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Blog Page 2002

Dear Fabio, leave Theo Walcott at home…

By
Sean Lennon
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Anyone who has watched more than a few fleeting moments of Arsenal’s games this season will notice that Theo Walcott has been, well, rubbish. If his confidence isn’t sky high he appears to forget the importance of changing direction, repeatedly running straight at his full back. That’s if he bothers running at them at all; too often he simply hoofs in a weak cross at Arsenal’s lightweight front men, rather than using that blistering pace to get to the byline or fashion something for himself.

Fortunately for Mr Capello England actually has a rather impressive cohort of wingers. With Gerrard likely to be playing on the left there is little chance that any more than four of the following will make it, and for England’s sake, one can only hope that young Theo doesn’t make the cut ahead of one of them. So, here is a comprehensive list of English wingers who should actually be in competition for a place:

1.Aaron Lennon – Somebody should take Theo Walcott, sit him down in front of television, and force him to watch clips from this man’s season. Lennon has been the shining star of a really quite exciting Tottenham team. Lightning fast and with a devastating drop of the shoulder Lennon has been terrorising left backs all season. Just ask Erik Edman or Sylvinho how hard it is to catch him. Should be an absolute shoe-in to start.

2.David Beckham – Ageing yes, but as his bright start for Milan has shown there is still life yet in one of England’s finest servants. What better alternative to Lennon’s pace and youth than Beckham’s experience and crossing? Beckham can still be a vital option, especially for late set pieces, and of course, penalties. May be his last chance to win something with England, a chance he thoroughly deserves.

3.James Milner – Fabio’s new favourite, and indeed every managers’ dream. By no means the most talented player on this list, but his phenomenal work-rate and new-found versatility should guarantee him a place in the squad at least.

4.Joe Cole – It speaks volumes for the regard with which the above players are held that a man of Cole’s talent may not make the cut. Aside from Rooney, Cole remains the most inventive player in the England set-up. Will be tricky to fit him into the England plan, but Cole’s sheer ability should squeeze him in.

5.Ashley Young – For some reason Capello just doesn’t quite fancy Young. He is quick, a fantastic dribbler, and almost certainly the best crosser of a ball in the league, but has never been able to force himself into the forefront with England. If he is to make it he’ll have to sustain the form he so often finds only in bursts.

6.Stewart Downing – Finally getting some minutes for Villa, and certainly impressing. Quite why O’Neill has been playing him on the left rather than Young is mystifying, but he remains the only genuine left-footed option. And it is quite a special left foot

7.Jobi McAnuff – Well, this one is rather in jest, but his spellbinding run against Liverpool was no fluke. His performances in both the original tie and the replay were full of menace and confidence. What they showed was exactly what Walcott is currently missing. Each time McAnuff got possession he attacked his full back, and actually believed he would beat him. If only Walcott believed in himself as much as MacAnuff he would rocket back up this list.

England’s strength on the flanks should certainly preclude Walcott’s presence at the tournament, but one can only worry that it won’t. That hat-trick against Croatia still manages to sustain him, but unless he sharpens up his form for Arsenal he should only head to South Africa as a spectator.

 

Year One

By
Nick Coxon
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It’s very nearly a year since Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th President of the United States. Besides Haiti, the big story this week in the US is that his approval rating is now worse than that of any other President a year in to his term except Eisenhower. In the latest Quinnipiac poll, his approval/disapproval score was 45% to 45%. Gallup has him 49-44. To put this into perspective, at his inauguration Obama had a 70-12 rating. The drop off to now is pronounced.

This almost unprecedented decline will form the basis of the commentary over the next few days into how Obama’s first year has gone. That’s not entirely fair. Firstly, his approval was still at 70% in May. Secondly, to focus too hard on the numbers would be a far too narrow approach in judging this President’s first year, and might lead to the wrong conclusion. The famous Lincoln meme, “you can’t please all of the people all of the time”, points to a trend often seen in political approval — the more you do, the more people you upset. And the Obama administration has done a great deal this last year, much of it unglamorous and a great deal of it politically inexpedient. The stimulus is thought by most economists to have been a great help in stabilising the crashing economy, but that hasn’t made people any less wary of the enormous volume of tax dollars spent in the process. Sonia Sotomayor was a well-qualified, historic pick for the Supreme Court, but that didn’t stop the right raising hell in some quarters. The incremental nature of the healthcare reform pursued to date has angered both left and right, and the continued engagement in Afghanistan remains a source of considerable angst.

Much of this is natural to the process of governing — tough decisions are by their nature sources of division. It is significant, though, given what we thought we knew about both Obama and his political machine at the start of his term, that the disconnect has become so distinct. The campaign had shown Obama to be a communicator unmatched by his peers. His political operation was quite possibly the most adept of any presidential campaign of the modern era. But in the government, on policy, the message is often cluttered, unclear. The public does not, it seems, associate Obama with political success, even while, compared with his predecessors, Obama’s first year has been a strong one. Partly this is the product of a gap between expectations and what has transpired; partly it is a simple failure of communication — a failure to provide adequate counterweight to the criticisms directed at the President, or to tout his achievements loudly enough.

The problem is bigger for the Democrats than for Obama himself. There are three years left before his next election, but the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate is up for reelection this November. Even in a good showing, the Democrats can likely expect to lose the Senate Majority leader, Harry Reid (who looks set to bomb in Nevada despite a very significant fundraising advantage), in addition to three or four other Senators — enough to lose their filibuster-proof majority. And if the current political climate progresses, legions of House Democrats will suddenly find their safe seats back in play.

As gains in the economy begin to be felt more widely, the national mood will change. But a sustained effort by the administration to recapture the support of the country is needed or the President’s popularity will continue to slip. In year one, they’ve been good at ‘doing’ but bad at ‘selling’. That will have to change or year two will be a rough ride.

Fifty years of Hurt

By
Nick Pierce
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John Hurt is an actor who needs little introduction. Over the course of his fifty-year career he has distinguished himself in countless screen roles, from playing unconventional leading men in The Naked Civil Servant and The Elephant Man through a formidable array of memorable character parts in movies as diverse as Alien (where he quite literally burst onto the screen in the film’s most notorious scene), The Proposition and this month’s arthouse gangster flick, 44 Inch Chest. In our exclusive interview he casts an eye back over his life in film:

From what I’ve seen you seem to be drawn to playing characters living on the margins of society?

– Well, they don’t fit in quite as readily as some people, that’s true. I don’t think it was a conscious decision though. I didn’t go out saying ‘This is the way I’m going to do things. This is how I’m going to live my life’…because I’ve never really planned anything. That seems to be how people see me, and presumably that is how I’d prefer to be seen because that is what I tend to do. It’s not intended, particularly, but it’s not denied.

When you say you’ve never planned anything, do you mean then that you fell into the acting profession?

– No, I didn’t. I far from fell into it, really. But I didn’t plan to be in it. I worked to get into it, but I didn’t set out with any ambitions, saying ‘Right, well I’m going to satisfy these first, and these second.’ It’s always seemed to me that people who make plans are people who make God laugh.

You seem to have trends in the films you pick; recently you appear to have switched from making more mainstream movies to stuff that would be considered arthouse?

– Again, that’s not planned, that’s just how it happened. I mean, I can’t really help it if Steven Spielberg rings up and says ‘Do you want to make a film with me?’ [referring to his role in Indiana Jones IV] And I don’t think I can be blamed for saying ‘Yeah, sure!’ So that’s how that sort of happened. In fact I thought it was a hoax! ‘Oh yeah, pull the other one’. But I’m glad I didn’t treat it like that. That would have been rather embarrassing.

How was it working with David Lynch on The Elephant Man [for which he was nominated for an Academy award for Best Actor]?

David Lynch and I worked very closely together. I mean as far as you can. There’s an area of David Lynch that is absolutely specific to himself and nobody is going to work closely with that, you know? He’s seriously auteur. And nobody is going to know exactly what’s in the centre of his thought or exactly what it is he’s after. If you think of yourself there’s surely an area of yourself that you can’t describe to anyone? Well that, when you’re working with an auteur filmmaker, is quite a powerful area – a large area.

Do you get a sense sometimes when you’re making a film like The Elephant Man that it’s going to be special?

Well, yes, I think that sometimes you can feel it. But I think you have to be very careful that you’re not talking about retrospect. I think you know that you’re making something quite special or at least you think it’s quite special. But you can’t necessarily know that it’s going to be something that is commercial – If people are really going to want to go and see it. You can have an inkling that’s going to be the case.

Is there a role of yours of which you’re most proud ?

Generally speaking I don’t really like to compare because the nice thing about them is that they’re different. But I suppose if I was going to choose one out of everything I’ve done, I would choose something that made a difference in terms of the way the audience thought about me, and that would probably be The Naked Civil Servant [in which he played gay icon Quentin Crisp]. But Elephant Man‘s up there, you know.

Is portraying characters who are based closely on real-life figures something that interests you?

– It actually doesn’t, particularly. I mean it does so happen that a lot of the people I’ve played have existed or were even alive when I played them, but I don’t think that actually makes any difference dramatically to the character that one plays. You know, poetic truth is not necessarily the same as fact. Indeed, because it happened to exist does not make it the only purveyor of truth, by any means. If that were the case, where would the poets be? They are a benchmark in terms of truth, in a sense.

Is that how you feel when you play these roles then – you don’t worry so much about imitating the real-life person, you just try and capture the sense of them?

-That’s exactly right. You’ve hit the nail on the head there.

Do you feel as an actor that you’ve accomplished everything that you wanted to?

– Oh, Jesus, no. Not at all, no. I wish I did -that’d be a nice thought. But then that’s not really for me to think, that’s for somebody else to think. I feel that there’s lots more I’d like to say yet.

Do you feel close to the work you’ve done in the past, or once you’re finished with a character do you think you leave it behind?

– Well, that’s a part of it: saying ‘Well, that’s the end of that’ and then moving onto the next thing, but anything that you do hopefully becomes part of you anyway. You might like to think that you’ve got rid of it, but you haven’t actually because it’s hanging about there somewhere.

Is that why you chose to revisit the character of Quentin Crisp in An Englishman in New York?

Well, no, I got the opportunity to do that. I mean, that was extraordinary – that doesn’t happen much in anybody’s lifetime. To be able to go back to a character 33 years later and at the same time be completely justified about it because by that time I was the same age as Quentin was when I first played him from the age of 18 to 68. This time I was 68 and he was long gone.

Did they approach you with the role?

Yes, they came to me. I was the obvious person to come to, I guess, when they had the idea. I was a little bit reluctant to begin with. I didn’t really want to devalue the currency of The Naked Civil Servant. But then when I saw the script and I had had a long conversation with the screenwriter Brian Frillis and Richard Laxton who directed it, it seemed to me that they all understood what the pitfalls were and they had very proper ideas as to how we should make it. And how it would stand, as it were, because you couldn’t possibly expect to do what the first one did because it was a different time in history altogether and this was a different era, and a different area and era in somebody’s life as well. It would have to be of a different nature and a different texture. And I felt that what we all were after was possible.

Is it true that you pick projects based on whether you think they’ll succeed on their own terms?

Yes, that’s almost exactly right. Anything that I do should stand a chance of succeeding on the level that it is intended to succeed on.

Can I ask you about your involvement in the last Harry Potter films?

Oh, that was a lot of fun. But very strange for me, because my involvement was as Ollivander in the first one, and then I didn’t do anything right through the middle until these last two. And of course by that time all those children had grown up. It was really strange.

It must be quite fun filming the Harry Potter movies as well because they’ve got a pretty impressive array of British actors?

Oh yes, well they’ve got pretty much everybody you can think of now. When we started nobody really had any idea whether it would be a successful enterprise or not. Back then there was much more pussy-footing around and being careful, because although the books were hugely successful that didn’t necessarily mean that the films were going to follow suit, but they did – and the rest is history now.

Review: Up in the Air

By
Tom Dunn
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The New Year period is the perennial ‘down-time’ phase of Hollywood; a brief respite after the slew of Christmas blockbusters before it all kicks back into gear from March and we’re once again watching big explosive messes. Yet it is in this quiet zone that some of the year’s best movies make their appearance in our cinemas; No Country for Old Man, The Wrestler, and quite possibly, Up in the Air.

By turns comic, tragic, wry and poignant, Jason Reitman’s latest directorial proves to build upon his success in the wake of Thank You for Smoking and Juno.

Up in the Air details the life of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), who utilises his job as corporate downsizer – firing people whose bosses are too cowardly to do so – to achieve his lifetime goal; ten million frequent flyer miles. If this sounds anodyne, you’d be right; yet Ryan’s world is the model that GQ sells to millions on a monthly basis – crisp suits, expensive hotels, big spender reward cards – and Ryan’s charisma and pop philosophy allows us to buy into it quickly. His life of airport-limbo is one of 50s glamour; cocktails and crooning music, ejecting delayed flights and sweaty queuing for an existence built upon the smiling efficiency of good business.

Scrapping much of the original novel’s story, the plot presents a lightly existentialist look at the validity of Ryan’s lifestyle through his two female companions. The enchanting Alex (Vera Farmiga), is a fellow frequent flyer whose casual relationship with Ryan seemingly confirms his jet-set lifestyle, whilst his begrudging protégé, Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), in her sweetly naive belief in romance, provides a strong foil that, when coupled with Ryan’s unexpected feelings for Alex, begin to reveal the possible hollowness underneath his surface gloss.

Anna Kendrick successfully captures the youthful ambition of a graduate go-getter, trying to keep her head up against the quietly devastating nature of her job for the employees fired (well evinced through documentary-style montages), whilst Vera Farmiga’s Alex is, as she so aptly puts it, Ryan with a vagina, matching his own effortless cool with a disarming aloofness that, from their first scene together, makes for great chemistry. The clear star of the show however, is Clooney, who fits right into Ryan’s shoes – the magnetism of his Danny Ocean is allowed to flourish within a strong script that creates natural tension against his smiling rejection of emotional baggage.

Reitman, meanwhile, rightly seizes upon the opportunity to fuse the corporate tone of Thank You for Smoking with Juno’s squashy whimsy, resulting in a visual style that mirrors Ryan’s own awakening emotion; what begins with relentless fast-cuts, sweeping pans and tight angles steadily softens into the shaky camera work and jerking zoom of amateur video, the visuals themselves gaining a sense of humanity as the movie progresses. Ryan’s speech on the need to remove yourself of your ‘luggage’ in order to live sounds increasingly false in its played out repetitions throughout the movie, the central conceit – the need for relationships in order to gain a fulfilled life – given the finishing touch with a soundtrack that swings from Rolfe Kent’s upbeat orchestral pieces to the sombre introspection of Elliot Smith.

Without giving too much away, the Juno haters needn’t fear too much over any excessive mushiness in Up in the Air – whilst the film goes through its occasional lull, there is no denying the polish of the finished product  and the magnetic energy of its leads – there is a reason this film has drawn in Golden Globes and significant Oscar hype. You will, if nothing else, be entertained.

4 stars

 

Week 1: Welcome to our new Photo Blog!

By
Photo Of The Day
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Fancy yourself as a photographer?

Want your photographs from around and about Oxford seen by the thousands of people who visit the Cherwell website every day?

If so, why not send a few of your snaps into [email protected]?

 

 

Friday: A quiet scull – Iris Kaltenbäck

 

Thursday: Broad Street from above – Wojtek Szymczak

 

Wednesday: Theatrical Waste Disposal – Sonali Campion

 

Tuesday: Seagull – Xiafu Shi

 

Monday: Mercury – Shaun Thein

 

Sunday: Messing around on shoot, Issue 3 fashion teaser – Ollie Ford

 

Saturday: Frosty pegs – Tom Glasspool

A decade in review

By
Harry Phillips And Dhatri Navanayagam
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2000: The year of Laura Spence

In 2000, any hopes of a quiet start to the new millennium were dashed by a story so controversial it has its own Wikipedia page. ‘The Laura Spence Affair’ is the plight of one clever but unlucky girl from a North East state school. Spence applied for medicine at Magdalen, but despite perfect qualifications, was not offered a place because – according to the college – other candidates (of whom there were 22 for 5 positions) had equally good qualifications and performed better during the interview process. Gordon Brown was the first to lambast Oxford with accusations of elitism, calling Spence’s rejection an ‘absolute scandal’ and suggesting that she had been discriminated against by ‘an old establishment interview system’ which couldn’t possibly give Geordie comp students a fair chance. Quick to respond were Oxford’s dons, calling Brown “a hypocrite and a bully” and accusing him of “talking out of his backside”. Steady on chaps! Still, the debate forced us to confront some uncomfortable truths. Was it fair that only 7 per cent of pupils attend private schools but fee-paying students make up almost half of Oxbridge population? Laura Spence, incidentally, later went to Harvard. She did not study medicine.

2001: The year with three racial discrimination claims

2001 put Oxford University in the hot seat when it found itself embroiled in three court cases involving claims of racial discrimination. Chinasa Anya, a postdoctoral research assistant, claimed he was the victim of racial discrimination when he was denied a new post in favour of a white candidate in 1996. Ali Erdem, a Turkish postgraduate student, said the University had behaved inappropriately when it charged him with misconduct and dropped him from his banking law course. Nadeem Ahmed, a MPhil student studying medieval Arabic, accused the University of institutional racism after he alleged he was made to sit “flawed” exams which resulted in him being unfairly dismissed from the University’s Oriental Institute. To top it off, Mr Ahmed was subject to a racist email campaign by two not so bright history students. The emails told him that Asians should not be at university but “working in McDonald’s or on a building site” and asked “Why don’t you do a course in bricklaying?” Other emails made vulgar references to his wife and mother and contained pornographic photographs.

2002: The year of cash for places.

2002 Oxford’s attempts to rid itself of its pervasive elitist image were jeopardised in 2002 when an undercover journalist for The Times exposed the fact that Pembroke college was willing to offer students places in return for cash donations. The fictional banker, who worked in the US, was told by senior staff at Pembroke college they could create an extra place on a law degree course for his son. In the secretly taped interview, the Reverend John Platt, a senior fellow at the college, revealed that similar deals had been struck in the past. He said Pembroke needed the money because it was “poor as shit”. A year earlier, Booker prize judge Professor Valentine Cunningham of Corpus Christi had claimed that places across the university could be “bought” by wealthy families for their offspring, though the claims were widely refuted by other academics at the time.

2003: The Top-Up fee year

2003 was all about tuition fees, tuition fees, tuition fees. When will we hear the end of them? Students were up in arms in 2003 when Labour introduced top up fees, after declaring it would do no such thing. The cap on tuition fees was raised from £1000 to £3000. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised. This came from a prime minister who stated in 1997, “Labour has no plans to introduce tuition fees for higher education”. Since 2003, there has been no going back, with even higher figures suggested including £10,000. In 2009, OUSU President Stephen Baskerville and his delegates made headlines when they successfully lobbied two Oxford MPs in Parliament who signed a pledge to vote against the raising of tuition fees. Oxford students rallied outside the Palace of Westminster alongside National Union of Students protestors to campaign for the government to listen to students on the funding of Higher Education

 

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image:Ronapainting.com

2004: The year when Bullingdon got in trouble

In 2004, Oxford’s merry band of blue-jacketed blue-bloods, The Bullingdon Club, hit the headlines when members were fined £80 for smashing seventeen bottles of wine, every piece of crockery and a window at the 15th Century White Hart pub in Fyfield, near Oxford. Few could predict at the time that such stories would soon become a major political issue, with the ascension of young, hip, Dave Cameron and his somewhat gormless sidekick George to the ranks of Conservative Leader and Shadow Chancellor respectively. Both were members of the notorious drining club; both, along with buffoonish Boris, were clearly visible in leaked photographs, looking odious in their £3000 tail-coats. Since then, the spectre of drunken expensive revelries – most of which they probably can’t remember – has proven impossible to escape for the Tory trio. Class is back on the political agenda, and many predict a particularly gruesome and personal election due, in no small part, to the Bullingdon legacy.

2005: The SPEAK year

2005 relit the heated topic of animal rights when Oxford resumed construction work of its controversial £20m animal testing laboratory. The University had been forced to suspend the project in July 2004 due to the sustained campaign of protest of animal rights groups. Several building contractors pulled out during the years claiming their staff had been victims of intimidation and threats. However, work on the lab was finally completed in 2008. SPEAK, the animal rights protest group, has persistently fought against the construction of the lab and in 2008 their spokesman, Mel Broughton, was put on trial in connection with arson attacks to the University property in 2006 and 2007.

2006: The year St Hilda’s went mixed

In 2006 St. Hilda’s, the final single-sex college in Oxford (we don’t count the creepy PPHs, many of which are still all male) finally opened its doors to male students. Dons voted narrowly for the change, hoping it would attract talented applicants deterred by the single-sex environment. Money was a factor in the decision too, since abandoning single-sex status could boost the college’s shaky financial position and help plug a £400,000 budget deficit by bringing in world-class lecturers. Some students, though, were not so thrilled at the prospect, with one bemoaning that she could no longer get away with coming to breakfast in a “lacy nightie and skimpy dressing down”. Male students from other colleges, however, were reportedly delighted, since it meant that years of wall-climbing, fence jumping, and embarrassing fire-alarm situations had come to an end.

2007: The year of the Union scandals

2007 was the Year of the Union Scandals (isn’t every year really?). In November, the Union hit national headlines when President Luke Tryl decided to invite Nick Griffin, the BNP leader and David Irving, the controversial historian and Holocaust denier to attend a debate on free speech. Hundreds of students protested outside the Union with Griffin branding them as a “mob which would kill”. The Union wasn’t so lucky in 2001 when the President, Amy Harland, was forced to cancel her invitation to Irving after mounted pressure from students and the public. Internal politics wrecked the Union in 2007 with a bitter battle between the presidential candidates. The newly elected President, Krishna Omkar, was forced to resign after his defeated opponent, Charlotte Fischer, accused him of electoral malpractice. She didn’t last long though, walking out of the contest after claiming to have received lewd texts from Union officers asking: “Fancy a f***?” Oh dear.

2008: The year of scandals and shocks 

2008 held many juicy stories; not least the sneaky Proctors who used Facebook pictures of post-exam ‘trashing’ as evidence to tot up a £10,000 jackpot of fines, more than five times last year’s figures. Needless to say, students weren’t too pleased to know Proctors were just a friend click away. Naughty Oxide radio station was forced to close after a Cherwell investigation revealed that it had been operating as a pirate station for the last two years.  


2009: The year of the inappropriate joke

And what of last year’s offerings? Here at Cherwell, we’ve come to dub 2009 the Year of the Inappropriate Joke, for the number of scandals that arose out of démodé humour, misinformed satire, or just plain crassness. The “Bring-a-fit-Jew” debacle of late 2008 set the bar admirably high for tastelessness, but 2009 made an Olympian effort to outdo it. We had almost ubiquitous blackings-up, that joke during the hustings of “Disgraced former OUCA” (as they like to be known), and indeed a worthy performance from Cherwell in the form of Lecher, a gossip rag full of desperately unfunny in-jokes that led to the resignation of the then editors. When it came to insulting ethnic minorities, implicating people in paedophilia or mocking the holocaust, this truly was a golden year.

 

The Renaissance of the Reds

By
Aleks Klosok
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It was just over a year ago to the day when Billy Davies was announced to the press as Nottingham Forest’s new manager – their thirteenth since the acrimonious departure of the iconic Brian Clough. For Forest supporters, those were indeed heady days.

The Clough years elevated Forest to the pinnacle of the football elite, not only in England but in Europe. Under the often outspoken Clough, Forest won the English league championship, two consecutive European Cups and four League Cups – something which is simply unthinkable in the present climate.

For between 1975 and 1993, Clough added a new colour to the football palette. By combining three key ingredients; that of steeliness, total commitment and eye catching football, Clough had essentially fused present day Stoke City with Brasil. From the outset his football philosophy was clear: simplicity was the most effective weapon. Defenders defend, midfielders manufacture, strikers score.

His philosophy was reflected in his squad. Still, before embarking upon the creative side of things, Clough was focused on establishing a clear spine throughout the team. This was realised through the brilliance of Peter Shilton in goal, Viv Anderson’s no nonsense defending through to the wizardry of winger Archie Gemmill and Trevor Francis’s lethal finishing. Clough had laid down the blueprint for the perfect Forest Formula. Since his departure in 1993, a succession of relegations, instability both on and off the pitch and a sense of nostalgia has blighted Forest in their bid to once again relive the glory days of the Clough era. Yet, in the form of Billy Davies, the Reds may well have rediscovered the Forest Formula.

Having escaped relegation by the skin of their teeth at the end of the 2008 / 2009 campaign, expectations for the 2009 / 2010 campaign were relatively low. However, the summer brought with it drastic changes. Nine players were bought in for a total of £6 million – big money given the financial structures within the Championship.

Admittedly the season did not start off the way Davies had hoped for. Forest were playing well but failing to get the results many thought their performances deserved. Ironically though it was the East Midlands Derby victory over Forest’s fiercest rivals Derby County, a former club of Brian Clough’s and currently managed by his son Nigel, in August which has provided a kick-start to a magnificent run of eighteen games unbeaten in both league and cup.

It is highly unlikely that Davies will ever be spoken about in the same breath as Clough but Davies football philosophy is akin to that of Clough. Of course nowadays there may not be any familiar names in the Forest teams like those of days gone by; however Davies has managed to skilfully build a well oiled machine.

There is an impressive blend of youth and experience, steeliness and creativity within the squad and crucially a positive vibe in the dressing room which has translated itself to the supporters.

Some will point to the money spent by Davies as a big factor in Forest’s rejuvenation however crucially, unlike others, he has spent extremely wisely. The acquisition of twice capped England left back Nicky Shorey on loan from Aston Villa, the defensive and leadership qualities of Forest captin Paul McKenna, the creativity provided by Rados³aw Majewski and the steady supply of goals from Dexter Blackstock are among the highlights.

Unlike his predecessors, Davies has placed round pegs in round holes. Having established a strong spine, Davies has introduced a new dimension to the Forest team: that of fast flowing absorbing football. Above all though, Davies has brought something with all Forest fans have been craving for for many years: stability.

Having seen the chopping and changing at both board and ground level at Portsmouth and most recently at Manchester City, it is clear that football is now more and more becoming a results-orientated game. However, Messers Ferguson and Wenger have shown that with the backing from the right people and a desire to head in the right direction that success will eventually come. Forest fans will be keen to see that the same faith is manifested in Davies.

Davies maintains that his team are not yet ready to go up. His torrid time with Derby County in the 2007 / 2008 Premier League campaign is still a painful memory. Yet, if Forest’s scintillating form continues, they may well end up back in the big time.

In the City Ground, Forest currently boast the tenth largest stadium outside the Premier League and with plans to build a new 50,000 stadium should England win the right to host the 2018 World Cup, they are certainly moving onwards and upwards. The infrastructure for the present and future is there and the support has been unwavering throughout. The days of Clough are still talked about and will never be forgotten. But one thing is for sure: by being the first manager in many a year to crack Clough’s elusive Forest formula, Davies may well be on the way to writing himself into the Nottingham Forest history books.  

Baroness Greenfield sacked

By
Izzy Boggild-Jones
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Oxford professor Susan Greenfield was controversially removed from her post as director of the Royal Institute last week after the position was scrapped following a “governance review”.

Greenfield, who is currently professor of Synaptic Pharmacology at Lincoln College, has been in the role at the RI since 1998. Her 18 year contract was not due to run out until 2016.

It is understood that the Institute could no longer afford the position due to financial difficulties. The charity is reportedly struggling with £3m worth of debt brought on by the expensive refurbishment of the RI’s base in Mayfair.
Greenfield was the first woman in the job, and has been widely praised for freshening up the image of the prestigious scientific institution.

 

Fat bums beat fat tums

By
Nicky Henderson
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Oxford research has revealed that fat around your bum and thighs is not only healthier than round your waist, but actually protects against heart disease and diabetes.

A recent study shows that pear-shaped people have a health advantage over apple-shaped people.

Fatty acids stored in the abdomen are more likely to be released and float around the body, causing harm to other organs. However, fat in the thighs and bum is used for long-term storage of such fatty acids, and may even secrete more beneficial hormones than other fat.

However, Dr Manolopoulos, one of the researchers, emphasised that fattening your thighs would not help, as this will usually lead to a bigger waist too and offset any positive health effects. “Control of body weight is still the best way to stay healthy, and the advice remains the same: it is important to eat less and exercise more.”

 

Oriel goes carbon neutral

By
Rebekah Diamond
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Oriel is the first Oxford college attempting to become carbon neutral.

The college is offsetting their carbon emissions by sponsoring a tree planting project based in South America.

The project has been set up to support farmers in the Manu national park in Peru in the replanting of trees and selling of crops produced by these additional plantations. This would lead to the college receiving carbon neutral status as the trees they sponsor to grow would in theory cancel out the carbon emissions produced by the college.

Mark Jesnick, Oriel JCR President, stated that he is “delighted Oriel has taken such a bold step… We are proud to be one of Oxford’s most sustainable colleges, but hope that other colleges will take similar steps towards environmental activism.”

 

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