral will not affect the overall outcome of your degree”.

In two emails to students in early April, the University explained that the mark for the oral exam is “unlikely to make a difference to degree classification”. The oral exam normally only counts for half of a paper when a candidate’s marks are calculated by the ‘normal route’.

The oral exam is also not accounted for when higher class degrees are awarded by the ‘alternative route’, where the final classification is based on the number of papers with a mark in a given class.
One final year student told Cherwell that she feels that “in general speaking should be worth more of the degree and valued more than half a paper”.

The University has acknowledged that they “[c]onsider it important that your [final year] oral work during the course be acknowledged on your final degree transcript”. Thus, whilst no Distinctions will be granted, final year candidates will be given a Pass or Fail for the oral component.

The certificate of a Pass will be given upon confirmation that the candidate has attended and actively participated in eight oral classes (for each language if studying multiple) this academic year. This is a criterion the University expects the majority “will have no difficulty in meeting” by the middle of Trinity. Candidates can make up missed sessions at the start of Trinity.

Hearing the news of the cancellation one final year student said she reacted with “initial disappointment because their year group had been building up to it after three years worth of classes and extra sessions. In prioritising speaking, other aspects were slightly neglected during this time, such as literature”.

The student pointed out that this exam is also the opportunity for final year languages students to “properly show progress after the year abroad”, suggesting that speaking “is the most rewarding part of the degree where improvement is most noticeable”, and is “most directly relevant to the year abroad”.

However, the student did acknowledge that not all the revision will be fruitless as “for most people speaking preparation is helpful for paper 1 (writing)”. In addition, the student felt that “there’s not much else the University could have done due to the lateness of the strike announcement… there was no real good alternative”.

Some students responded to the original email with alternative suggestions to ensure the oral could take place. However, the University confirmed in a follow-up email that none of these would be possible.

The modern language oral exams were scheduled to take place between Monday 17th and Friday 21st April (0th week). Some students suggested having the orals the week before (at the end of week -1) to avoid industrial action. The University pointed out the following obstacles which made this impossible. Firstly, the closure of University faculty offices for Easter from Thursday 6th April until Tuesday 11th April would leave only a couple of days upon return to organize the orals before the proposed date. The University described the organisation of the orals as “a hugely complex operation” which “would not be possible in two working days”.

Furthermore, the University told students that they “had to take this prompt action because [they] are not able to guarantee the attendance, at the exams, of all examiners… Cancellation was necessary to avoid any uncertainty and, most importantly, to ensure that candidates are all treated equally. […] With the boycott commencing on the Thursday, it will be impossible to guarantee equitable treatment for all the c. 300 candidates across the week.”

In the follow up email they expand on this reasoning. During the Easter break, many academic and administrative colleagues may take some annual leave, and therefore not be reading emails. Some of the candidates, examiners, native speaker assessors and Exams Schools staff may have left Oxford for the break, possibly going abroad. They may not be able to return in time to hold the exams early.


Furthermore, they decline the possibility of postponing the exams in their first message, sympathising with the students that it “would interfere with your revision and the start of the written papers (we are mindful that some Joint Schools papers start as early as the end of the first week of full term, Friday 28 April)”.

A student that Cherwell spoke to described the general year group reaction as “mixed”. It seemed that generally among others, “bilingual people were disappointed”. However, “some students were relieved, for example Russian students, as they didn’t have a year abroad and didn’t feel prepared”. Furthermore, “people doing ab initio languages who had problems with visas because of Brexit, so could only spend limited time in the country, were also on the whole relieved about it”.

The University advises those who will not be able to attend the eight classes to speak with their tutors. They mention that a ‘Mitigating Circumstances notice’ may be suggested for some students further to this conversation.

For Russian and Czech students the cancellation of the oral component also means the Listening Comprehension is also cancelled, as it is part of the oral exam.

This action has raised some concern amongst students over the possibility of further exams being cancelled. However a student told Cherwell that “the faculty haven’t given us any details about whether it will affect further exams”. Given that exams begin on 22nd May, the student expressed hope that the oral will be the only assessment affected.

An Oxford University spokesperson said that the University is “recognising our colleagues’ right to take industrial action” whilst “working to minimise disruption for students – and in particular… taking all reasonable steps to ensure no student is disadvantaged in examinations and assessments.”


The University assured that “with specific regards to the cancellation of Modern Language oral exams, Exam Board Chairs will ensure that no students are disadvantaged in any way as a consequence of this action”.

Daft Punk’s ‘Random Access Memories’: A Tenth Anniversary Retrospective

Kira Atanasiu
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Daft Punk’s ‘Random Access Memories’: A Tenth Anniversary Retrospective

This spring marks the tenth anniversary of French duo Daft Punk’s fourth and last album, Random Access Memories. There’s a chance the name doesn’t sound familiar to you now, but this album was big at the time—both before and after it came out. The rollout is still remarkable in how slow and gargantuan it was, with over two months of anticipation-building teasers anywhere from physical billboards to Coachella to SNL. And, when the album finally came out, the reception matched the hype—lead single ‘Get Lucky’ was the group’s first and only UK #1, and Daft Punk were essentially the protagonists of the 2014 Grammy Awards, two white-clad robot-heads collecting win after win after win, topping it off with the fifth and most important ‘Album of the Year’.

This still does not explain why we should be looking back at this album ten years on. Albums happen, they get big, even huge, but very few remain in the public consciousness after the last of their singles fizzles out of the Top 100. An album isn’t a child, we have no obligation to celebrate its birthdays, be they double-digits or not. 

That said—when it comes to Daft Punk, it’s a bit of a different story. 

Daft Punk have been around since 1997, which means we’ve had enough time to see whether their sound has had any effect on the landscape of music as a whole. And, decidedly, it has. Not only have countless artists from Avicii and Skrillex to Jay-Z heralded the duo’s early releases as life-changing, but their second album Discovery has often been credited as a pivotal predecessor to the EDM genre. So, the obvious question follows: if Daft Punk’s early 2000s music bled over into the pop and dance music of the 2010s, could we now be seeing the echoes of their 2013 project in today’s pop trends?

I’m arguing that we absolutely are.

For us to understand what Random Access Memories represents, we need to understand what it meant as a change of direction from Daft Punk’s previous sound. A lot of the talk surrounding the album does not make sense otherwise—typical album-writing activities like doing studio sessions or playing real drums or collaborating with other artists are mentioned with a tone of awed surprise, as if they are the strangest most topsy-turvy concepts. However, hearing even one Daft Punk track written before 2008 immediately explains why the duo’s fourth album was the first one they recorded in a studio: their signature sound is usually created not out of live instruments but an intricate mesh of samples chaotically worked into dance music (only to be lovingly detangled by meticulous fans).

Random Access Memories took what could be argued to be the complete opposite approach—instead of upcycling retro songs into a new-sounding product, the duo instead attempted to create music with newly recorded instruments but carrying a retro groove. Iconic disco guitarist and producer Nile Rodgers, whose instantly recognisable bright-timbred guitar appears on multiple Random Access Memories tracks, says of the project that “it’s like they went back to go forward”. If the early 2010s, when the album was being composed, are full to the brim with electronic and digital-age-sounding music—from the 2009 robopop of ‘Boom Boom Pow’ to the 2012 meme-fuelled EDM trap of ‘Harlem Shake’—then returning to vintage synthesisers and acoustic instruments is downright counterculture for a dance music group. As ‘Fragments of Time’ feature Todd Edwards says, “You’re listening to [the tracks] and they’re future classics. [Daft Punk] brought the sound of something that’s been lost for a long time.”

As of this March, interviews are not the only places where you can hear Edwards’ excitement over his collaboration with Daft Punk. As an early teaser for the Random Access Memories 10th Anniversary Edition, which contains 35 new minutes of demos and outtakes, the duo have released ‘The Writing of Fragments of Time’. During the track’s eight minutes, we can hear Todd Edwards and Daft Punk member Thomas Bangalter throw lyrical and melodic ideas to each other over an often-interrupted instrumental loop, a seemingly uncut recording taken directly from their songwriting session. This is very representative of Daft Punk’s method—the band’s collaborators talk of the way the duo recorded continuous improvised jams rather than any prewritten material, only to be mix-and-matched after the fact. The ‘Fragments of Time’ line “turning our days into melodies”, one that Edwards can be heard singing and then passionately complimenting during the new recording, is a brilliantly concise way to capture the spirit of Random Access Memories: recordings of jam sessions over four years and two continents end up coming together seamlessly to form the sound of the album. The result of this unorthodox recording method is an album chock-full of legends—overlaid upon each other, enmeshed with each other, or sometimes being given centre-stage to monologue about their careers like on the track ‘Giorgio by Moroder’. As soon as your ear starts picking these different building blocks apart, you get a real feel for what Bangalter meant when he claimed that “we wanted to do what we used to do with machines and samplers, (…) but with people”. 

So, the question remains. What is there in our current pop landscape that could possibly have its roots in Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories?

Well, of course, first of all we have the monogenre. This album brings together disco, funk, pop, and electronic influences in an early example of the genre that pop music has been tending towards since the mid-2010s: that is, no genre. While the monogenre was first being conceptualised around the time Random Access Memories was released, nowadays it’s a given in the current music industry. Neither newcomers, such as Lil Nas X with his record-breaking country-fusion ‘Old Town Road’, nor established voices, like Ariana Grande with her trap-infused Positions album, shy away from blending what would usually be considered disparate genres. As overlap grows between the indie, pop, rap, and rock charts, Thomas Bangalter’s quote—”we really liked the idea of breaking all the barriers between these musical genres”—starts sounding less and less about their album exclusively and more and more about the duo’s plans for music as a whole. 

But what genres do remain also seem to follow a markedly Daft-Punk-esque trajectory. The Grammy Awards’ website declares jubilantly at the end of last year that “pop has seen a disco revival seeping in over the last few years”, and gives the example of Beyonce taking inspiration from Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ for her 2022 album Renaissance—the original Donna Summer track being, of course, produced and written by Random Access Memories collaborator Giorgio Moroder. This disco revival has certainly been in full bloom post-pandemic, but the rise of retro had been building up for years—albums like Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia and The Weeknd’s After Hours follow the Daft Punk tradition in not just sampling or interpolating 70s tracks but writing new music that could have easily fit on the charts forty years earlier. The Weeknd is actually important to mention here: not only has he been named “one of the biggest torchbearers of retro”, but his two 2016 hits ‘Starboy’ and ‘I Feel It Coming’ are the last two projects on which Daft Punk ever worked on as a duo, leaving The Weeknd with the seemingly-unlikely but actually very fitting responsibility of carrying forward Daft Punk’s legacy. 

I want to make it clear that I’m not claiming Random Access Memories to be the one album that brought the retro-pastiche revolution to pop music; I can’t ignore the impact of other hugely influential musicians like Amy Winehouse and Lana del Ray when it comes to the vintage-pop trend. What I am arguing, however, is that when the Cherwell review for Random Access Memories, written almost exactly ten years ago, called the album ‘defining’, I get to confirm that as true an entire decade later. Defining, absolutely, for Daft Punk as songwriters and musicians, but also more largely defining for pop music as a whole.

Music and Cosplay: In conversation with MAKO Girl and cosplayer, A-Ni Ochoa

Deborah Ogunnoiki
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Music and Cosplay: In conversation with MAKO Girl and cosplayer, A-Ni Ochoa
A-Ni Ochoa from her Twitter profile

Cosplay, a portmanteau of ‘costume play’, is an activity and performance art where in which participants wear costumes to represent a specific character. The term was invented by Japanese film producer and director, Nobuyuki Takahashi, after seeing costumed fans at the 1984 World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles. However, it’s said that the history of cosplaying lies in the masquerade balls in 15th-century Europe. Gradually, the practice grew, developed, and evolved into modern-day cosplaying. 

Of the many modern-day cosplayers, A-Ni Ochoa is one of the most well-known on the internet. With 940k followers on TikTok, the music artists’ cosplays have captivated the internet. She tells Cherwell all about the world of cosplaying and what it means for her as a Black woman and music artist.

A-Ni tells us that her interest in cosplaying came to surface in early 2018, when her older sister was into cosplay and A-Ni was invited to go with her to MOMOCON, knowing that she had an interest in anime/gaming. She said she “loved everything about it!” and “was in awe of the cosplays that people had and I wanted to be able to be a part of that.”

However, as cosplaying enters more mainstream media, issues like ethnicity and gender become more and more controversial. Issues such as blackface, brownface and yellowface become greater topics of debate as many cosplayers still feel that it’s acceptable in order to be true to their cosplays. Further issues are created where cosplayers of colour face criticism when cosplaying white characters, facing backlash claiming that ‘that character isn’t black you can’t cosplay as them’. 

I ask A-Ni what it means to her to be a black cosplayer when the cosplaying community and the anime community can oftentimes be hostile to black people. A-Ni tells us that “It’s very disheartening to hear that people would be hostile to black cosplayers. To me it feels as if we haven’t progressed much as a community. Cosplaying is supposed to be fun and feel like a safe space that anyone can enjoy, regardless of what their skin complexion is or race. We have to support and protect POC cosplayers so that they don’t feel discouraged or worry about what others might think about them cosplaying. To help combat that, having a diverse community and a safe space within it can definitely be the start of making a better impact!” 

Her positive attitude truly surprised me. As I myself am a big fan of her cosplays and the general cosplay community, I know too well the levels of abuse that cosplayers can receive, especially people of colour and women. I ask her if she herself has ever experienced colourism or racism when sharing her cosplays, and how she deals with it. “As a black cosplayer, there are often times when I get a wave of hate comments from cosplaying characters that aren’t black. I would get called racial slurs, and many other things, and even had experiences of people messaging me that they didn’t like that I cosplayed a certain character.

Despite getting those types of comments, I ignore them completely and to be honest it never affects me at all. Due to me already being in the music industry prior to cosplaying I’ve already built the thick skin for it and received worse comments on that end. But overall focusing on the hate did not get me as far as I am or halt me from doing what I love to do. It was catering to the audience that do love me and being an inspiration to other black cosplayers that got me to where I am now.”

A-Ni Ochoa is one-third of the Hip-Hop/Pop group, MAKO Girls. Based in Atlanta, the group features the three West Indian sisters Kena, Mimi, and A-Ni. The girls have performed live throughout the United States and the Bahamas with one of them as young as 14. Being in the public eye for as long as they have, and as young as they are, it’s not a surprise that A-Ni and her sisters have built a thick skin against internet trolls.

Though despite having a thick skin against those on the internet, how does she feel about the cosplayer community itself? The anime and cosplaying community has been accused many times of misogyny. Female cosplayers experiencing over-sexualisation, assault and lewd comments online. The anime community similarly has been accused of underrating its female characters and seeing them as figures of sexual desire rather than characters of genuine admiration or interest. These experiences have alienated women from cosplaying spaces and created an environment within the cosplaying community that could be said to be hostile to women. A-Ni’s take on this is that “From the experiences that I have with the anime community, I feel like the women in the community are lifting each other up constantly. I love and respect all of my mutuals because they always support any cosplay that I do. They are the first ones to comment, repost, or share my videos. And they truly make being a cosplayer worthwhile and fun. Now with the misogyny that’s been occurring, I haven’t been on receiving end of it, or heard of it happening, so I won’t be able to add too much to that topic. But that’s just my experience, especially since my audience is majority women.”

It’s beautiful that a young woman has the support of her community online. But it’s not just her female audience that supports the young cosplayer. I ask A-Ni how her family feels about her cosplays. Older generations, especially African and Caribbean parents, tend to struggle to understand things like cosplaying and anime. But A-Ni answers that “My parents are very supportive of me cosplaying, they just show it in different ways! My mom would always interact with my content, she’ll be excited for any character’s cosplay that I show her, and she loves the outfits despite her not knowing the show. Whereas my dad would see my post interact with some of them, but any milestone that I hit on my page he’ll always be one of the first to congratulate me. I am very grateful to have them.”

Though A-Ni explains that there are times when it is extremely difficult maintaining multiple social media presences as a music artist and cosplayer with her fully booked schedule. It is clear through her social media stats and bomb-ass music (stream ‘Leverage’ by MAKO Girls on Spotify!), that this is a both dedicated and talented young cosplayer and music artist. 

Hooked on Hooks? Thoughts on the current crochet craze

Ursula White
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Hooked on Hooks? Thoughts on the current crochet craze

I first learnt to crochet when I was nine, waiting for my brother to finish a sports class. I noticed one of his friend’s mums making a blanket, and was absolutely fascinated by how she was doing it. She ended up teaching me how to make a small flower, and kindly gave me one of her hooks and some wool. The next week I took back several flowers to show her and I have been crocheting ever since. It’s safe to say I was hooked (pun intended).

In the last few years I have been excited to notice a massive surge in the amount of young people who are crocheting regularly, and I think we can all agree that it is no longer just grannies making Christmas jumpers – although we love those too! Everyday on Instagram I see posts featuring everything from coasters, to bags, soft toys, and bikinis, and it is no surprise that the Instagram tag #crochet has over 46 million posts.

However, it is no secret that the crochet trend has caught the eye of fast fashion clothing brands in a concerning way. Not only have there been frequent accusations of large companies plagiarising self-employed designers work, crochet cannot be created by a machine due to its three-dimensional structure, and whilst you can get machines that design something similar, they do not look the same. For this reason crochet is a dangerously time-consuming fast fashion nightmare which is helping to fuel exploitation in sweatshops. 

When considering this I turned to Shein to see how they are marketing this trend. Shein sells a crochet bucket hat for £6.50, made of 5 floral squares and joined with double crochets. I decided to see how long it would take me to make, and was unsurprised to find that just the 4 colours of yarn required for the design would cost me £6 (prices for Hobby Craft’s own brand selection April 2023), leaving just 50p if I was to attempt to sell a similar product matching Shein’s prices. Making the squares for the hat took around 30 minutes each, so including joining time, that was at least  3 hours of making time. Whilst re-creating this hat is a fun and very manageable project it did make me very aware that fast fashion brands are not only making the market inaccessible for small business owners, but that it is almost impossible for them to be paying their workers, as even excluding materials costs the price of the product is considerably less than living wage for the time it would take to make it. 

So for those of us inspired by the infamous ‘Harry Styles cardigans’, Katie Perry’s Granny Square American Idol Dress, or Tom Daley’s Crochet Instagram page @MadewithlovebyTomDaley, who want to avoid fast fashion but don’t want to pay hundreds of pounds, it is the perfect time to grab a hook and take up a new hobby and learn to crochet!

Whether you are a crochet novice or a hardened hooker, here are my top five tips for crocheters:

1)  Buy a decent quality hook and some wool – don’t start with a ‘ready-made crochet kit’
I’m not saying you should go out and spend loads on money on a fancy hooks set or hundreds of balls of wool, but for the same price as a beginners kit from a craft store you will be able to get a metal hook and a ball of wool, and with the amount of free patterns available online it is possible to find beginner tutorials that will make a much nicer final piece than a craft store kit and can be tailored to your crochet dreams.

2)  Use a video pattern – there are lots on YouTube
On the subject of patterns…whilst ‘book’ patterns may be more traditional, video patterns have the advantage of you being able to see the creator making the stitches. This means that you don’t have to learn loads of code words – who wants to be worrying about what ch, sc, dc, hdc, and sc mean when they are just trying to make a fun hat? or worry about whether you are following a US or EU pattern (the stitches have different names!).

3)  Start with something small
Who doesn’t love finishing a project? Not only is a small project cheaper in terms of materials, the serotonin from a completed project will always be a draw for a busy student.

4)  Practise a pattern with lots of the same stitch
As with the above, getting really good at one stitch is a great way to quickly build confidence and develop your skills. Lots of simple tops and cardigans will do this, but a Granny Square is a great way to start because they use two stitches and build quickly.

5)  Pay attention to your tension
One of the biggest mistakes crocheters make is not paying attention to their tension – as your work builds, tension is what will make your stitches look even and keep your project to the right size. To keep your tension uniform, focus on the way you are holding your hook and yarn, note if the stitches feel tight or loose as you pull the hook through. It is something that gets easier with practice! And if you get stuck, check out Krista Cagle’s great article on Easy Crochet, ‘How To Get Perfect Crochet Tension’. 

Ready For Takeoff: My Little Airport and the Hong Kong Indie Scene

Charlotte Lai
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Ready For Takeoff: <em data-src=My Little Airport and the Hong Kong Indie Scene" title="Ready For Takeoff: My Little Airport and the Hong Kong Indie Scene" />

 Lyrics Translated by Charlotte Lai.

The Hong Kong music scene hasn’t quite taken off like its Korean or Japanese equivalent in recent years. With the irresistible dance-pop swagger of K-pop dominating the global music scene, the glory days of Cantopop seem long behind us, relegated to above-40 karaoke bars, late-night radio stations, and my dad’s record collection. Remember when Bruce Lee, kung fu films, and city pop were the hottest things on the market? Neither do I, but in its heyday between the ‘70s and ‘90s, Hong Kong – alongside Japan – were Asia’s pop culture leaders. Cantopop is an integral part of Hong Kong’s cultural identity – whilst still under British colonial rule in the mid-1970s, pop music sung in Cantonese resonated with an entire generation and gave rise to the stratospheric takeoff of pop stars such as Hui Koon-kit and Leslie Cheung. In the ‘90s the baton was passed onto the ‘Four Heavenly Kings’ of Cantopop: Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau, Leon Lai and Aaron Kwok, each dominating award shows, radio, and body pillow sales alike. Harry Styles, eat your heart out.

But Cantopop seems to have been left behind, whilst K-pop has continued its stratospheric rise. Cantopop album sales have plummeted from HK$2.5 billion in 1989 to just HK$200 million in 2022. Once Cantopop giants, former firebrands like Andy Lau sell concert tickets by riding off a wave of ‘80s nostalgia. From a sputtering city that hasn’t produced a real pop star since the 2000s, the genre limps on with nods from the Crazy Rich Asians soundtrack and Pinterest edits of Chungking Express. We’ve somehow poached the Arctic Monkeys to headline Clockenflap.

But this isn’t about the sorry state of Cantopop. Nor is it an insufferable, ‘have-you-seen-my Spotify Wrapped?’ rumination on ‘real’ local indie. Instead, I want to introduce one of my favourites from the modern Hong Kong music scene – My Little Airport.

With all the melancholia of Portishead and the dreamy introspection of Cigarettes After Sex, the two-piece, comprised of Nicole Au and Lam Pang (also known as Ah P), are staples of Hong Kong’s small indie music scene. Sung mostly in Cantonese, their repertoire is bursting with wit, shining through in song titles like ‘Leo, Are You Still Jumping Out Of Windows In Expensive Clothes?’ and ‘I Don’t Know How to Download Good AV Like Iris Does’, a whimsical ditty about watching Japanese porn on the Internet. Bet you’ve never heard that sentence before.

They recorded their first album in 2004, entitled 在動物園散步才是經事 (The OK Thing to Do on Sunday Afternoon Is to Toddle in the Zoo), with nothing more than an electric violin, guitar, and vocals, and subsequently established Harbour Records alongside four other indie bands from Hong Kong. 

In 2009 they started writing politically charged songs, such as ‘Divvying Up Stephen Lam’s $300,000 Salary’ and ‘Donald Tsang, please die’. Nothing if not a succinct response to Tsang’s suggestion that the 1989 Tianamen Square Massacre was insignificant compared to China’s current economic prosperity. Hong Kong music has always been shaped by our complicated (to say the least) political scene, and My Little Airport is no exception. 

With 11 albums now under their belt, My Little Airport has stayed true to their dream-pop roots with their recent release of 跟你開玩笑 (Just Kidding). Drenched in a drowsy Rickenbacker guitar wash, their release departs from their earlier whimsy and focuses instead on abandonment and wistfulness. Understated and hazy, yes, but with just enough slick pop sensibility to keep your attention the whole way through.

Fans of Beach House’s Depression Cherry or Julien Baker’s Sprained Ankle will find I’m Just Kidding With You to be a fine complement. My Little Airport maintains their characteristic stripped-back production – Lam’s electric guitar is ethereal, with a touch of fuzzy dissonance, whereas Au’s ghostly, half-spoken vocals fit seamlessly with the sedate production, perfectly capturing the soundtrack to a drowsy 3am car ride. Minor details to the production – an ever-so-slightly dissonant chord, the imperfect drone of a keyboard patch – result in a sound that departs significantly from the bombastic power-balladry of their Cantopop predecessors, resembling instead an intimate, one-take live performance. My Little Airport has traded theatricality for an LP that transports you to the midnight sleaze of Mongkok and the smell of greasepaint and fish balls at a wet market.

The album kicks off with ‘細胞’ (Cell), a juxtaposition between glittering, once-strummed guitar chords and Au’s plaintive vocals. It sets the scene for the rest of the album with its in-your-face melancholy, featuring lines like ‘I had everything / But met ghosts at the same time’ and ‘I love my every cell / I’m just sorry I never told you it would get better’ .

This less-than-cheery opener leads into the wandering beauty of ‘循環的夜’ (Repeating Nights), its upbeat (I promise!) drums and moody violin arrangement is held together by a muted bassline. Au’s vocals are mixed just a few inches closer, whisper-singing the wistful ‘You’re sea-blown and insincere / I kind of want to approach you / It could just be curiosity’. Lam’s marching-band snare drum interlude, overlaid by a melancholy synth solo, gives the tune dynamic contrast.

Circulating Nights is followed by two of my personal favourites – ‘LUNCH’ and ‘德州之戀’ (Texas Romance). ‘LUNCH’ is sung as a duet between Lam and Au, with lyrics that read like pages from a diary. The song is a sweet, heartfelt ditty, with Au’s guitar weaving a silvery thread through the performance and its hazy, reverb-drenched production reminiscent of two lovers backlit by the city glare. ‘The Romance of Germany’ is almost James Bond-esque with its haunting, suspended, tremolo-heavy guitar chords. Telling the story of a long-distance lover who has emigrated to Germany, the track itches with promise and glitters with longing. 

The album finishes with ‘我不適合聚會’ (No Gathering for Me) and ‘不要把冬天衫放回衣櫃’ (Don’t Put the Winter Clothes in the Closet). The first is laden with lounge-music melancholy, climaxing with a rare guitar solo from Au. The strings arrangement is the highlight of the track. The interplay between Lam’s guitar reverb and the haunting violin provides a soundtrack to a gathering, draped in velvet, that Au sings at the fringes of. Winter Clothes ends off the album with uptempo indie rock, its catchy melody and upbeat drums resembling the glitzy Cantopop appeal. After spending most of the album with an introspective melancholy that makes the music linger, the last track  is a welcome reprieve.

Au’s wordplay carries a sophistication that – despite my best efforts – does not translate into English, but I’ll be damned if I don’t give it my best shot anyways. ‘LUNCH’ references the oft-quoted phrase by T. S. Eliot, ‘April is the cruelest month’ (which conveniently rhymes in Cantonese). This is followed with the wistful ‘every joke carries some truth / I am trapped in between layers of clouds / surrounded by mist’. With lyrics that read like pages from a diary, Au’s vocal delivery is characteristically understated, whose subtleties are understandable by non-Cantonese speakers.

With that being said, My Little Airport’s foray into melancholia can feel a little oversaturated. From the acid wash of Lam’s guitar to Au’s dreamy vocals, the fingerprints of indie-pop doziness are all over the album, turning the seasoned two-piece into – almost – a parody of indie sad-boy edginess. There’s a reason why the most popular indie acts – the likes of Cigarettes After Sex, Beach House and, alt-J – are often lampooned for being pretentious, floppy-hair shoegazers that make music to watch paint dry to. In the context of the global indie scene, My Little Airport only just escapes the fuzz-heavy monotony, offering up a ten-track LP that shines in its lyrical originality and minimalist innovation.

Writing a review of the Hong Kong music scene may expose me as being a bit of a hypocrite – I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t delved much into the Hong Kong music scene. I sit quietly when my friends sing along to Cantopop classics during karaoke. My mom offered to take me to the Eason Chan concert, to which I responded ‘who?’ This article owes a lot of thanks to Google Translate and Wikipedia. Music has never been something that I had in common with my parents, who often respond with ‘why don’t you do something more useful?’ when I tell them about a new song I’ve written, or about a performance I’ve done with a band.

I, like many other Hong Kongers, have often felt like ‘a people without a country’, caught between a colonial heritage and the Chinese handover. Hong Kong’s dwindling cultural clout has left me grasping for artists who I can relate to in the present day. While my parents were brought up with the likes of Leslie Cheung and Faye Wong, I was raised on a ready-for-radio mix of Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift.

Like the city itself, I struggle with my cultural identity, often caught at a crossroads between my Cantonese roots and a British education – almost-but-not-quite Hong Kong, yet decidedly far from being British. My Little Airport bridges the gap between my self-professed love for all things indie and my cultural heritage. They are true to their roots, earnest, and tender enough to appeal to audiences everywhere – My Little Airport punches above their weight.

Witty, innovative, and, unabashedly Hong Kong in character, My Little Airport has only just begun to take off. Hong Kong indie, like the city, has plenty of gas left in the tank.

跟你開玩笑 (I’m Just Kidding With You) is available on every major streaming platform.

The Myth of Representation 

Jui Zaveri
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The Myth of Representation 

Representation has become a bit of a buzzword these days. Rightly so – the growing realisation that something must be done to remedy the huge lack of diversity in positions of ‘power’ is a move towards a fairer society. Visibility matters in today’s world and so when Humza Yousaf was announced as the First Minister of Scotland after Nicola Sturgeon, British Asians across the country, and indeed the globe, rejoiced to see the highest political office attained by a man who looks like them. Rishi Sunak’s appointment to the office of Prime Minister had a similar reaction. Indian social media was awash with memes celebrating Sunak’s cultural heritage and his social mobility in a post-colonial context. Though Sunak is as unlikely to return the Koh-i-Noor diamond as any of his predecessors, it is undeniable that an Indian at the head of a country that historically believed Indians to be incapable of self-governance seems to be the perfect instance of poetic justice – the colonisers have been colonised. However, race is only one aspect of diversity – disability, class, sexuality, gender, etc are all equally important. This intersectionality complicates things – representation, in reality, is hardly straightforward or one-dimensional. 

What do Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and First Minister Humza Yousaf have in common beyond their British Asian identity? The fact that they were both educated at prestigious private schools: Yousaf at Hutcheson’s Grammar School in Glasgow and Sunak at the elite Winchester College. Immediately, this makes their lived experience radically different from the average immigrant story. Both men have some of the same privileges afforded to their white male counterparts: wealth and the plethora of doors it opens. This is not to say that race is not an important factor here, and should not be celebrated. Instead, the point is that their success cannot be used as proof that the UK is a place of perfect equal opportunity. Though at first glance these national leaders are the poster boys of a new, diverse age of British politics, it would be a complete blunder to see them as the endgame of true inclusivity. We must be conscious that PoC (people of colour) in politics tend to be from a very narrow subsection of PoC in general. 

Both Sunak and Yousaf represent a socio-economic elite – an elite that has always been overrepresented in the political sphere. Research published by the Sutton Trust in 2019 found that 29% of MPs at the time had attended a private school. Statistics from the same year show that only 7% of the UK population have been privately educated. These shocking discrepancies advantage Sunak and Yousaf in a way that cannot be minimised by their British Asian identities – one aspect of diversity should not be used to brush over another key one. This is not a question of ‘hardship Olympics’ – when sociopolitical disadvantages are pitted against each other. Rather, it highlights a need for a more nuanced attitude towards representation or the lack thereof. We crave visible relatability but many British Indians have questioned how relatable Sunak really is. His wife, Akshata Murthy, is the daughter of the billionaire Narayana Murthy. She managed to avoid 20m in UK tax before last year and has a net worth greater than that of the late Queen Elizabeth II. To any normal person, these numbers are nearly beyond comprehension. As a child of Indian immigrants myself, I am sceptical that Sunak in any shape or form is looking after my interests any better than any of the white Eton boys who preceded him. Our apparently shared cultural heritage hardly matters in the grand scheme of things.

Perhaps this is a little harsh. There are undeniable positives of seeing change with your own eyes. It is hugely inspiring for minority communities to see people who look like them, though their financial backgrounds may not be the same. It is a start in the right direction – Yousaf is the first Scottish-Asian and Muslim to be elected as First Minister and Rishi Sunak is the first British Indian and Hindu. To see 10 Downing Street decorated with traditional Diwali regalia goes a long way in normalising other cultures and helping promote practises that historically have been looked down on and mocked. Many children from diasporas have a deep-seated insecurity about their heritage and are made to feel ‘other’ – oftentimes it is not as simplistic as the colour of your skin but extends to the accent you speak in or the way you dress or how your food smells. Similarly, Yousaf’s tweet – 157K views and counting – explaining why he fasts for Ramadan helps cultivate a more accepting attitude towards something that is alien to the majority of the Scottish population. Additionally, there is little doubt that Yousaf, Sunak and countless other PoC in politics, and the wider professional world, have had to work harder to achieve the same milestones as their white colleagues. They have had to overcome systemic racism and are testament to the fact that it can and will be done. As visible figures of diversity, their presence and success help engender a sense of self-confidence in young people, which in turn will help push against the deeply entrenched prejudices that must be destroyed before true equality can be achieved. 

Essentially, there is a need for logical balance – we need to be cognizant that these figures are good for a certain type of representation but they are not all-encompassing. Politics is notoriously closed-off to those from less financially privileged backgrounds and even more so to PoC from working-class families. This must be addressed at its root level – Rishi Sunak and Humza Yousaf cannot be used as proof that British politics has achieved its optimal diversity quota. The myth of representation is a complicated one but steps in the right direction mean that we are closer than ever to making true equality a reality.

Image credit: Scottish Government/ CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Where do the IMF’s new forecasts leave us?

Amelia Bryan
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Where do the IMF’s new forecasts leave us?

Wednesday the 12th signalled a bleak day for Britain’s economy, as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released their updated economic growth forecast. The UK’s economy is again predicted to shrink. At -0.3%, we rank last in growth among the G20 countries. This includes Russia, despite numerous waves of sanctions due to the Ukraine war that were meant to cripple their economy. Yet the UK still is worse off. What does this say about our country’s leadership?

This decrease in growth is not universal. While Britain’s economy is struggling, the USA’s economy is projected to grow by 1.6% and the eurozone by 0.8% in 2023. Furthermore, the USA and several European countries including Germany have passed legislation to deal with rampant levels of inflation in their countries. The most prominent of such legislation is America’s inflation reduction act which invested $370 billion into reducing energy costs for Americans. Whilst other countries deal with the problems their citizens face, the UK government has not.

Inflation is at its highest in 40 years and interest rates have reached 4.25%. While all of this is happening our public service sector is on strike. Nurses, doctors, and railway workers among others have been striking all winter in demand of fair pay and this trend could continue throughout the summer with the nurses’ union RCN this week rejecting a pay offer by the government. 

When compared with Europe and America, the UK’s historic ‘greatness’ seems to be faltering. If we look at the bigger picture, over the last year the value of the pound has fallen substantially against the dollar, increasing the pressure inflation is having on UK households along with the energy crisis. While other countries are having issues with the soaring prices of wholesale natural gas it seems to be that the British economy and its people are suffering most. The question is why?

There are a few explanations that could be given to answer this question but, as always, they are remarkably hard to disentangle from each other. Brexit is one. When Brexit happened, economists predicted a tough trade-off between growth and inflation due to labour shortages and new trade barriers. Due to a lack of willing labour, the UK’s labour market is widely accepted to be less flexible than before we left the EU, creating problems in industry and with the economy.

Of course, all of these effects are compounded by the impact the pandemic had on all global economies. At the height of the pandemic, levels of trade dipped for all G7 countries, but at the start of this year these levels had recovered in all the G7 except the UK. It seems to be that ‘Global Britain’ is more closed off and not quite bouncing back as the rest of our contemporaries are.

The Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, however, strikes an optimistic tone and has begun to state that Britain’s economy is ‘back’, after meetings at the IMF where his plans for growth were accepted. 

Despite what Hunt says about Britain’s economy it has only just reached what it was pre-pandemic and is still recovering from his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini budget which triggered a crisis in the Bank of England, and contributed to food inflation reaching 10.6%, the FTSE 100 dropping by 232 points, and the pound falling to a record low against the dollar.

However, there are solutions that have been proposed for the issues facing this country. Last year, when Boris Johnson was still Prime Minister, groups that represented unions, women, ethnic minorities, developing world nations and young people wrote a letter urging him to avoid the mistakes that came after the financial crash. Even though there is a different prime minister the message still rings true; to improve the living standards the current PM Rishi Sunak needs to reject austerity and not scale back funding for the public sector workers of this country. 

Sunak also needs to face the climate crisis with an appropriate and proportionate plan to the problem we face. Not only would this reduce damage to our planet, it would reduce our economy’s dependence on oil prices, stabilising Britain’s economy against the actions of foreign powers like Russia and Saudi Arabia. Investing in renewables and moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy could stop the economy depending on the volatile prices of natural gas with the added consequences of reassuring business and investment which has declined since Brexit.

Finally, to regain its place on the world stage Britain needs to be more open. With an ageing population and declining population growth, the UK just like many other countries around the world needs the services and work provided by immigration. We need to embrace our globalised world instead of rejecting it and suffering because of it.

However, this does not seem to be the path Prime Minister Sunak wants to or is willing to take. His government refuses to offer what unions consider appropriate pay to their workers, disrupting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The government also plans to decrease tax and therefore decrease spending in areas such as social care. The restrictions on immigration applied by Brexit also seem to be an issue the Conservatives are unwilling to compromise on as the message from the Home Secretary Suella Braverman is no less cruel. It seems that the great standard of living and political management people would expect from Britain as a global power only years ago is failing.

A Very French Protest

Calvin Chan
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A Very French Protest

The protests in France have taken us by surprise, but they shouldn’t have. The French have long been accustomed to a style of protest characterised by what the English consider excessive violence. Writing almost a century ago, the Balliol historian Richard Cobb recalls attending a demonstration in the Latin Quarter as a visiting undergraduate:

“There was a single whistle blast, then the sound of galloping horses, as the darkblue, black-helmeted gardes mobiles rode into the crowd, hitting out with their long batons; the first three waves were followed by fifty or more paniers à salade, long dark charabancs of 1920 vintage, into which bleeding demonstrators of all ages and both sexes were literally hurled. After fifteen minutes, the square was quiet and littered with slogans and banners”.

Curiously, this appetite for violence was shared by both sides of the class and political divide. Staying with a well-heeled family in Paris, Cobb was told by his hosts “that the passage à tabac was an old French institution; they did not like the police, but they thought it quite natural that anyone who fell into their hands should have a preliminary beating-up”.

Democracy & Chaos

There is another way in which the protests should not have been a shock. The widespread disruption and breakdown of civil order may have been objectively shocking. But they have become something of a staple in Western democracies, much to the delight of our detractors, notably China and Russia. Gloating over our supposed comeuppance, Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, helpfully suggested that Macron begins arming the demonstrators to “secure democracy” in France: a lame reference to our support for Ukraine. As we have come to expect, democracy is now a byword in authoritarian regimes for the chaos and instability they see in the West.

The truth is exactly the opposite. It is not democracy that spawns chaos and instability. It is the deflection of democracy that prompts fury and unrest. The pension reform in France is a good example. In itself, the substance of the proposal — an increase of the retirement age by two years — is almost trivial. It is however the means by which the president has pursued his policy that has provoked a backlash.

Sidestepping the Demos

This is borne out by what the protestors say. Asked why they are driven to the streets, the answer that comes up repeatedly is the government’s use of article 49.3. This is an article in the French constitution whose function it is to allow the government of the day to bypass the lower chamber, typically when they realise they lack majority support. Though perfectly legal, it is invariably described as undemocratic, as it is now, with the distinct feeling that the “executive chose to draw on special powers to force through an unpopular measure”.

France is not unique in this experience. Amid the litany of blunders and horrors during the Johnson administration, nothing has scandalised the country more than the use of prorogation to effect a no-deal Brexit without Parliament’s approval. This unusual deployment of the Crown’s prerogative power led in turn to the Supreme Court’s intervention to nullify the government’s decision, which has in turn been condemned as a “misuse of judicial power” by one of our foremost constitutional experts. According to Prof. Finnis, the judgment was a “historic mistake” antithetical to our “system of constitutional democracy”.

Across the Atlantic, the explosive protests over the reversal of Roe v Wade tell of a similar story. Arguably, the original enshrinement of a right to abortion via the courts rather than the legislature merits the charge of judicial activism, but the current Court’s remedy of doubling down on that very same error in the opposite direction has made it a deserved target of all the scorn that has come its way. The opprobrium is especially apt when we remember that some members of that very court have themselves warned against the dangers of judicial overreach before their appointment. Reacting to judge-led progressive reforms, Neil Gorsuch sagely advised some 20 years ago that “respect for the role of judges and the legitimacy of the judiciary branch as a whole diminishes” unless the left resolves to “kick their addiction to constitutional litigation, and return to their New Deal roots of trying to win elections rather than lawsuits”. So much for practicing what you preach.

What these episodes have in common is that standard procedures in the normal running of democracy are suspended in pursuit of political objectives that do not command majority support. These objectives are inevitably classified as uniquely urgent — as they are now in France — so as to justify the use of special procedures to procure their attainment. The casualty in all these cases is the legislative branch, the body with the strongest representative credentials and, in this country, the only branch of government that is in fact elected.

Democracy Restored

The beginning of a cure must be the restoration of those democratic habits and practices that had served us well. In concrete terms, this means that the legislature must reclaim its place against an encroaching executive as well as an increasingly trigger-happy judiciary. After all, we have some evidence to believe that a return to properly democratic routines can go some way towards healing the bitter divisions on display in France and elsewhere.

Return for a moment to the example of abortion. It is worth asking why the same debate in the UK has never taken on the shrill pitch of its American equivalent.In our case, the matter was decided by a parliamentary process (i.e. Abortion Act 1967) where both sides made material contributions to the final arrangement, and different voices were formally heard and listened to. By comparison, critics of the American debate have rightly pointed out that abortion in the US was resolved as “a matter of judicial decision”, and the polarisation we have seen is due in part to the fact that “the decision there was made in a way which marginalised the contribution of the electorate at large”. In this respect, President Macron’s use of Article 49.3 is the executive equivalent of the judicial sidelining of the citizenry we so often witness in America.

This is not to say that problems will disappear as soon as article 49.3 is dropped. Doubtless, the search for a compromise in the Assembly will be painstaking and uncertain in all its familiar ways. In order to make progress, however, temperatures have to come down sufficiently for a meaningful discussion about pension reform to take place, and a negotiated settlement to take shape. The key is to extend the scope of deliberations to include not only the government of the day, much less judges who are appointed rather than elected. In a democracy, the forum in which to do this is parliament, whose members represent us, and we might well hope that France can live up once more to the large claims it makes of its democratic heritage. Just as disorderly protests may be deemed a French specialty, giving voice to the populace belongs just as much to a proud tradition where the French have always led by example.

Image Credit: 李 季霖//CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr

Exclusive: Oxford Union termcard TT23 highlights

Maggie Wilcox
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Exclusive: Oxford Union termcard TT23 highlights

Ambassador John Bolton, European politician Michel Barnier and adult star turned media personality Mia Khalifa are amongst the big names who will come speak at the Union this term.

Barnier and Ambassador Bolton will both address current political issues. The former EU Chief Negotiator will hold a talk on “Brexit and the Future of Europe”. Bolton, former US Ambassador to the UN and National Security advisor during the Trump administration, will participate in the debate “This House Would Fight For Democracy, Individual Liberty and The Rule of Law Abroad”. 

The Rt. Hon. Emily Thornberry MP, notable Labour politician, is also amongst the list of distinguished speakers to come to the Union in the second term of its bicentenary year. She will speak in a debate on the motion “This House Believes That Class Defines British Politics”. 

Stella Assange, human rights activist, lawyer and the wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, will host a screening of the film Ithaka. This film depicts the tumultuous and ongoing campaign to free Julian Assange.

Other debates happening this term include a special Pride Month motion: “This House Believes That The Commercialisation of Pride Has Done More Harm Than Good”. This debate will take place on Thursday, June 1st.

The Union Committee have also unveiled the theme for their termly ball. For Trinity 2023, members are invited to the “Summer of Love”, based on the 60s and hippie culture.

Image Credit: NATO Multimedia Library/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via Flickr

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