Friday 11th July 2025
Blog Page 2066

Fyfe Dangerfield – Fly Yellow Moon

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The tone of Fyfe Dangerfield’s Fly Yellow Moon is introduced in the opening track’s lyric: ‘I can’t help it if I’m happy.’ The album, the first offering form the Guillemots front man is unapologetically uplifting throughout. The track in question is a high octane pop number featuring quirky electronics, piano thrashing and an effortlessly energetic vocal; it’s as good an opener as we’ll hear all year. The rest of the album follows suit, maintaining the joyous aesthetic through an eclectic mix of pop-folk ditties. Elements of Nick Drake and John Martyn can be heard in songs like ‘Firebird’ and ‘Don’t be shy’, whose delicate, sensitive air is more heart-warming than melancholy. At times the track listing feels a little disparate, jumping between styles from one song to the next. However, the album is undoubtedly a great achievement… and get this – it was recorded in only five days!

4 Stars

Delphic – Acolyte

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They call themselves the anti-Gallaghers, which might explain why they sound quite a lot like Bloc Party. But Delphic are more than just openers for their more illustrious tour partners. Encouragingly, they seem to avoid easy catergorisation. Too dance to be indie, too many guitars to be just club music, they fuse the genres in a more natural way than Bloc Party managed on Intimacy, their own electronica effort.

Opener ‘Clarion Call’ is exactly what it claims to be, and although single ‘Doubt’ does open very similarly to BP’s ‘Hunting For Witches’, the vocals are sometimes more reminiscent of Tom Vek, (incidentally, the vocal effects on ‘Red Lights’, compared with Vek’s ‘Nothing But Green Lights’, are similar, and there is an obvious thematic connection) with a chorus which is more like that of a club classic than anything else. The instrumental title-track perhaps most adeptly showcases their dance potential, an epic which spends three minutes building up until it breaks out into a full on rave, compelling beats underpinned all the way by glorious harmonies – and through 8:51 minutes, it never drags.

Sometimes the lyrics lack originality – the opening lines of ‘Halcyon’ are lifted almost directly from Radiohead’s ‘Idioteque,’ the concept of a band asking for ‘something that I can believe in’ is not exactly unheard of, and this song and others (like ‘Counterpoint’) are dependent on compelling drum hooks introduced halfway through to carry them convincingly.

Its a shame that a band with so many great original ideas slip into cliché occasionally, but more often than not, their ideas are rendered with such conviction that they avoid this problem – ‘Clarion Call’ is a case in point. Another is single ‘This Momentary’ – their statement of intent. It has more than a passing semblance in both purpose and musicality to The Gloaming by Radiohead. There the refrain was ‘Your alarm bells/They should be ringing.’ Delphic have a more optimistic outlook, and their imperative is ‘Lets do something real.’ And they duly deliver.

4 stars (8.5)

 

Vampire Weekend – Contra

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Vampire Weekend are what they are, and are not ashamed of it. If you liked their first album, this doesn’t disappoint. Musically, VW still have a tendency towards a thin sound, even if they are admittedly catchy. Some stringed orchestration attempts to solve this (‘Taxi Cab’, ‘I Think Ur A Contra’), sometimes a brass section is the medicine (‘Run’), but generally the production tends towards twitchy electronic music.

‘California English’ has front-man Ezra Koenig doing his best Animal Collective impression (imagine Panda Bear on autotune) and ‘White Sky’ – an album highlight – is all about the blips and beeps. That is, until a catchy falsetto chorus to guarantee insanity come the inevitable incessant-summer-festival-repetition (think the effect of ‘A-Punk’, on helium.) ‘Cousins’ is an astute choice for lead single, tremolo riffing and machine-gun drumbeats adding energy which is sometimes lacking from Vampire Weekend’s setlists.

Lyrically, Koenig is still slightly lost in an Ivy-League world, yet he’s definitely more self-aware; when you name your album after Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries as a response to The Clash, you’d hope their pre-occupations would extend beyond minor grammatical errors and New York bus routes. ‘Holiday’ is close to being as thematically bland as the title suggest, yet lyrics like ‘She never seen an AK/In a yellowy Day Glo display’ suggest a sense of irony. The implication that Koenig has seen an AK, or anything close, might raise a wry smile. But they aren’t exactly Rage, and don’t pretend to be. Judging by a sold-out UK tour, that doesn’t matter, to them or their fans.

4 stars (7.7)

 

Death of an art form?

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Last week the Royal Mail issued a set of ten souvenir stamps, each celebrating a ‘classic album cover.’ The collection, which features ‘some of the most potent graphic images of modern times,’ has been welcomed by many (including Led Zep’s Jimmy Page) but to me, it’s a sad reminder that album art is now seen as a relic – a once-great institution now only worth enjoying on a thumb-nail-sized adhesive; one that peaked decades ago – its glow casting a shadow over subsequent output.

Only recently, Peter Saville – the man responsible for Factory Records’ artwork – told the Independent on Sunday, ‘Cover art is now dead…’ Ouch. It’s true that the album art institution has faced battles: not only did it have to deal with its physical downsize (from Vinyl to CD) but the emergence of minidisk and MP3, and most significantly, the profusion of illegal downloading, have meant the production of credible, viable, even radical album art has become less of a priority for major record labels.

Cynics note the abundance of CDs on HMV’s shelves whose covers are less a product of Andy Warhol and more an OK Magazine photo shoot. However, they fail to recognise the plethora of innovative, thought provoking and sometimes interactive will-be classics that grace us with their presence.

Let’s take Blur’s Think Tank as an example: an album more recent than anyEMI featured by Royal Mail’s collection, its cover art comes courtesy of enigmatic street artist Banksy. The image, which is in his staple stencil-style, shows the embrace of a man and woman, each wearing old-school breathing apparatus – or is it? To be honest, it’s hard to tell what’s going on, and that’s part of the appeal. I appreciate many may not like the image, or any of his corpus for that matter, but this isn’t the point. Banksy, whether we like it or not, has an urban appeal that has captured a generation. Although less esteemed than Warhol, who created the iconic image on The Velvet Underground’s debut, he undoubtedly taps into the zeitgeist of the noughties; the image itself, as enigmatic and provocative as any seen in the ‘golden age’ of album art.

ParlophoneRadiohead’s 2001 release Amnesiac marked a pivotal point in album art’s story. Rather than being released in the orthodox plastic box, the CD came in a hardback book whose pages were filled with the surreal illustrations of long time collaborator Stanley Donwood. Not only is the art featured fascinating in its own right – exhibitions of Donwood’s work have received glowing reviews in recent years – but it leaves the beholder with an impression that here, the art is far from secondary to the music; the images and music are inextricably connected; Amnesiac is not just a sonic experience, but a visual one also – a multi media package bound in a felt-finish book.

The same can be said of pop masters Bjork and Sigur Ros, whose albums are sought after as much for their cover art as their sounds. Both these Icelandic acts are artists first and last – for them the artwork is bound up in a work’s overall ‘package’ and no part of it is left to chance. Sigur Ros, until recently generated all their album art themselves. The works elicited discussion on their minimalist and mystifying composition, and offer a fascinating incite into the band’s psyche. Their last album Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust

used a picture by the acclaimed American photographer Ryan McGinley showing four nude figures running across a road. Despite the band claiming the picture echoes one of the album’s themes, ‘the celebration of the natural,’ high street retailers censored it – an action that thirty years ago would have instantly elevated it to ‘classic’ status.

Animal collective’s acclaimed 2009 opus Merriweather Post Pavilion has equally provocative album art. The cover design sounds simple – lines of bright green ovals on a purple and pink backdrop – but after a moment’s inspection its Dominoinventiveness is apparent. As we look at the design, the patterns change. The ovals ebb and flow as we pan across, creating an uncomfortably trippy, kinetic experience. The design is inspired by the work of Japanese psychologist Akiyoshi Kitaoka who earned his PHD studying visual perception. Posting on music blog Popdose, reviewer Talor Long says: ‘it appears to be in motion when we know it’s stationary. It’s an apt representation of the album’s duelling thematic components: fantasy versus reality, whimsy versus obligation, restlessness versus tranquillity.’ Again, we see modern, mainstream album art that supports its work’s musical content whilst innovating artistically – it deserves a place in the same album art canon as Sgt. Pepper’s and Dark Side of the Moon…doesn’t it?

Of course, these are just a few isolated examples within a broad sweep of current mainstream album art. A richer vein of artistic prowess is to be found in the more left field market; a trawl through some of London’s backstreet record shops is likely to expose an even more iconoclastic and virtuosic artistic repertoire. Who said album art is dead?

Out of the frying pan

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In some ways, Hot Chip’s music is a strange dichotomy; its sound is an embodiment of both accessibility and experimentation – normally two mutually exclusive features in our world of Jedwards and JLSs. They’ve achieved that rare feat in music: as well as being unashamedly radio-friendly, the music is intelligent; the cerebral and visceral are in a state of equilibrium; listeners can bask in the beat-driven sounds, or they can analyse the hell out of the clever use of compression on the kick drum… Few bands do pop like Hot Chip.

I chatted to Joe Goddard, one half of the creative duo within the five-piece. He and lead vocalist Alexis Taylor have managed all creative responsibilities since the group’s inception eighteen years ago. After becoming friends in their first year at Elliot School, they’d hang out listening to Pavement and recording acoustic guitars on a four-track; the name Hot Chip was set in stone even back then. Joe tells me about the school which itself is an institution famed for its musical pedigree: its alumni include enigmatic dub step pioneer Burial, electonica wunderkind Four Tet and indie darlings The XX and The Maccabees. “It was a big liberal comprehensive that instilled the idea that you could do anything with your life.” He recalls how he and Kieran Hebden (a.k.a. Four Tet) would “introduce each other to new records” and “go and see shows all around London.”

In fact it’s through this extant friendship that Hot Chip had its break; Hebden passed the group’s demos to London label Moshi Moshi who were quick to put the band on its roster. Despite the new contract, Hot Chip didn’t indulge in state-of-the-art studios and cutting edge producers. The first two albums, 2004’s Coming On Strong and 2006’s seminal The Warning, were both recorded on laptops in the band members’ bedrooms, using the unfashionable music program Steinberg Cubase (think GCSE music lessons). Joe admits, “it’s seen as pretty old” but uses it because “he doesn’t have to look anything up in the manual.” He expresses his disillusionment at musicians’ tendencies to hop between the latest music software “never being comfortable with any one thing” and producing poorer music as a result.

Like its predecessor Made in The Dark, the band’s soon to be released album One Life Stand was recorded in more conventional spaces. The band assembled its own studio in a disused London industrial estate, only for it to be burnt to a crisp by a freak fire in 2008. Fortunately, the studio was restored and equipped with a glut of vintage gear in time for the recording sessions that produced songs “inspired by lots of different kinds of soul music from different times and places.” The band wanted to make something “more concise than Made in The Dark” which was apparently too disparate: “it changes from pop to folk to crazy ravey…this time we wanted to make something more of-a-piece.” One Life Stand features more live instrumentation than its predecessors, perhaps offering an antidote to what Joe describes as “aggressive, processed, digital dance music.”

For the recording sessions which began in spring last year, the band decided once again to work without a producer, favouring instead the Goddard-Taylor unity: “The production’s my favourite part of the whole process…I’d be loath to give it up.” Goddard does suggest he might be tempted if they found someone who changed the way they work, rather than the work itself, but concedes, “It would be difficult to find someone we trust enough.” I wondered how, without an exterior presence, Hot Chip maintains a balance between accessibility and experimentalism, the union of which, to me, is a defining feature of its music. “Both aspects are important to us…we want something that works as a pop song but has some strangeness.” He tells me how the personalities within the duo complement each other, “if one of us is doing something that’s too experimental, the other will rein it in…so it gets to the point a bit quicker.”

The group has just started rehearsals for its imminent tour of Europe where the songs will undergo further transmogrifications, as they do in all of Hot Chip’s live shows. Joe sounds enthused when he talks of the “potential for experimentation in a live setting.” He recognises that gig-goers are willing to wait for the pay off in a song…it’s about building and releasing tension in a way that wouldn’t work on CD.” He finds it “dull when you go to a gig and the band essentially plays its record with no live elements.”

It’s evident from our chat that there’s something unique about the way Hot Chip thinks about music – a distinction that inevitably manifests itself in the sounds it produces. Joe has a jibe at the ordinary sounds that are becoming ubiquitous in the pop landscape due to the likes of X Factor: “it’s a nasty business. Terribly run-of-the-mill music made by pretty boys and girls with normal sounding voices,” yet I get the impression he doesn’t think about it much; all Hot Chip really cares about is making music – if a fire incinerating their studio doesn’t distract them, “pretty girls and boys” haven’t got a chance.

 

The Pro

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For the majority of students, summers are spent travelling, working and relaxing.  Not so for Charlotte Houston, a Hertford Geographer. She has spent much of the last three years training and playing international lacrosse, breaking into the senior team last year during the Home Internationals. Having progressed through the top tiers of the sport so rapidly, she was first chosen for the Under 19 squad aged 15, Charlotte’s introduction to playing lacrosse was unremarkable: compulsory “games” at her school in Guildford. Her fortuitous introduction to lacrosse, however, represents its major weakness; namely that lacrosse is mainly only played at a handful of private schools in England.  

It is an issue Charlotte herself raises, arguing that lacrosse is only elitist because of the expense involved in playing. “Players have to pay to represent regions, even England” due to funding being based on results. She sees this is a vicious cycle as “to get results the funding is needed to improve training facilities and coaches”. A cursory scan down an England squad list shows though that for a considerable number of Charlotte’s teammates this weakness has been overcome by gaining a scholarship in the USA. Although tempted, she felt however that the distance from home and the intensity at which sport in American colleges is played was not for her.

Their loss, it seems, has been Oxford’s gain, they are currently sitting fourth in the BUCS Premier Division. Having lost only two of their eight games and with a game in hand Charlotte admits she is very excited about the team’s prospects for the rest of the season. Talking about the crucial varsity match coming up in February, Cambridge at home, she is confident that Oxford can overturn a disappointing loss to them earlier in the season, “if we perform well on the day with such a talented squad I don’t see why we can’t win”.

 Setting the tone for the rest of the season, the Women’s squad train three times a week, the team’s first ever pre-season training schedule must have proved daunting, coming as it did before Charlotte had even started “Fresher’s Week”. Thankfully her introduction was helped by three further Hertford Geography Fresher’s also joining up with the squad for the first time meaning that the College, perhaps surprisingly, now represents the sport in all three of its variations with students already in the Mixed and Men’s squads. Charlotte agreed, “It’s really nice to go to training and fitness with people from College, rather than face the freezing mornings alone”.

A further training session a week plus training weekends throughout the year with the England squad in Rickmansworth means Charlotte does have a demanding schedule. However she did not feel that she had had to sacrifice other areas of Oxford life to succeed. Frequent Crew Dates, punctuated by seemingly even more frequent visits to Park End, appeared to be highlights of the very social, social life enjoyed by the Lacrosse team.

Charlotte does not yet know what the future holds for her lacrosse plans after graduating but she is definitely interested in a Law conversion course. At the moment it seems she is just focussing on achieving the fine balance between working hard and playing hard, whilst seemingly remaining relaxed throughout.   

Crunch time in college football

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The second half of the college football season figures to be one of the most exciting in recent memory: that is, if Hilary’s frozen fields relent in their effort to sabotage Oxford sport.

This is the term of championship elation and relegation despair, Cuppers triumphs and painful penalty shoot-out exits: whether trophies or torment, something is at stake for all teams at this time of year.

The JCR Premier Division has been exciting and competitive, where the overall quality of play is consistently high. Christ Church, one of the pre-season favourites, stormed out of the gate and maintained that momentum into the New Year: they now sit three points clear, unbeaten and hugely confident. Alec Ward, the team’s creative heartbeat, directs a high-powered attack that threatens the goal on every possession, and the side’s resilient defensive line are as tough to beat as any in the league.

St Catz are an impressive force, though, and once again they seem to be hitting their stride at the right time: their tactical intelligence is obvious, and supporting striker Alan MacNaughton is able to find space and distribute the ball freely. The destination of the title might well be decided by which of these top two can keep their form over the next few games.

Teddy Hall, Wadham and Magdalen are still in the race, too, especially in a division where many teams are clustered on a similar number of points; a week of surprising results can entirely alter the table’s complexion. Wadham began the season as

pace-setters, but have faded fast against the league’s better sides. At the other end, LMH, Brasenose and New are fighting for survival, while Merton/Mansfield currently occupy the fourth relegation spot – next year’s divisional realignment means that an extra team must drop.

The First Division has been dominated by fallen giants Worcester, who are set to bounce back to the Prem immediately. St John’s and St Hugh’s also look strong in their campaigns for promotion. Cuppers is again fascinating: a winner at this stage is impossible to predict. In the leagues and the cup, then, the next 8 weeks will decide everything, providing plenty of drama and entertainment along the way.

 

Five star athletes

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Aristotle once said that “the athletes in the Pentathlon are most beautiful.” Whilst the disciplines have changed somewhat since the 8th century B.C, the Pentathlon’s position as one of the most prestigious Olympic events has not. Its origins are found in the romantic adventures of a liaison officer whose horse was brought down in enemy territory. Having defended himself with his pistol and sword, he swam across a raging river and delivered the message on foot.
Sadly, the efforts of the Oxford University team during their gruelling Christmas training week could hardly be described as beautiful or romantic.

Clinging awkwardly to horses and being outswum by schoolboys would probably not have impressed Aristotle. Then again, the athletes had a lot to live up to.
Oxford University has a long-standing record of success in the Modern Pentathlon. The pride of OUMPA is Steph Cook who won Gold at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and was crowned World Champion in 2001. In the 2000 Olympics the silver medal was won by another OUMPA old girl, Emily deRiel. In more recent times, current student Richard Hildick-Smith (SEH) has represented Great Britain, and last year saw a newcomer to the sport, Yusuf Randera-Rees, represent South Africa in the African Championships.

The multi-disciplinary nature of the Modern Pentathlon requires a demanding array of mental and physical skills. Power is required for swimming. Manual dexterity and fast reactions are essential for success on the fencing piste. Taking an unfamiliar horse for a spin around a 1.2m show-jumping track tests an athlete’s courage. Finally, not only fitness and skill, but also focus and determination are required for the combined event which intersperses a 3km run with 3 sets of rapid, accurate, target shooting.

With BUCS, Old Blues and, of course, the Varsity match, ahead of them OUMPA’s training week may not have been pretty, but it was absolutely essential. Our athletes defied the snow and ice to take advantage of Whitgift School’s incredible facilities and coaches.

They were quickly thrown in the deep end. The week began with 7am swimming session, though once in the pool, all they really needed to get them moving was a group of schoolboys in the next lane going a little bit faster. Humiliation can be a great motivator.

At Chessington Equestrian Centre the team worked on their show jumping skills. Few of the team had much experience with horses, and there were more than a few shaky moments. Yet by the end of the week everyone was looking at ease on a horse and some had even progressed to doing a few jumps.

Somewhat relieved to be back on their own two feet the team looked for post-lunch training inspiration from the master of the training montage – Rocky Balboa. In Rocky IV they found the perfect training technique. Running across Wandsworth Park quickly turned into a full-on snowball fight followed by the traditional boys versus girls snowman rolling contest. Theirs may have been bigger but ours was most certainly better.

With Mika, the rather formidable Czech master, rolling an expert eye in disdain and belting out the likes of “You shoot like shotgun,” the athletes swiftly got back on target. Incorporating circuits with shooting to simulate the combined event competition pressures they soon learnt that, when in a hurry, the black ring isn’t quite as easy to hit as one might hope. Nevertheless, they made a lot of progress and even got some fencing work in too before the week was out.

Unfortunately, all good training camps must come to end. At least ours did in true OUMPA style back at our President’s ‘unwinding’. Aristotle would have been proud.

Not all downhill for winter Blues

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The Blues race bears the distinction of being the world’s oldest team ski event with a tradition which dates back to 1896. There are three men’s teams and two women’s teams – six skiers on each team. All skiers ski both slalom and giant slalom (GS) disciplines. Each racer has two runs on each course and their times from these two runs are combined so that each racer has an overall slalom and an overall GS time. The top four combined times in each team for each discipline are then added up to give the teams overall time, which is then compared against the corresponding Cambridge team’s time.

Normally GS is raced in the morning and slalom in the evening but due to an avalanche across the stade where the course was being set for the races, no races could take place in the morning. So we started with the slalom in the afternoon, by which point the cloud had cleared and the conditions were looking good. The Women’s Blues team went down first, Anouk Dey (Exeter) raced first, setting a phenomenally good time of 40.55 seconds, which was only beaten by Peter Calvert of Cambridge out of all of the mens and womens teams.

Ex-Welsh national skier Aimee Broughton (Jesus) skied next for Oxford, again setting an excellent time. Abby Willward (St Catherine’s) and Alice Kelway-Bamber (LMH) both put down two very good runs and made up the third and fourth fastest slalom times. By this stage the Women’s Blues team was over 17 seconds ahead of Cambridge which is a very large margin – last year the men won the overall varsity match by less than a second.

The next team to race was the Women’s 2nd team who put down fast times, notably Katie Mountain (Queen’s) skied excellently, beating one of Cambridge’s Blues women. The Women’s 2nd team’s combined times for the slalom gave them more than a 20 sec lead over Cambridge which again was an excellent result, probably best ever for Oxford Women’s 2nd team.

The Men’s 1st team, who were looking strong, were next to race. Richard Murphy (Worcester) went down first for the dark blue men setting good safe times in both of his runs. Andre de Haes (BNC) raced next setting a very fast time of 39.85 seconds in his first run and his second run was looking strong until a few gates from the finish when he skied out and was disqualified.

This put more pressure on the remaining Oxford men to complete without disqualification because if only three skiers out of the six in each team complete large time penalties ensue. Billy Henson (LMH) and Ed Grieg-Gran (St Hugh’s) rose to this pressure and set strong times. Unfortunately Ewen Maclean (Hertford) the Men’s captain was disqualified and Tom Dalton had a fall meaning he lost valuable seconds. So despite Oxford fielding a very strong blue’s team their bad luck meant that after the slalom Cambridge was ahead by over 16 seconds.

The luck reversed for the men’s second team and Cambridge had three of their team disqualified giving Oxford a comfortable lead. The Men’s 3rd team skied well but were a long way behind due to poor team selection by Cambridge – their 3rds team was stronger than their 2nds team – some 3rds men even beating Blue’s skiers!

The following day the post-poned GS races were held, again in good weather. The men’s 2nd team managed to increase their lead with good GS performances eventually winning by an impressive margin of over a minute.

The men’s first team skied hard in the GS to try to pull back the lead from Cambridge. They managed to beat them by over 7 seconds but it wasn’t enough to make up the time they had lost in the slalom the day before and the 2009 Varsity Men’s skiing match was won by Cambridge.

After fantastic performances by both teams the day before in the slalom morale was high in the Oxford women’s camp. Anouk Dey and Aimee Broughton again raced excellently showing their wealth of racing experience, recording very fast times. Federica Nocera (Univ) and Amelia Davies (St Hugh’s) the women’s captains, also both put in strong performances meaning that Oxford had all four women in with quicker times than the 2nd quickest Cambridge women, a very impressive feat.

This cemented their lead, giving them a 34 second win overall, one of the best results in the history of women’s Varsity ski racing. The Women’s 2nd team also furthered their lead in the GS, winning by a very comfortable margin. The women’s performance this year was very impressive, and is unparalleled by any win – men or women – in the Varsity ski race.

Editorial: Higher Education funding

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University finance, while not the most exciting topic of conversation, has understandably absorbed the attention of both students and the national media this week. ‘Education, education, education’ seemed like good priorities at the time, but with funding cuts that reportedly could lead to the closure of up to thirty institutions, these priorities seem to have been waylaid and ‘educashun educashun educashun’ might be what we settle for as a nation. This isn’t good enough.

“While other countries see education as a means to economic recovery, we choose to compromise it”

Thousands of courses and places are to be axed in the next few years, just when applications have increased by tens of thousands. This obvious shortfall threatens the viability of our higher education system, and the competitiveness of the UK as a whole. For years we have been told that everyone should aspire to higher education, and the places would be there. Just as Blair’s form of aspirational socialism seems to have taken hold, and young students really are aiming for university as a serious route to their futures, this no longer has the commitment and backing from Westminster that it requires.

Other nations are funding university education as means to innovation and economic recovery, and yet we choose to compromise ours. The deficit the country faces needs serious attention, but cutting funding to education sends the wrong message about our priorities. This is about more than money; it is about our national priorities.

“The shortfall in places and courses threatens the viability of higher education”

Of course funding cuts have to be made across the board, but financial support is the way by which the government demonstrates its

commitment to a policy. Small cuts here and there can be dealt with, but they are only the beginning. They ease the pain of large cuts until these are no longer noticed. And the proposed cuts are not small, nor insignificant. Of course efficiency savings should be made, but does this not simply transfer the onus of the funding cuts from the government to individual institutions?

Increasing tuition fees is far from a perfect solution, but there seems to be little realistic alternative, particularly in the current economic climate. Alumni campaigns are all well and good (look to the US for how to do this properly) but relying on donations and endowments as a serious source of funding disadvantages those universities that don’t have Oxford’s calibre of alumni. Higher education for the benefit of anyone and everyone who wants it should be our ideal, but relying on the government for long-term sustainable funding no longer seems to be a viable alternative.

The implications of funding reductions on our years at Oxford are yet to be decided, but it is those arriving in years to come, let alone those not fortunate enough to gain a place at university, that will endure the consequences. These decisions may be easy to sneak out in an announcement on December 23rd, as Mandelson attempted to do, but the damage, once enacted, is far more complicated to undo. We should be constantly raising the bar and our expectations of university, not sinking it.