Schizophrenics who also abuse alcohol or drugs are four times as likely to commit a violent crime than the average person.
In contrast, among those who are clean the risk is only 1.2 times the average.
Dr Seena Fazel, researcher from Oxford’s Department of Psychiatry said, “we found that the risk of violent crime committed by people with schizophrenia is a lot lower than people might expect.”
The findings suggest that substance abuse treatment may help control the rate of violent crime among schizophrenics. Currently, up to 5% of violent crimes in society are committed by schizophrenics, among whom 30-40% are alcoholics and 10-15% abuse drugs.
The Telegraph has reported that Adam Smith, Labour MP for Oxford East, used his expenses account to makeover his house.
Mr Smith defended his spending, saying, “My mortgage interest costs are much less than the mortgage or rent for many other MPs, but I have had to spend significant amounts on repairs.”
One of his claims from February 2006 includes the cost of a new dishwasher, oven, fridge, microwave, gas hob, and a 50p carrier bag from Ikea.
Oxford West’s Dr Evan Harris MP has published his expenses record on his website. “I consider this job to be a privilege and not an exercise in income generation,” he said.
Oxford University has been criticized for spending of £300,000 of taxpayers’ money researching what type of water ducks like the best.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has carried out a three-year study “to ascertain the importance of bathing water to ducks by quantifying their motivation to gain access to water in which they can bathe.”
After offering the ducks a variety of water supplies including a trough, shower, water pond and a nipple drinker, it was concluded that the birds preferred standing under a shower.
The research has sparked anger among farmers and taxpapers alike, who have viewed it as a huge waste of money.
Anthony Rew, Devon chairman of the National Farmers’ Union, said the use of taxpayers’ money on the research “just proves that Defra is quackers”.
He added, “They need to get out of London and get on a farm to see how the countryside works, to put policies in place that are practical.”
Susie Squire of the Taxpayers’ Alliance agreed, viewing the research as a “bonkers waste of money”.
“It is common sense that ducks like rain and water. The last thing the government should be allocating scarce resources to is this sort of nonsense”, she said.
A spokesperson for Defra defended the research, saying that it was carried out “to help determine the most appropriate method of providing water and maintaining hygiene in the duck-rearing industry.”
Marian Stamp Dawkins, professor of animal behaviour at Oxford added that it would be unfair to portray the study as finding out simply that ducks like water. It had been carried out to find the best way of providing water to farmed ducks because ponds quickly became dirty. Oxford students have expressed mixed views on the research.
Jess Bolton, a first year student at Worcester expressed her support for the research.
“I think it’s fantastic that the government is taking the initiative to work towards a situation where the animals we farm are raised in the most comfortable conditions possible. The fact that the government is allocating such sums to the general cause of animal welfare shows a surprising level of moral integrity in the face of potential public criticism”, she said.
However, Daniel Lowe, the OUSU Environment and Ethics officer expressed his surprise at the sum spent.
“£300k seems quite excessive for research of this nature, and I wonder how the bill managed to get so high”, he said.
“However there is some environmental benefit of finding out that ducks prefer showers as a shower provides a more hygienic source of water for farmed ducks than ponds.”
Oxford University’s Humanities Division is facing wide funding cuts despite an improvement in the quality of its research. This is believed to be a result of the government’s stressed commitment to funding scientific development.
One of the hardest hit faculties is Modern Languages, which will see a £1 million drop in its funding, despite being awarded top ratings in the recent Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). Both the French and German departments were ranked number one in the country according to the Research Fortnight’s Power Index.
Professor Michael Sheringham, Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature described the situation as “lamentable”. “It suits no one that Oxford University should have this imbalance; a beleaguered humanities alongside boosted sciences.” He added, “It’s not good for the [Oxford] brand.”
The cuts will take the form of a drop in ‘quality research’ funding, supplied by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Oxford receives one of the highest HEFCE monetary allocations out of all the UK universities, with this year’s grant exceeding £180m. How much money a university receives is dependent upon its performance within the RAE, which scores departments on the quality of their research output.
“Funding is calculated according to RAE ratings on a subject by subject basis”, explained Philip Walker, a spokesperson for HEFCE. “To do well, a department needs to improve the quality and increase the volume of its research.”
Yet Head of the History of Arts Department Professor Craig Clunas, whose faculty saw a substantial rise in its UK ranking this year, questions the very relevance of the RAE system in light of the cuts, “It is very disappointing that an improved RAE performance leads to poorer funding.”
The downsizing of the Humanities budget comes in the wake of government initiatives to boost scientific funding in higher education. Speaking at the recent Romanes lecture at Oxford in February, Prime Minister Gordon Brown committed to making science a priority. In line with this, while arts and languages at the university are suffering , funding for scientific research has seen a sizeable increase.
Professor William James, Associate Head of the Medical Sciences Division, denies however that the boost his faculty has received in its annual grant comes at the expense of the arts.
“The additional funds have arisen because of the continued increase in quality and quantity of medical research done in Oxford. In most areas of medical research, Oxford departments were rated as the top one or two in the UK.
“The government have decided to award a premium to subjects it is particularly keen to promote, including maths, science and medicine. As a result of both of these factors, the University has received a great uplift in the block grant it gets from HEFCE.”
When asked, a spokesperson for the University said that it is up to HEFCE to decide how it allocates its money.
Before meeting Helen Fielding, mastermind behind the woman in Britain love more than the Queen (Bridget Jones, obviously), preparation was in order. With true dedication to the craft of method journalism, I spent a long days submersed in a thick pink fog of chick-flicks, period dramas, power-pop albums and ‘female orientated literature’ (…browsing the Mills & Boone Shelf in Borders). So it was I skipped to the Oxford Union to meet the duchess of Chick-lit herself.
Fielding, a St Annes English graduate, first gave birth to Bridget in the form of a column for the independent in 1995. Millions of housewives took up the Bridget-banner in response, eventually giving rise to two best-selling novels, which in turn became best-selling films. Presumably this is news to no one though. Fielding walks into the room, with a small entourage of those chosen to have dinner with the fine woman. My immediate thought is what it was they did to get in there. My photographer suggests the unifying factor amongst applications was using the sentence ‘I am Bridget Jones’.
Which is the charm. Bridget is the ultimate everywoman. And so is Fielding. Like all good speakers, she’s an extremely likable woman. She stands to applause after the usual Union introduction, and tells the story of the first ever reading/signing she did for Bridget Jones; the one where two people turned up, one of which was someone she kissed at school. How far she’s come!
One of the most valuable things about hearing Fielding speak, and chatting to her afterwards, is the advice she offers to aspiring writers and word-scientists at Oxford. Fielding began her career as a journalist working for the BBC in Bristol. Finding her feet through reportedly similar experiences to those of Bridget herself, she went on to spend extensive time in Africa; experience that helped form her early novel Celeb. She went on to work for the Sunday Times, before leaving over an objection with an editor and moving to the Independant.
She feels that the experience she gained here definitely contributed to her eventual success. She talks about how journalism crafted her writing style; routine things like rewriting always makes a piece better, keeping your sentences short and sharp, and general functional, writing. Wise words.
She also has something to say for anyone feeling the Oxford grind might not be worth as much as it seems to be; Fielding makes a reference to a period of writing ‘12-18 hours a day’. Someone questions this, and she credits it to her weekly essay crisis-wake up at 5am and ‘write and smoke and smoke and smoke’ until the tute that evening. At the same time, this isn’t something she actually reccomends. On Oxford; ‘I remember worrying a lot of the time…Worrying that I wasn’t doing enough work. Which was ridiculous; of course I wasn’t doing enough work’.
Later, on getting into the industry itself, she offers some of the best advice I’ve come across yet; ‘I would think about what you can offer a newspaper. And [for students] that’s youth! Find a story or feature idea and do it!’. She trails off, possibly bemused at how intensely the wannabee journalist is listening; ‘Don’t make it too long…oh, and put the worst bit at the end, that’s the bit that always gets cut’.
Fielding speaking on the craft of writing is a fascinating experience. Before meeting her, I’d carried around the assumption that she wrote with the intent of righting wronged women and disparaging men everywhere which turns out to be exactly the ‘feminist’ view she derides. Clearly I’d mis-judged her style. It was with some regret then when I ask why she always goes for happy endings. All I get is the same bemused smile and ‘I like happy endings’. I pause, and she elaborates ‘I think the thing about happy endings is that they always satisfy me. I mean, Jane Austen always had a happy ending.’
The Jane Austen comment is a reference to a moment during her talk. When doing my usual whip-round of friends asking what they thought would be good to bring up in the interview, one joke was asking whether she thought Jane Austen would mind that she was rewriting her plots. Oddly enough, she said exactly the same thing to the room. Someone asks if she finds herself inspired by any particular writers; ‘Jane Austen more than inspired me because I just stole all her plots’.
Back to the lack of pretension: Fielding still seems so surprised at how well everything has turned out. One of the first questions from the floor is ‘Are you Bridget Jones?’. ‘I used to feel like I was carrying a sign around my neck saying ‘I’m not Bridget Jones’. Everyone asked that. Although actually it is quite autobiographical!’. The main surprise was how widespread the agreement was; ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ has sold over two million copies worldwide. What did it? ‘I think that Bridget touched the chord of it being alright to be human’.
An important message these days. You’re not about to read another diatribe about image presented by magazines; it’s bad in all the obvious ways. Between lifestyle magazines and a range of self-help books, we’ve all got so many places to turn to in search of happiness. Fielding describes them as ‘a modern religion’. I ask what she thinks about the magazine industry, and whether there’s any value in having that image thrown at us. ‘I think it’s fine if you read them alongside a good self-help book’. I have absolutely no idea if she’s being serious or not. But either way she probably has a point. Throw in a copy of Bridget and you could end up with a holy trinity of moral guidance.
Not wanting to lose the oppurtunity to abuse the potential of some startling insights into the female mind, I push for tips on just what women want from the woman more qualified to answer than any. I ask what the most romantic thing a man has ever done for her is.
‘What’s the nicest thing a man has done for Bridget…There was one quite funny thing. The girls were completely drunk and we were ranting about the men who are bastards. And Daniel suddenly turned up freakishly, for once in his life being the perfect boyfriend. With chocolates, and being all considerate and nice. Just as we had been saying all men were bastards’. Hmm. Not bad, but I was hoping for something more specific.
I’m more upfront; Any tips for the Cherwell readers looking to please their girlfriends this weekend? ‘I think what’s interesting about today is that everyone is so defensive now. All this texting, emailing, there are so many barriers to everything. Better just to talk. I think that…..I think girls like compliments.’ Then she thinks. Her face turns michevious. ‘Well, I can think of a rather obvious way to make their girlfriends happy this weekend; I’m sure they know that already!’ Point taken.
In ThreeMoreSleeplessNights by Caryl Churchill, Kontrast Theatre Productions present an engaging, meticulous and powerful depiction of human interactions at their most fundamental level and exemplifies the very best aspects of student drama.
Caryl Churchill’s script follows two troubled couples over the course of forty-five minutes; Margaret and Frank, and Dawn and Pete. The final scene sees Pete and Margaret, rid of their previous partners, apparently content, or so it would appear. Whilst ostensibly each pair seems unique, the common fragility of their respective relationships is made abundantly clear through a bewildering array of heart-wrenching monologues, explosive arguments and lingering silences. That each one of us, as audience members, can relate on some level to the experiences enacted before our very eyes makes Three More SleeplessNights a decidedly unsettling theatrical experience.
The small cast of four is impressive. Kim Fitzgerald as Frank imbues his character with a volatility and violence of emotion – see-sawing between anger and despair – that leaves onlookers in a state of bemusement. Margaret, played by Hanan Abdalla, pulls at our heart-strings; trapped with a young child in a tumultuous marriage, she expertly portrays a woman struggling to hold onto that glimmer of love long since lost. Antonia Tam combines an eerie, supernatural delivery with purpose of action to great effect as the suicidal Dawn. Pete (Edmond Boulle) provides an almost comic element to the piece; conceited and unable to communicate with his so obviously troubled girlfriend, he retreats within himself in order to avoid the hopelessness of his own existence.
The Burton Taylor Studio, as harnessed by director Matt Orton, provides a perfect setting for the action; its claustrophobic space serves to heighten the emotionality of the piece. Judicious placing of mirrors and the incorporation of an audience gangway into the performance area engenders a sense of awkward participation. We feel distinctly uneasy gazing upon a bedroom; the most intimate of environments is laid bare for all to see. All action takes place around the central over-seized bed, from which a different sheet is removed to signify change of scene. Tilted at a twenty-five degree angle, observers are given a direct view into this truly personal space; the actors appear as mere objects under a microscope.
Truly compelling acting, proficient direction, subtlety in staging; at under an hour in length ThreeMoreSleeplessNights is not to be missed.
(four starsout of five)
Three More Sleepless Nights by Caryl Churchill will be at the Burton Taylor Studio, 6th Week, 21.30, Tuesday-Saturday
How did you get into rowing in the first place? Well, I was lured into it in Freshers Week like everybody else thinking it was the thing to do. Unsuccessful at the rowing part, a number of the crew suggested I try coxing instead as I’m of quite a small, light build. I was reluctant at first – it always seemed like quite an intimidating position that required lots of shouting and aggression, and I didn’t think it would be for me. I gave it a go though and soon found that it actually came quite naturally.
And what’s your rowing record so far? I started in my first term at Oxford and have been coxing for about one and a half years now. My first appearance was for the M3s in Torpids, followed by W2s in Summer Eights. This year I worked with W2s for Torpids and have been training with W1s since then, and I’ll be rowing with them in the coming week. Having got headship in Torpids last term the team have good potential even if we don’t have any Blues to boost the team.
How would you describe your role as a cox? In training, the important thing is to just be really patient with the boat. On race day it’s a completely different matter though. I find that it’s not so much about being aggressive as trying to motivate the team. You’ve just got to get yourself and the team involved. When i first started as a novice I found it awkward yelling at people who knew so much more about rowing than I did but you’ve got to get used to it. Now I feel totally comfortable and the team are some of my closest friends.
Do you feel you’re an equal part of the team compared to the others? Coxes don’t keep the same hours as the rowers, so we’re a bit cut off in a way. I do a maximum of 5 outings a week whereas some of them do close on 8, so the intensity of training isn’t quite the same. Nor do we do all the erg and fitness sessions, or the carb-loading dinner sittings. Having said that, when we’re all sitting in the boat there’s definitely a sense that we’re all in it together. One unit.
Would you count coxing as being a real sport? In terms of physical exertion, obviously it can’t be judged on the same scale as rowing itself. Even without pulling an oar however, I still feel exhausted and shaky from all the shouting and nervous energy used up. The sense of competitive sportsmanship is there in full strength, perhaps even more so for the cox, who directs most of the tactical manoeuvring of the race. The pressure of sitting in the boat in silence at the beginning of the race waiting for the signal is terrible for everyone, rower and cox alike.
And what would you say has been your worst coxing experience ever so far? Torpids this year had a memorable moment when we caught a crab in the middle of a race and the boat behind slammed into us with all four blades. Even more galling for me, though, was last year’s Summer Eights: having bumped on each of the first 3 days, on the final day the boat ahead managed to bump out moments before we caught them in the final stretch, meaning that we just missed out on getting blades. It’s always gutting not to get the final result when you’ve worked so hard!
Last Sunday on the tropical terrain of Iffley astro, anyone who wasn’t too busy getting burnt would have been able to witness the delights of the University Mixed Hockey Cuppers Finals. Silky skills, sweat and supporters were all out in full force as LMH and Anne Somers (St Anne’s/Somerville) battled it out for the highly sought-after title of Cuppers Champions.
If any onlooker had cared to predict the result from the warm-up, the prize would undoubtedly have gone to Anne Somers, who were looking motivated and rehearsed next to a distinctly casual LMH side. Not surprising perhaps coming from a college who has never entered a team into the competition before and only squeezed in their entry application less than 24 hours before the deadline. Just goes to show how sometimes it pays off to back the underdog.
As umpires Will Alderton and returning OUHC legend David Cresswell blew the starting whistle, Anne Somers took the initiative with Toby Burton making some good early runs to put pressure on the LMH defence line. A goal-line save from reliable defender Jonathan Monk saved LMH from early humiliation but the threat was by no means over yet. Blues player Becci Carpenter of St Anne’s steamed into the attack fearless of the male weight around her, forcing Monk to show his more gentlemanly side at tackling as she darted in front of him to collect the ball.
Gritty stick skills from Nick Randall set up the first goal for Anne Somers as Martin Sykes punished the ball into the corner of the goal with a powerful slap.
Anne Somers continued to fight for consolidation of their lead but it was not to be. Frustrated to have let one slip by and spurred on by forceful words from LMH Blues Cuppers secretary Mark Kinder on the sideline, LMH rose like a sleeping lion as Lucy Pares dribbled past defence on the left wing to finish off the second-phase with a sneaky push past GK Watson’s right foot.
With 1-1 at half-time the seemingly equally matched sides returned to the arid pitch with all to play for. Once again it was Anne Somers who came out with the early goal as Sykes buried another past the keeper. With three unsuccessful short corners successfully defended, James Geake felt it was time to spice up the game with a glory run down the middle, outrunning and outplaying as he streaked past in a whirl of colourful socks, setting up the pitch for LMH to score their second goal.
The pace heated up as the sun continued to scorch the supporters, and moments later LMH repeated their central sprint to take the lead. Anne Somers suffered a disallowed goal for a questionable foot in the D and as time ticked away their attempts became more frantic. LMH were having none of it though, and a final jazzy scoop from Roy Wheeler brought the match to close at 4-2. All credit to the side that offhandedly knocked out defending champions Teddy Hall in their opening match to bring the title home on their very first solo appearance in the tournament.
I’m not going to lie. I’m not a rower. I’ll also hasten to add that there’s a reason for this: whilst I play sport, I don’t think I could keep up the incredible endurance, strength, balance and discipline to dedicate myself to it like so many of our peers here do. My views towards rowing may have been misconstrued in the past, but I do have a lot of admiration for boaties, even though one can’t deny the fact that they do seem to enjoy talking about it rather a lot.
Rowing has been an Oxford tradition for the last 200 or so years, originating as a recreation that combined exercise and ‘amusement’ (in those days, competition was rife and a reward, simply be it pride, was always at stake). Summer Eights can be dated to 1815, where two crews from Brasenose and Jesus decided to challenge each other to a race on returning from an outing. Brasenose won the encounter and were thus denoted the first ‘Head of the River’.
Oxford presided in the first Oxford-Cambridge boat race in 1829, however their subsequent defeats in the next two encounters triggered the formation of the ‘Oxford University Boat Club’, a more structured system that gave college rowing a permanent body. The competition developed; rules were drawn up, boats were modified, colleges began to invest in boathouses and CUBC event donated 100 guineas to the construction of the Oxford University boathouse, completed in 1882. I’d like to interpret this as a stroke of humanity rather than charity, but either way it was of great benefit to us and I won’t complain.
The introduction of women’s crews came in 1927 when only 5 women’s colleges existed at Oxford. St Hilda’s didn’t fail to impress, however, pushing out an impressive performance at Eights in 1969 where they ‘rowed over’ and competed with the men’s crews in Division VIII. Rowing at Oxford began to accelerate as more colleges opened their doors to women, and by 1976 a women’s division had been made, enabling them to properly compete in Summer Eights.
Apart from being a longstanding tradition and the oldest intercollegiate sport in Europe, rowing at Oxford is constrained by, not surprisingly, its medium: the river. The Isis is narrow, meaning that crews must have a staggered start, and must aim to ‘bump’ the crew ahead of them in order to be granted the right to overtake. A bump can occur either by the boats making direct contact, or by the cox conceding its inevitability by raising an arm. Both boats involved must drop out of the race and exchange positions on the following day. The leading eight aims to ‘row over’, (finish the race without being bumped). In my view, bumping adds the excitement to rowing. It can have a serious psychological effect too: crews that successfully bump are exuberant while their prey is listless, and this can play into their subsequent success in the competition. Good crews are looking to bump every day, and the ultimate goal is finishing ‘Head of the River’ at the top of Division I.
So perhaps I can understand why rowers talk about their sport so much. It eats up a large proportion of their life, demanding time, mental strength and focus, and this can only be attained by unwavering dedication. There’s also probably a slight nagging desire to justify swanning around in lycra all day, and for that I can’t blame them.
Obama has chosen Sonia Sotomayer to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court. It was, I think, an excellent pick.
First, the pick dovetails well with the President’s core governing philosophy, without giving in to his opponents. He could have gone much more to the left of Sotomayer — she is probably describable as a liberal judge, but she’s not extreme (she was, we should note, appointed to the District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H. W. Bush). In other words, the strong liberal wing of Obama’s support is moderately pleased, but in choosing Sotomayer he’s less likely to lose the middle ground. That’s important. He wants (as probably any first-term President would) to have his nominee confirmed by a large margin. He wants to appear unlike a partisan hack. Probably he’s done the right thing here.
Second — and interrelatedly — this is virtuoso politics. Electorally speaking, this could have a startling effect. Hispanics are the fastest-growing group in the US electorate. Bush won in 2000 and 2004 at least in part because, as a former governor of Texas, he had a good relationship with Hispanic American voters. The Hispanic vote swung strongly towards Obama this cycle. By being the first President to nominate a Hispanic (and of course a Hispanic woman), he will certainly encourage long-term Hispanic support for the Democrats. And because Sotomayer seems so well-qualified — at least in terms of her academic record and judicial experience — the Republicans will have a hard job fighting the nomination without seeming, to some at least, as anti-Hispanic. Obama has pushed them into a corner — the Republicans are in a spot where, at best, they will still likely lose much of the Hispanic vote for the next few election cycles.
So now begins a lengthy confirmation process which both sides must play extremely carefully. The nominee, and the White House, must do two things at all times. First, keep touting Sotomayer’s record and personal history, in precisely the way they did in yesterday’s announcement in the East Room, and in this release. The confirmation hearings in the Senate will be nationally televised, likely on the main networks, which means the nominee is as much talking to the public as to the Senate judiciary committee. And the public will fall for her personal story. It is rags-to-riches, it is success-against-the-odds, it’s precisely the sort of thing which will sell her as a person. Second, be honest. Don’t try to obfuscate, or to hide stuff. It will get found out if it’s there. I very much doubt there is any ‘dirt’ on Sotomayer, but any questions about her legal history should be answered honestly, or at least with the willingness, when asked about any controversial statements, to simply admit you were “wrong”. The public, I think, finds honesty refreshing.
The Republicans must absolutely not do what the likes of Limbaugh and Fox News, and even Huckabee and Romney, have done thus far. The first two examples there are clearly “nutcase kneejerk stupid moderate-alienating responses” (as I believe is the technical jargon). The second two — the responses from Huckabee and Romney — are problematic in much the same way: in their attempt to get out a message fast, they only look like shouty partisans who have not reflected, have not researched, have just come up with a bog-standard, ill-conceived talking point.
If Republicans really want to stop her (and I’m not sure that in the final calculation they will want to), they can only do it by a smart, legalistic, substantive approach concentrating on her past rulings and not her personality. They cannot make baseless statements devoid of measured reference to facts (at least not this soon after the announcement) without seeming like obvious partisan hacks, which will be suicidal against the first Hispanic nominee who is the pick of a very popular President.
Here’s the rub: I think she’ll be nominated, and handily, unless something altogether unexpected comes up.
Before meeting Helen Fielding, mastermind behind the woman in Britain love more than the Queen (Bridget Jones, obviously), preparation was in order. With true dedication to the craft of method journalism, I spent a long days submersed in a thick pink fog of chick-flicks, period dramas, power-pop albums and ‘female orientated literature’ (…browsing the Mills & Boone Shelf in Borders). So it was I skipped to the Oxford Union to meet the duchess of Chick-lit herself.