Wednesday 9th July 2025
Blog Page 2022

Going Up Going Down

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Going Up:

Lent apologies

It’s the beginning of Lent so forty days without chocolate/alcohol/kebabs still seems fairly manageable and we’re optimistic. Let’s hope it continues!

Apologies

78 days after Tiger Woods’ affairs came to seedy light, he has finally managed to eke out an epic 13-minute apology. Are John Terry and Ashley Cole to follow?

Good Views

The ‘Endeavour’ shuttle left the International Space Station with a new ‘Tranquillity’ mode which features seven huge windows through which to watch space. The station commander Jeffrey Williams was delighted, “We are really going to enjoy the view.”

British Sport Morale

27-year old Amy Williams was the first Briton to win a solo Gold medal in thirty years, in the women’s skeleton competition as part of the Winter Olympics. Anything that gives us a little faith for 2012…

Going Down:

Banksy

One of Britain’s biggest Banksy works, a mural of a rat holding a machine gun, is to be painted over by a developer who admits to not liking ‘modern art’.

Security

A website called ‘pleaserobme.com’ claims to be able to reveal the location of empty houses based on what people post online. That’s why we’re always on facebook – we just don’t want to be robbed.

Fair Play

Shakter Donetsk footballers were banned from Harrods by Muhammed Al Fayed in the build up to their match with the Egyptian businessman’s club, Fulham, who went on to win the match 2-1. Victory for the ‘win-at-all-costs mentality’ once again…

Swimming Goggles

Due to health and safety laws, officials have been claiming that children should be prevented from swimming in goggles because the rubber straps can be dangerous if a child has them “snapped back in their face”. Stop giving us ideas…

Fine Dining: French cuisine

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I am, I think, the first person in the history of Cherwell to be rejected by my Blind Date partner before we had even opened the menus and ordered the first drinks. I spent a happy evening constructing witty remarks and erudite opinions on the great topics of the day, so that I was sure to impress my new paramour. Unfortunately we already knew each other, from a drunken late night conversation in an overpriced London club a year ago. On the very reasonable grounds that Sohna is young, charming and beautiful, whereas I am old, fat and grumpy, a new date for her will be arranged, but not me. I haven’t been so distraught since the Cherwell Boathouse last took venison off the menu.

Perhaps by way of compensation, my editor agreed to have dinner with me instead. As a food critic, you’re employed to know about eating, so if you pick a bad restaurant or worse, suggest a dish that turns out to be disgusting… So I was on my best behaviour. And I booked Pierre Victoire. As the Oxford Union might say: where else? It’s the obvious choice, which is perhaps why I haven’t got around to reviewing it yet – I just assumed you were all fully cognisant of its greatness. But they deserve their 650 words anyway, for Pierre Victoire is one of the not-so-hidden gems of Oxford dining; reliably excellent, good value food in a small, cosy, friendly environment.

We went on a Tuesday evening, which is generally a bad time to eat out, because most places are half empty and all the decent cooks are on their day off. But PV was hosting a big group on a birthday dinner, which livened things up until the post theatre crowd began drifting in.

I started with a chicory, pear, and Roquefort salad. I don’t normally do salads – a soggy pile of wilting green stuff is not really my idea of sustenance – but there were three empty packets of McCoy’s on my desk, I hadn’t done any exercise for a month, and I convinced myself that if I chose some rabbit food, as my brother calls it, as a starter I might just about fit into my dinner jacket again. (It didn’t work). I was immediately punished for my virtue, the lonely lumps of (really quite good) Roquefort being vastly outnumbered by a great heap of pear and chicory, which was nice enough but really quite dull.

For those of you who are sad food buffs, the chicory had also been exposed to slightly too much light before ending up my plate, for it was a touch greener and more bitter than the ideal. But it was better than any other salad you can get in central Oxford on a cold Tuesday evening. My date’s goat’s cheese soufflé was much better: light, fluffy parcels of cheese and egg white alive with the rich smell of the farmyard (in a good way, in a good way). My smoked haddock was exemplary and came with a beautiful, quivering poached egg which, when I gently touched it with the edge of my fork, exploded into a rich, unctuous river of yolk flowing lava-like across the serried backs of the unsuspecting fish. Beautiful, just beautiful. Tasted pretty good too. Alternatively, the cassoulet was strong and filling in the best French housewives’ tradition. We had puddings too, but I was too scared of my date’s reaction if I tore myself away from her scintillating conversation to take notes on the food, so I can’t for the life of me remember what they were. I’m sure they were good though.

All of this came to twenty pounds per person for three courses -superb value. At lunchtime they do three courses for ten pounds, which, coming from London, I find utterly unbelievable. I’ve paid more for a cocktail. Rating: 4/5 In short: Reliable

Interview: Laura Dockrill

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Heading off to watch Laura do a poetry reading, at the Beatknik Bookstore in Jericho, I wasn’t sure what to expect – my image of poetry readings was all duffel coats, long pauses and lots of staring moodily into the distance. I can safely say I have never been so surprised in my life.

Despite the fact that her second book is published under the title ‘Ugly Shy Girl’, Laura Dockrill is neither of these things. It may seem like a slightly sycophantic cliché, but she comes across like a whirlwind of bright colours, pink lipstick, clever wording and spot on impressions. Described by the Independent as a ‘Poet for the iPod generation’, there was certainly no reading involved – Laura stands, brimming with (nervous?) energy and acts her poems; it comes as no surprise that the word ‘performance’ is frequently prefixed on to the word ‘poet’ when describing her job. ‘I have enough respect for the poets who read the poetry quietly, of course, but I just couldn’t do that. It makes me less nervous to be energetic – if stood still my hands would be shaking, I’d be a wreck, and I’d be sweating the life out of me!’

Laura is probably the first of her kind to have graduated from the infamous Brit School. ‘I did Performing Arts – no I didn’t, that’s a complete lie! I did theatre there. It was probably the best experience of my life. Teenagers are difficult aren’t they? I was sixteen and I went to a private school before that, and my parents really had to scrimp for me to go there… we couldn’t help but feel like it was a bit of a waste of time. I felt creatively they were burning me out – I remember one of them saying that if I wanted to be a writer then they’d see me stacking shelves with Mickey Mouse in Sainsbury’s and I just thought ‘Fuck this’.’

It was the creative encouragement that it seems Laura has always craved, and this has helped her flourish into the performer she is today. ‘It’s so creative, they just encourage you – you could just go up to the front desk and say ‘You wanted to put a play on’ and they’d just say ‘Go on then’. Don’t get me wrong, there were prima donnas whimpering ‘I’m like so… fractured’ and you meet all the characters but they’re just inspiration- and you know, at one point I was a dick too. It’s growing up isn’t it?’

‘Poetry comes easy to me. Everything else just makes me feel like an imbecile’

The Brit school is famous for its alumni and has been nicknamed the ‘Fame Academy’ by the media, with ex-students often quite embarrassed about their roots, preferring instead to appear ‘self-made’. Laura doesn’t seem to share these qualms, perhaps because what she does seems so unusual compared to the usual Brit-pack singers and actresses. Why though, did she not take the path more travelled? ‘I did want to be an actress, but I just couldn’t stand the auditions. It’s the most gruelling, stressful, terrifying experience ever. And so I wanted to be a playwright, but that is just boring – watching people perform your work that you know you could have done better. So in the end, it just seemed right to marry my too loves together. It comes easy to me. Everything else just makes me feel like an imbecile.’

‘Saying you want to be a poet is like saying you want to be a tyrannosaurus rex’

And it seems that Laura is trying to ignite the creative passion in people that she felt slipping away in that first secondary school. ‘I want them to go away and think ‘Maybe I could write…’ It’s such a craft, and it’s been forgotten. It frustrates me how it’s being taught in schools. If people don’t engage with poetry and poets – how is anyone ever going to aspire to be something they don’t think is tangible to them? They’ll just think, Oh, I could never be a poet, poets are all dead. Saying you want to be a poet is like saying you want to be a tyrannosaurus rex. So it’s important that people who are twenty-three and could be a singer, or an actress or a receptionist, can still be excited by words.’

For Dockrill, it’s all about making poetry exciting again and reaching a new audience. ‘Why is music and theatre so important? Why do people say ‘Oh, I can’t live without that song’ but they don’t really do that with poetry. I want to make people fall back in love with words. No one listens to stories anymore.’

‘Poetry’s not made for everywhere though, we know that’

And reaching a new audience is just what she is doing- her second ever gig was at Latitude, and since she has played at Glastonbury and Reading. ‘On paper it sounds really exciting but it’s mostly drunk people going ‘What the fuck is this?’ and throwing cider at my head. Tough crowd! Poetry’s not made for everywhere though, we know that. Although, Latitude is always amazing, because it’s about all the arts; you want to go to the comedy tent, or the theatre tent more than you want to go to the music stage.’

If that was her second gig, then her first must have been pretty impressive. It was, in fact, because of her friend Kate Nash – in the year below her at the Brit School – that Laura first performed. ‘She did like a mini launch and she wanted all her friends to read something, but I didn’t have anything that I wanted to do. I’d just come out of university though, and we had had to write a letter to someone telling them something, and I changed it into a letter of obsession – and wrote to Rolf Harris- of course!- and made this whole character up… and I just knocked it together and made it rhyme. I read it all scared and shaking, so nervous. Acting is so different because you’re doing someone else’s work, but once it’s your own work and you’re being judged by everyone, and the clothes your wearing because you haven’t got a costume to wear- it’s scary! But once you get paid for doing something you love- even if it’s just a drink you get bought – it’s like ‘this is it!’

And what’s the dream, where does Laura go from here? As it is, she’s concentrating on her third book and is taking it easy on the gigging side of things – but next year? ‘In 2011 I’m going to make a poem number one in charts- I’m going to do a bit of a Lou Reed’s Perfect Day and get aspirational, inspirational figures in the arts to say a line of the poem a capella and then see where it takes us. And all the money that we raise will go into a massive pot to fund new talent.’ ‘People think poets don’t need to be paid, people think poets are just banjo players or that they’re all like Pete Doherty – they don’t need pens they write in blood…. The amounts of times I’ve sat next to someone and they say ‘So what do you do?’ I feel kind of embarrassed, because people don’t expect it. It’s like saying you’re an astronaut. And then people just say, ‘Are you actually living off that?’ and I say ‘Yes’. I mean of course, it’s a struggle but this is what I want to do. If it doesn’t work I’ll just have a baby…’

It’s said with a wry smile, but there is a sense that Laura battles against such poetry prejudices on a regular basis. ‘I face those kinds of battles all the time. People ask me who my favourite poet is all the time: sometimes I say Eminem, sometimes I say Roald Dahl or whoever. If you say someone like Sylvia Plath, they just think you’ve looked on Wikipedia. That’s so frustrating because people only know a handful of poets, so they think you’re not a real poet. People just love to capture you and I find it really tough because I am so inspired by everything – music, art, people, things- that it’s so hard to say what my favourite anything is.’

There is no bitterness in these words, but a very potent understanding of how people work- something that reads powerfully in her poetry, and a key factor in her quick success. ‘It’s been a whirlwind – well, as far as a poetry whirlwind could whisk you.’ The thing is, I imagine in Laura’s case, the whirlwind might go pretty far.

British humour has no clothes

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By the end of this you might think, ‘this guy needs a sense of humour.’ Well, I’m in the market for a new one. And so you should be too. There’s something rotten about British humour, and it’s time to hold our noses and face up to it.

‘Apart from Harry Potter, humour is our last remaining cultural export’

In English-speaking foreign countries, British humour is a sign of cultural superiority. It’s part of our mystique, that vague notion of an island peopled entirely by James Bonds. British humour, dry as gin and black as taxis. We work hard to keep its cachet high, and understandably: apart from Harry Potter, it’s our last remaining cultural export. And it’s one of the few forms of nationalism we have left. Americans? Too dumb to get it. The French? Too stuck up. There’s a paternalistic thrill about it when some foreign product (usually American, The Simpsons or the Coen brothers maybe, but remember that Australian show Kath and Kim?) takes up British-style humour. Perhaps that’s what it felt like when a colony first formed a cricket team.

We like to feel as if we’re inside something other people want to get inside too. In that sense British humour is like Oxford: exclusivity is key. Here’s where the essential element of British humour, irony, comes in. The main thing about irony is that it only works if you already know what’s going on and where you stand. Take an example: ‘lovely weather!’ That’s (debatably) funny in a hailstorm; in sun, just banal. It gets more complicated when the context of a joke depends on your milieu: ‘that Dave Cameron’s a splendid chap,’ say. Irony relies on cultural codes that close groups off from one another and from hapless outsiders: it’s basically a form of in-joke, which is why we love to tell Americans, ‘you won’t get it, it’s ironic.’ ‘Oh,’ they say, embarrassed, slightly awe-struck, ‘that’ll be the famous British humour.’

It also fosters ambiguity in social situations. Banter, for example. You walk into the bar, your collar popped, hair spiked, ready – or, as you would put it, pumped. Your companion greets you: ‘Good look, mate. Good look!’ Not only do you suspect he is joking, but in any case your only option is a counter-quip. The spiral has already begun. Lest you dismiss it as a modern form, remember Churchill was a master of banter (‘and you, madam, are ugly, but I will be sober in the morning!’) But then, he was quite posh. The atmosphere created by the insult-as-joke obviously favours the ostensibly more socially secure, which in Britain correlates to what kind of school you went to: another form of exclusivity.

So to a second and related area of British humour: self-deprecation. You might think this makes up for the elitist spirit I have sketched so far, but you’d be wrong. Sincere self-deprecation makes us insecure, and insecurity provokes us to seek solace in superiority to others (c.f. Andy Millman in Extras). If insincere, it simply reinforces positive self-image: you are not only wonderful, but modest too. Self-deprecation also breeds neurosis in those who come into contact with it. How do you react when someone says, ‘I’m such an idiot, I totally forgot that Sartre changed his mind about the concept of praxis,’ or just, ‘God, I look so ugly today’?

‘The comedy of social awkwardness has largely taken over from the comedy of class’

The comedy of social awkwardness has largely taken over from the comedy of class. Perhaps this dates to Tony Blair. Contemporary British humour specialises in identifying and examining in painful detail all the sources of humiliation lurking on the edges of our daily lives. Whether we’re all too mindful of each new embarrassment (Mark, Peep Show), self-consciously oblivious (David Brent, The Office), or faintly, tragically aware that someone, somewhere, seems to be laughing at us (Alan Partridge), each state is as undesirable as the next. Perhaps it’s just the dying sigh of an ex-empire, but British humour at its core says, ‘Life is full of failure. Best just stay in your pyjamas.’

Compare Friends, which extracts its humour from adorable and ultimately harmless human foibles. In some ways its about as funny as a kitten with a ball of wool; still, it’s life-affirming. That’s why it’ll be on, somewhere, any time you care to turn on the TV. Frasier, on the other hand, pays so much homage (Frasier would rhyme that with fromage as in frais) to British humour that it’s sort of like a cargo cult, but even that features an old man and a dog. By the way, for those who think I’m being too Atlantic here, I’d bring in German comedies but I’m not sure they have any. The point is that British TV comedy depicts a world of unredeemed, unhappy people. That can’t just reflect our national psyche, it must influence it too.

‘It cherishes the cutting remark, discourages sincerity, and prides itself on being meaningless to ever-larger groups of the uninitiated’

But it’s in real life that British humour, as a form of interaction, that we do our best to make attractive to unfortunates who didn’t grow up with it, has its most harmful effects. As a cultural mode it puts us constantly on guard for social ambiguity and awkwardness; it cherishes the cutting remark, discourages sincerity, and prides itself on being meaningless to ever-larger groups of the uninitiated. We are a shy, stiff, anxious, and increasingly parochial people. There’s plenty of blame to go round. I’m just saying, lay a smidgen of it at the door of British humour.

New College network open to hackers

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Students at New College have labelled their computing system “buggy and insecure” after it was revealed last week that students were routinely hacking into the College meal system.

A Facebook group appeared last Wednesday publicising the insecure nature of the web page, and offering a step-by-step guide on how to hack into the College system.
The group’s fan base increased to nearly a hundred students before College authorities noticed the page and took the meal booking system offline.

Accurate Solutions, who provide New College’s accounting and management software, responded to the reported flaws by releasing a fixed web page the following Friday.
However, further problems ensued as it was discovered that the system could only be accessed by people inside College and that those living out were therefore unable to book in for a Guest Night.

The College IT staff responded by allowing access to the page through the Oxford VPN, while restricting public access for security reasons.

But only later that day the security restrictions placed on the system were removed and the page was made available on the public internet.

New College did not offer comment as to why the vulnerable system had appeared online and therefore been exposed to more malicious users.

Many students are frustrated by their College which they felt had been ineffective and slow in taking action.

One undergraduate complained: “College staff have known about this for months, and it was reported to them multiple times during Michaelmas.
“The responses varied from indifference to an insistence that the issue did not in fact exist.”

Problems with the system also affected battel payments and prevented students from putting cash on their Bod cards. On Monday morning students found that they had been charged money but that this had not been transferred to their accounts.

Michael Burden, Dean of New College, confirmed that the issue has now been resolved stating that “All the delayed transactions have been repayed, and students’ accounts have already been credited.”

However, there is still concern amongst students regarding the insecure nature of the Accurate Solutions system.

New College have stressed that: “There are no private or personal details on the publicly visible system”, adding that “once communications with Secure Hosting can be verified in detail, we will again be securing the site behind the University firewall and VPN system, with a specific exception being made for the Secure Hosting communications that allow on-line payments to proceed.”

The computer system used by New College is provided by Accurate Solutions. Seventeen of Oxford’s other colleges are clients of the company.
Michael Burden admitted that the system’s flaws had been missed by Accurate Solutions’ testing.

When asked whether the company’s contract with New College would be renewed he stated that: “Contracts are commercial decisions, and are always periodically reviewed”.

Seventeen of Oxford’s College are clients of Accurate Solutions.

Guest Columnist: Chris Tennant

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Looking in the mirror, we have the chance to see ourselves as others see us. Experiments show children taking fewer sweets from a bowl placed in front of a mirror because their own reflection reminds them not to be greedy. They become ‘self’-conscious. Our plays and films hold the mirror up to nature, letting us see how we really are from a third person perspective. But when Alice passes through the looking glass, she finds a distorted, fantastical version of reality on the other side. Recent films encourage us to follow Alice through the glass. Purporting to reflect reality, they provide an illusion of self-consciousness at the same time as escape into fantasy. In this false self-consciousness, we know the consequences of our actions, but are allowed to maintain the fantasy that they will not happen.

‘Our plays and films hold the mirror up to nature, letting us see how we really are from a third person perspective’

In the film Precious, an abused, overweight teenager with two children achieves redemption and escapes the clutches of an evil mother. Ostensibly, the film holds up the mirror to child abuse and poverty. Yet, when her hard working high school headmistress engineers a fresh start she takes us through the mirror to a fantasy reflection of that world. Precious’s fresh start is in a special class with an inspirational, beautiful teacher: she has her second child in a clean hospital room with plenty of space for her friends to come and hang out: she gets counselling from a wise, thoughtful – and yes, young and attractive – woman at the Citizens Advice bureau who confronts the mother in the film’s dénouement.

Society pulls out all the stops for Precious, but it is up to her not to succumb, not to perpetuate the cycle of abuse and not to abuse the state through wilful welfare dependency. The film closes as Precious walks free, carrying her kids into the crowd. Walking out of the film back through the mirror into the real world, she will be utterly ill equipped to raise them. The mythically nurturing state will indeed enforce a clear answer to the question “Who’s responsible?”: it’s up to you, Precious. You’re on your own now. Society holds the mirror up to itself, knows that it fails 99 out of 100 Precious’s, but stays on the other side of the mirror where individual redemption relieves society of responsibility.

The parallel of reality and fantasy is the central structure of the film Avatar. Ostensibly, the film delivers a clear Malthusian message. Humanity is destroying the planet through excessive consumption and neglect of the natural environment. The good guys are the indigenous aliens (read blue Native Americans) and the bad guys are the capitalist invaders (white Europeans). A few of the invaders are able to pass through the looking glass to the prelapsarian world beyond. The main protagonist is a crippled marine. On the other side, as one of the blue aliens, he is redeemed and recovers his powers: he helps the locals expel the invaders and elects to stay permanently.

Watching, we are able to pretend that we are conscious of what we are doing to the planet. But, by following him through the looking glass we can pretend that it is not actually us destroying Eden. We do not identify ourselves as the dishevelled crowd herded into their spaceships, forced to return to a now brown Earth at the end of the film.

‘Expect more of this false self-consciousness. More of this having our cake and eating it’

Expect more of this false self-consciousness. More of this having our cake and eating it. As individuals we are adept at recognising our virtues, of trumpeting our successes; and we are just as good at wishing away our vices and placing the blame for our failures on others. As a society, we do the same. Democracy intensifies this process. Our politicians must flatter us to win our votes; must promise us more hospitals without asking us to accept the cost. Our films must tell us that we do look after the disadvantaged like Precious: so that those that do not redeem themselves can be held responsible for their own fate. Our debates over climate change will continue to reassure us that we are playing our part, even as we blame others for not playing their’s.

As an undergraduate I was fortunate to have tutorials with Mary Warnock, looking at Plato. I read Karl Popper’s criticism of the false consciousness of the shadows in Plato’s cave and also of Marx’ theory of false consciousness. For Popper, these critiques of human reason inevitably led to Plato and Marx’ totalitarian prescriptions. Today the field has been set for the same arguments again. This modern false self-consciousness is clearly pernicious, but who has the right to tell people what to think?

Notes from the Underground

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As I get older, I get more and more worried about the general sense of university as the best days of your life. I mean, Oxford has exceeded my expectations by yards, and yet I still sometimes get that itchy sense that my life just isn’t as good as how I want to be able to say it was, in twenty years time. And talking to Simon Reynolds, that feeling is back with bells on. He’s one of the most interesting music journalists Britain has, and yet he went to university in a town which (let’s face it) lacks the kind of interest in its music scene which would spark the fascination of a twenty-something who had ‘the absolute fixed notion I was going to be a music journalist’.

‘Music on a national level, and the music papers, above all the NME inspired me to want to do music journalism’

From asking about his experiences, Oxford seems a bit more glistening. I start by questioning him about the music scene when he was here. He lists the Oxford Apollo (now the New Theatre), and a slightly more exciting-sounding ‘discotheque called Scamps’. But even with a few exciting names popping up – The Smiths, for example, or Elvis Costello – Reynolds notes that it wasn’t the music scene in Oxford that really got him into music journalism, but rather ‘music on a national level, and the music papers, above all the NME, that inspired me to want to do music journalism’.

But it isn’t the music scene that I’m envious of, even if being able to roll off – as he can – that I had seen The Fall ‘at their absolute most fierce, dense, discordant, impenetrable’. It’s rather the general sense that he gives of his time here, how his major influences were his friends; ‘a bunch of misfit, intellectual types’, which included a best friend who was ‘doing a dissertation that involved Derrida and deconstruction’, and another who was a ‘full-on feminist’. It seems for Reynolds, Oxford’s main impact on his life was that it provided the opportunity for making friends and having fun and, as he puts it, ‘the adventure of being a young adult away from home for the first time, and all the socialising and just doing things like staying up all night talking’.

But from a man as astute and eloquent as Reynolds, it’s hard to believe that if it wasn’t the History degree (he was at Brasenose in the early 80s) which gave him his way with words, he must have been ‘staying up all night talking’ about something pretty interesting.

He was also influenced by books, he concedes, but mainly ‘those I would read in my spare time’, mainly ‘a lot of French critical theory – Foucault, Barthes, etc – and also subcultural theory and academic work on pop culture’. Talking about his work later he says that ‘post-structuralism and the French critical crew had a big influence on me’. His main regret reflects a similar tendency for diversity and intellectual curiosity; he wishes that he ‘had taken advantage of stuff at Oxford, like going to lectures that weren’t on my course’.

Reynolds also avoided the traditional journalistic channels in Oxford, though not – as he notes – as an act of ‘defiance’, and instead published his first fanzine while here. This was a production called Margin that they attempted to start as a full zine but became a ‘wall poster that was in every college and all over town’. This developed after he graduated (though still in Oxford) into another called Monitor, which he took to London.

‘Independent production in the music industry generates a lot of crap and just middling stuff’

Having had this experience, I ask him how he considers independent production more generally. For him, independent production gave the chance to create something with ‘a really potent hit of what you’re about’, and gives you something different, ‘as opposed to being dispersed amid a sea of other text’. However, despite this positivity, he seems a lot less enthusiastic about the idea of independent production in the music industry. ‘It’s good,’ he concedes, but it ‘generates a lot of crap and just middling stuff’, with a ‘ratio that is better than the non-independent production by not that much’.

It seems that he is objecting not to the concept of independent production – something which should be appreciated for its role as ‘an outlet for a lot of weirdo perspectives that would otherwise not get out there’ – rather the idea that independent is equivalent to interesting or original.

‘The interesting zone in music is where the underground breaks into the mainstream’

And it is originality which he seems most enthusiastic about – in both of his chosen fields, music and journalism. A desire for newness infects his unprecedented style of his serious zine (‘it looked so unlike any other fanzine at the time… which was our intent’) to his current opinions on music. The ‘interesting zone’ in music is where ‘the underground breaks into the mainstream’, incidents such as ‘The Smiths getting on to Top of the Pops and gatecrashing the happy-happy vapidity of it all’, ‘rap busting onto MTV’ or the unexpected success of grime.It is where the rebellion of the underground infiltrates and impacts on the commercial world where music gets really interesting.

In his journalism, the same emphasis on difference breaking and changing the tendencies of the mainstream is equally apparent. I ask him about the influence of the internet on his work – widely recognised as the biggest change in the way we write and read since, perhaps, the printing press – and he doesn’t seem that bothered by it; ‘I haven’t noticed it much myself’, he says, except the newness of the ‘sense that opinions have a definite sell-by date’. This is perhaps because of the originality of his work, even where he writes online content, such as his recent blogs for the Guardian, it is often ‘really, really long’, and in this he may be ‘unconsciously bucking the trend for brevity and the twitter-length opinion’.

Reynolds is refreshingly un-snobbish for a music writer, referring, for example, to the most indulgent creators and consumers of underground music as ‘closer to the snooty end of the mainstream’ than they think; ‘a kind of hip snobbery and self-distinction through acts of discerning consumption’. Like his descriptions of his time at Oxford, Reynolds seems more concerned about making his portraits of music accessible, while retaining the qualities of desirability and enviability on which the underground culture so heavily and exclusively relies.

Falklands Fervour

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What is the history of the Falklands Islands?

The war of 1982 did not settle the dispute, and the Argentine claim persists: no conceivable Argentine government will ever renounce it. Since 1982 Argentine governments have oscillated in their policy towards the islands, from a “charm offensive” towards the islanders and collaboration over fisheries and other matters under President Menem and Foreign Minister Guido di Tella, to a harder line under the present government of Cristina Kirchner. Her government has ended previous cooperation, has protested the current oil exploration and threatens some bureaucratic harrassment of shipping in the region, but has renounced any show of force in favour of a diplomatic offensive. She has had some success in the recent meeting of Latin American and Caribbean heads of state in Mexico, where they all supported the Argentine sovereignty claim. This contrasts with 1982, when a number of them, notably Chile, Brazil and Colombia, clearly opposed the Argentine recourse to force. It means that Great Britain will have a somewhat harder time in the UN, where the annual exchange in the decolonization committee has hitherto been something of a ritual.

What is the current Argentine policy towards the Falkland Islands?

The war of 1982 did not settle the dispute, and the Argentine claim persists: no conceivable Argentine government will ever renounce it. Since 1982 Argentine governments have oscillated in their policy towards the islands, from a “charm offensive” towards the islanders and collaboration over fisheries and other matters under President Menem and Foreign Minister Guido di Tella, to a harder line under the present government of Cristina Kirchner.

Her government has ended previous cooperation, has protested the current oil exploration and threatens some bureaucratic harrassment of shipping in the region, but has renounced any show of force in favour of a diplomatic offensive. She has had some success in the recent meeting of Latin American and Caribbean heads of state in Mexico, where they all supported the Argentine sovereignty claim. This contrasts with 1982, when a number of them, notably Chile, Brazil and Colombia, clearly opposed the Argentine recourse to force. It means that Great Britain will have a somewhat harder time in the UN, where the annual exchange in the decolonization committee has hitherto been something of a ritual.

Do the Argentineans want the oil as well?

Obvious enough – Argentina is bound to resent the unilateral exploitation of natural resources by the British or the islanders in what she regards as her maritime waters: Oil, a finite resource, is also a much more visceral matter than fish. The British government naturally says it has no doubts about its position in international law – no government ever admits such doubts. It has also taken discreet measures to ensure against any possible Argentine interference, and will dismiss any diplomatic cost as negligible.

Why does Britain want to retain control over the Falkland Islands?

In the aftermath of the war of 1982 no British government will risk outraging public opinion by appearing soft on the question of sovereignty – the political price of that has always been high – it was so on several occasions before 1982, and after the war of course it would be much higher for any government that would be foolhardy enough to risk it. That is the main reason. There are other ones as well: support for the principle of self-determination for the islanders, access to the Antarctic … even perhaps in some minds oil.

How much oil and gas is there?

Wait and see. Watch the share price of Desire.

Malcolm Deas is a retired tutor in history at St Anthony’s College

 

Voice of the People: India after Independence

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She is best described as an anomaly; a nation bound to fail but which somehow manages to wriggle on. Poverty, unemployment, religious heterogeneity, cultural diversity and corruption aren’t usually the ingredients of a democratic nation.

‘India ridicules political theorists and their insightful axioms of what is required for success’

Throughout the 60 years that India has remained a republic there have been a plethora of enthusiastic predictions all drawing the same conclusion: doom. With every death of a Prime Minister it has been prophesized that anarchy will replace democracy; after every religious riot the disintegration of a united India expected; with every failure of the monsoons destructive famine anticipated. India ridicules political theorists and their insightful axioms of what is required for success.

Today India is the recipient of laud and invokes deference. The integration of the princely states into a singular nation pre-independence, the division of a mighty nation into the dominions of India and Pakistan, the Pathan invasion of Kashmir, the communal riots that rocked partition and communist threats are all itches that have been scratched. India has a booming economy, her judiciary sets precedents, her elections are free and fair and her fourth estate is steadfast in uncovering the latest political ‘masala’. Dissent is rarely confused with disloyalty. Education systems, while imperfect, are improving. The intellectual rigour of the diverse Indian populace allows them to criticize their fellow nationals without resulting in Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’.

Praise is an excellent way to encourage, but we must avoid encouraging complacency. India’s progress ought to leave a lot to be desired by her citizens who have become comfortable with the present. Where once stood the eloquent and loquacious Nehru demanding change, today demagogic rhetoric dominates the airwaves. Communal influences once divided India, today religious leaders unite to restrict sexual liberties. Instead of sagacious patriots and bold nationalists, today we have corrupt politicians. Where there once stood ‘Ahimsa’, today stands aggressive foreign policies intent on securing India’s position as a nuclear vixen.

‘Catching up with the world has lowered her voracious appetite for progress’

Where once stood a mighty nation, today stands a nation that is far too comfortable with where it is. Catching up with the world has lowered her voracious appetite for progress. If despite staggering odds, India has progressed, it is also necessary that she soon overtake her privileged counterparts and to do so it is exigent that Indians recognize their apathy for the present.

Ramachandra Guha, an Indian historian, ended ‘India after Gandhi’ with ‘Speaking now of India, the nation-state, one must insist that its future lies not in the hands of God but in the mundane works of men’. So long as we can kindle the flickering passion for reform, so long as there are intrepid thinkers who can point out our deceleration, so long as we can tolerate criticism, India can hold her role as the world’s largest democracy. The climax of India’s history is still to be written.

Stripping down Thirst Lodge?

Jess Shepherd, JCR secretary, Keble

‘Oxford clubs should follow Thirst Lodge’s example’

Over the past few weeks, we’ve all been subjected to the pontificating of those who are outraged/mortified/secretly titillated about the recent decision of Thirst Lodge to apply for a license to offer services of the lap-dancing and stripping variety. Ooh-er! Such activities are linked to the rise of crime in the area, to men seeing women as merely sexual objects, and to the seedy underworld of human trafficking and prostitution – this is what we are told, in tones of horror and despair, by those who so vehemently oppose the granting of the license. There are 826 such individuals on Facebook, at the last count.I worry, though, that they are all missing the point completely and failing to see how much of a revolution, nay, blessing, this license could be for the student body of Oxford.

Nudity, stripping and overt sexual displays are a common feature, or bane, depending on your point of view, of life beneath the dreaming spires. How could it fail to be, when we are surrounded by rugby boys playing at being men, and fresher girls who have discovered the dance floor for the first time? When you add the omnipresent double vodka and energy to be found in every hole we kindly refer to as ‘clubs’, you invariably end up with a situation far worse than that of dusky maidens, soft of thigh and moist of lip, twirling and swirling their bottoms in your face. At least they’re sexy, unlike the blank-eyed and slurring specimens you find at Escape, who, after a few too many of the suspicious ‘free’ shots, see a pole and think they’re the Next Big Thing. At least they’re easy on the eye, unlike the rugby squad who can’t help but display their fine muscle-coated-in-chub physiques as they run around the quad after…oh, a few too many of the suspicious ‘free’ shots.

I hope all the ‘clubs’ in Oxford decide to follow Thirst Lodge’s stellar example, since employing women to get their bits out for the punters’ benefit means I won’t have to witness the vile sights of Park End’s finest who currently have no choice but to take it upon themselves to entertain the masses.

There is a world, sadly just beyond our reach at the moment, where the only flesh I have to see is that of only the finest, sparkiest girls, who are toned, voluptuous, and most of all, absolutely well fit – and that is a world I desperately, desperately want to live in. Let’s grab this unique opportunity, please – licenses all round!

 

Jay Bernard, WomCam Committee, Oriel

‘Thirst Lodge reinforces objectification of women’

The photograph on the facebook page of the campaign against a potential lap-dancing club at Thirst Lodge reads “I can’t believe we still have to protest this crap!” Wry as it is, the point is that despite decades of campaigns, the glaringly obvious is still ignored: granting a license to Thirst Lodge re-enforces the idea that women are sexual objects to be bought and sold by men. So obvious is this argument, that the first response is to highlight how dull, old-fashioned and prudish it is. But what it means is that despite the general understanding that such establishments are predicated upon the subordination of women, people are still willing to let them operate. In fact, until April 6th when the law finally changes, a lap-dancing club is in the same legal category as a café – not a ‘sex-encounter’ establishment – which means the process for selling naked women is the same as the process for selling a hot drink.

In an ideal world, this would be a good thing; buying and selling sexual encounters would be as controversial as having a cup of coffee. In the real world it is fraught with inequalities. Thirst Lodge’s club would cater exclusively to the straight, male libido, and even if they did decide to have the odd night for women, it would still play into the heteronormativity that characterises such establishments. Even if I wanted to spend an evening at the new club, as a queer-identified female, I’d have a hard time doing so. Men are encouraged to gratify their desires publicly and women, apparently, have none. This is not about demonising men – it is about the exploitative sexuality that is promoted to them. Safety is a concern – a report by Transport for London noted that “wherever lap-dance and strip clubs appear, women’s quality of life deteriorates…with increased reports of rape and increased fear of travelling as a result.”

Some argue that women can be empowered by lap-dancing – especially working-class mothers and students – because it pays better than a conventional job. This is true on an individual level but true economic empowerment doesn’t come by playing the part given by society, especially when society conflates freedom for women with the playboy bunny. A far deeper discussion about sex, sexuality and gender roles is required. No-one can overturn the double-standards inherent in Lap-dancing clubs overnight, but we can open our eyes to how places like Thirst Lodge might unthinkingly, perhaps inadvertently, re-enforce the objectification of women.