Friday 4th July 2025
Blog Page 215

100 days on: I’ll give you a choice.

Anonymous
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<strong>100 days on: I’ll give you a choice.</strong>

December 26th marks 100 days since the beginning of protests in Iran, sparked by the murder of Mahsa Jina Amini, because of a loosely fitted hijab. December 26th also marks 100 days since I took a flight back home from Tehran to Stansted Airport.

Let me take you along on a taxi ride with me. The destination is Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport. The taxi driver is a man, maybe approaching his 40s. Mahsa Amini was murdered a few days ago and protests are ramping up in the capital. The driver is trying to avoid routes which will lead to a run-in with protestors. I’m not scared, but I am relieved to be going home before things get worse.

The relief quickly turns into guilt. The driver begins talking about his faith in Iranian women to put an end to this regime. He says that if anyone can do it, Iranian women can. He says he is optimistic about the future. My heart sinks when I realise that, inevitably, I am going to leave this taxi and retreat to the safety of the UK. Meanwhile he will have to turn right back around and continue living under a heinous, repressive regime.

I sat there quietly and listened. I said nothing, mainly because my mum tells me not to speak in taxis, otherwise they’ll realise that I’m foreign and charge about tenfold. But also, I wanted to hear everything he had to say, because he was filling me with hope.

Out of nowhere, he seemed in shock by something he’d seen. As it turned out, he hadn’t avoided the protests as successfully as he thought. In the distance, we could see a crowd of people, huddled over something. It was a dead body. He told us that someone had died; that they had killed someone else. My heart sinks, again.

And that was that. The end of our conversation. There was nothing left to say, really.

I came home, spent a few days packing too much stuff, then came to Oxford in time for freshers’ week. I thought the feeling of guilt would subside to be honest with you. I thought if I needed a distraction, well then, Oxford’s the place to go. I was wrong. I left a country where women were being handed the death sentence for a loosely fitted hijab and returned to a country that afforded me so many opportunities that I felt undeserving of. The guilt didn’t go away, it got even worse.

I’ve always been proud of my culture, of my bilingualism, of my dual nationality. But for a moment, I wished it all away. All I wanted, was to be rid of the burden that came along with all of that.

I tell you this story because I want to show you how events on the other side of the world can have a very real and personal impact on the people around you. If you are a non-Iranian, it can be difficult knowing when and how to bring up what is going on in Iran to your Iranian friends. Maybe they would rather not talk about it. Maybe you do not know where to start, what to say, or how you could possibly help.

It is easy to be pulled to extremes. One extreme is to say nothing, to not bring it up at all. The other extreme is to call up your Iranian friends every time you hear about something that has happened in Iran. Of course, the extreme that most people settle into is the former. The point I’m trying to make is that both extremes, to me at least, are as bad as each other. The former makes me feel isolated. It makes me think you are apathetic about what is happening. The latter is simply overwhelming.

So, I ask that you fall between those extremes. How often you discuss these issues with your Iranian friends will be shaped entirely by the way they react and how open they are to talking about it. You can adjust your approach accordingly. But please don’t be too afraid to say something. I promise it means more than you think it does.

A great deal of thought went into whether to write this anonymously or not. I’m not sure if these words hold more weight when you can see a name behind the article. I recently contributed to a piece by Sonya Ribner in Cherwell, and I asked to stay anonymous. That was because I feared having my name be associated with a piece critical of a regime that has proven, time and time again, to be vengeful. A regime willing to execute.

I came very close to publishing this with my name on the by-line. I was going to ask that you repost it, and with that, I was asking you to help seal my death sentence when I return to Iran one day. That was the choice I was going to give you.

But I realised that I couldn’t put that choice in your hands. The reason for that is simple. I couldn’t rob my future children of the opportunity to visit Iran, that’s not a decision I’m willing to make for them.

Maybe that’s just a cover up. Maybe I am not brave enough to die for this. To die for a Cherwell article. But the fact I came so close, must surely tell you something.

Show me that I was right not to take that risk.

Show me that my words can have the same impact on you, even if you do not know who I am.

The choice I am giving you is much easier than condemning a stranger to execution. All I am asking you to do is show me that you care, so that I do not have to write another article, so that I do not have to put my name on it.

Image credit: W. S. Luk

NHS in crisis – Oxford braced for student return

Oliver Hall
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<strong>NHS in crisis – Oxford braced for student return</strong>

There is no doubt – the NHS is now in a more dire state than at any point in its history.  As the population begins to numb to the anecdotes of “war-like” conditions in our hospitals there is no longer a guarantee that people will get seen in an emergency.  And now, with the Oxford population set to surge with returning students, its healthcare systems are braced for things to get worse than ever before.  Understandably, people are scared.

It is worth reminding ourselves just how bad things are.  The stories of wait times and abhorrent conditions from nurses and patients are countless and well-documented but it is easy to normalise them – this is not normal.  Doctors “examining testicles in cleaning cupboards” is not normal.  Sheets being hung around beds in corridors for intimate examinations is not normal.  Staff returning for their next shifts 12 hours later and seeing the same patients waiting on the same floor is not normal.  Speaking to ‘The News Agents’, one brain surgeon laid out just how dire the situation is: “I’ve worked in India, I’ve worked in the US, I’ve worked all around the world – this is the worst health service I’ve ever seen.”  We need to stop thinking that ‘Our NHS’ is special or unique.  In the last week with published data, more than 16 300 people waited longer than an hour to be handed over from an ambulance to hospitals (up 31% on the week before).  Seven million people are on waiting lists, three million have been waiting more than 18 weeks for treatment and another 400 000 have waited a year or longer.  Perhaps most shockingly, 44 000 people in A and E waited more than 12 hours to be seen – that is an increase of more than 11 000% on three years ago.  The only thing that makes our health system stand out at the moment is that it is in a worst state than any other in the developed world.  

24% of Oxford’s population is made up of full-time students and those 30 000 people are returning to a health service already under strain.  Quite understandably, people are scared about whether the city can cope.

In a survey conducted by Cherwell, 78% of people said they were worried about the health service in Oxford ahead of returning.  71% of students said that the university should be doing more to offer reassurance about the systems in place and, on average, people said they would be ‘concerned’ about calling an ambulance on a night out next term.

These concerns are built largely off scarring experiences over the winter break and stretching back far further than that in many cases.  An astounding 67% of people said they experienced the crisis first-hand over Christmas with some respondents sharing harrowing stories that have become all too commonplace.  One student said that their GP made a mistake on their prescription that it was too overwhelmed to resolve – as a result she had to go without her medication for three months.  Another person’s grandmother waited over 30 hours for an ambulance after a fall.  The reality is that these kinds of experiences are not quickly forgotten.  Trips to hospitals are life-defining events that most people will remember in detail long into the future, the total lack of dignity that patients are suffering right now will live long in the memory.

For their part, a spokesperson for the Oxford University Trust responded to Cherwell saying: “Students form a large and important part of our local demographic.  We are familiar with the patterns of term times and know what to expect.

“Health services are under a lot of pressure at the moment.  We are asking the public, including students, to help us to help them by keeping Emergency Departments (A&E) for genuine emergencies.  If people need urgent, but not life-saving, care, then the teams at NHS 111 can give advice and signpost them to local facilities such as Minor Injury Units, pharmacies, and their GP.”

Elsewhere on their website the trust warns that patients should “Expect long waits at Emergency Departments (A&E) at all hospitals in the Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West area”.

As clear as the problems are for all to see, the solutions are of course extremely complex.  In the short term, urgent efforts are being made in Oxford to discharge patients “wherever possible”.  The reality of course is that the crisis in the NHS is exasperated yet further by a social care sector that has been left in tatters by years of underinvestment.  In mid-December over 14 000 people were in wards unnecessarily, largely due to congestion in the social care system.  Now, individual trusts are being forced to consider discharging patients into hotels rather than care homes at an average cost of £1000 a bed compared to the normal £525.  The problems are everywhere and the solutions hard to come by.

The opinion of students is clear with almost all respondents saying that the answer was increased funding and a change of government.  Examples included calls for “funding, attracting foreign workers, improving work conditions”, and “funding, funding, funding!!!!”.  Some even took a harder line with three people saying that privatisation is the answer.

Clearly though, money and staffing alone aren’t the answers.   Although much of it has been eaten up by inflation, there genuinely is more funding and there are more nurses in the NHS than ever before.  What is really needed is complete restructuring and reform.  Problems from outdated IT systems (one trust says it can’t even tell how many free beds it has) to antiquated red tape and management structures need complete and total re-evaluation. 

What worries me is that it seems incredibly unlikely that any politician is brave enough to go far enough.  Whispers from Wes Streeting showed some positive signs but the government itself still refuses to acknowledge that there is a crisis at all.  Neither Starmer nor Sunak had anything substantial to offer in their New Year speeches either.

None of this though helps in the short term.  For now, pupils are returning to Oxford and other parts of the country worried about the care they are going to receive.  Only time will tell as to whether hospitals are ready for the surge.

Image: CC2:0//Ron Adams via Flickr.

Surrealist Film Review: Fellini’s 8½

Sophie Magalhaes
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Surrealist Film Review: Fellini’s 8½

To describe Fellini’s 8½ as a confusing piece of surrealism would perhaps undermine its reputation as a masterpiece of Italian cinema. However, the array of violently incohesive images in the opening sequence of the film had me puzzled as to what the plot would entail. The premise of 8½ is not inherently strange, yet there is something to be said of how Fellini reflects the psyche of a stagnant, middle aged film director through an obscure and multi-faceted plot.

The film opens without sound. The protagonist, Guido (Marcello Mastroianni), is stuck in a claustrophobic traffic jam. The black and white cinematography seems to heighten the sensory appeal of the scene, and yet it appears as if nothing moves and nothing will happen. As the camera pans across rows and rows of identical cars, it pauses on individual faces. A man sits grumpily in the backseat of his car, a woman in the front. A row of hands dangle absently from the windows of a bus. Guido bangs hysterically on the windows of his car, desperately trying to escape. The car fills with smoke. Blank faces stare at him helplessly. Guido clambers out of the car roof; white light overwhelms the screen. Guido hovers and flies into the distance, drifting through the clouds before being, quite literally, tethered back to earth. Fellini was forty-three when he made 8½, and intended for it to be an honest reflection on his stagnated creativity as an ageing film director. His baroque, earthy style is confusing for the unknowing audience. Yet this is the sensation Fellini sought to project, one of uncertainty and inaction. The mind of an aimless film director experiencing a creative hiatus is portrayed through Guido as well as the muted cinematography and surrealism of the story. An air of foggy perplexity prevails, extending Guido’s own psychological condition to the mind of the viewer themselves. 

Fellini’s writing exudes a sense of Freudian psyche, filling 8½ with an unrestrained subconscious which leaves the audience to piece together the significance of the dream-like images themselves. Played with a deep sensitivity by Mastroianni, Guido’s recurring vision of his ideal woman causes him to spiral into a series of bad relationships. He is estranged from his wife, he is distant from his mistress, and he fools himself into thinking that he has found salvation in an actress, Claudia. All these women seem to fall under the shadow of a potent yet somewhat displaced figure, Saraghina. In flashbacks to his youth, Guido remembers a group of children running to the beach to visit Saraghina. Uncertain as to who exactly Saraghina is, I watched as a large buxom woman with wild black hair and a tight black dress emerged out of a hut. The children all chant in unison “Saraghina! Saraghina! La rumba!” as Saraghina prowls towards them, bares her shoulders, and begins to prance across the sand. An unsettling unfamiliarity comes over both the audience and perhaps the character of young Guido himself, as if this strange figure skews the narrative off its predicted trajectory. Saraghina is a fabrication of Guido’s sexuality and imagination, as her dwelling place is on the cusp between fluid imagination and concrete reality. 

Guido’s flashbacks to childhood provide moments of clarity; they are digressions which help to elucidate the central plot. When magicians read Guido’s mind and reveal the words “asa nisi masa”, this nonsensical phrase is explained by the shadowy, baroque image of Guido as a child, being put to bed by a crowd of women. The scene grows dark, and another child repeats “asa nisi masa” to make the eyes of a portrait move. This memory, which connects Guido’s past and present, demonstrates his profound desire to be cared for by a woman. Later in the film, when Guido envisions himself surrounded by women in a harem, he again regresses to a child-like state, doted on and cared for by women. Yet it is his wife, Luisa, who is the only constant, realistic female figure in Guido’s life. Despite being cold and distant, she is the figure of reality that grounds Guido as he deceives himself with idealisations. 

It is the aesthetic appeal of the shadowy, muted cinematography that best portrays the dulled creativity of Guido’s mind, and scenes such as the rows of empty, square cinema chairs when Guido’s film is previewed that evoke the loneliness and lack of support he feels as an artist. Add to this the concrete brutalist set, revealing the unforgiving and unglamourous side of filmmaking. The ending, in which all the characters of the film dance around in a circle to the tune of Nino Rota’s carnival-like La Passarella di Otto e Mezzo, plays on the farcical element of Guido’s artistic choice; to write an honest film about his experience as a troubled director. While 8½ might at first appear irregular, imperfect, and slightly exaggerated, it is where Fellini blurs the lines between fantasy and reality that he has produced an authentic filter of a man’s consciousness. 

Image: Marcello Mastroianni as Guido Anselmi in 8½ by Federico Fellini. This image is in the public domain.

St Stephen’s gives up PPH status to exclusively train priests

Andy Wei
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<strong>St Stephen’s gives up PPH status to exclusively train priests</strong>

After a review by the University, St Stephen’s House will lose its status as a Permanent Private Hall (PPH) in September 2023. This move follows the closure of St Benet’s Hall in September 2022, which failed to renew its PPH license for the current academic year due to financial hardship.

Unlike St Benet’s, St Stephen’s is losing its PPH status because Oxford will no longer allow a PPH to deliver another university’s qualifications. Since 2014, St Stephen’s has offered the Church of England’s Common Awards programmes, which are validated by Durham University.

According to the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England, the decision to forsake PPH status “represents a loyalty and commitment to the Common Awards system to which the majority of [Theological Education Institutions] subscribe,” and “this shift is by no means understood as a negative move by the House Council, nor by the Principal and Staff, nor by the University of Oxford.”

Despite the loss of its PPH status, St Stephen’s will continue to operate as an Anglican theological college and will continue to offer Oxford’s graduate qualifications in Theology and Religion. However, the House will no longer offer other graduate qualifications and will only consider candidates who are “ministers of religion, genuine candidates for the ministry, or exercising lay ministry.”

Robin Ward, Principal of St Stephen’s, reflected in this year’s edition of the House’s newsletter that “one of the more challenging aspects of the decision” was that “the focus moving forward [will] be solely on ordinands and those already ordained.” However, this change has “secured a future for the College” and allows St Stephen’s to “maintain relationships with both Durham and Oxford Universities and in turn offer the widest range of courses to ordinands.”

Founded in 1876, St Stephen’s is the oldest unamalgamated training institution in the Church of England. It has delivered Oxford qualifications since 1970 and became a PPH in 2003. Currently, the House comprises around 80 mature students: about a quarter are training for priesthood while the rest are pursuing a variety of graduate qualifications.

Robin Ward says that St Stephen’s new relationship with the University marks the beginning of an “exciting new chapter”: “I believe it is the trajectory which stays truest to the College’s founding – and still core – mission: to train priests in the Anglo-Catholic tradition.”

2022 – A Year in Review

Oliver Hall
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2022 – A Year in Review

It feels like every year in December we are told about just how momentous a period we have gone through.  Whether it be in arts, sports, or politics every 12 months seems to be ‘more influential’ and ‘more shocking’ than the last.  This year though, that might just be true.  It has been an extraordinary time to be the Comment Editor and after a year of events in the UK and around the world that have undoubtedly changed the path of history, I thought there was no better time to take a look back.  So, here is our selection of 2022’s drama, disaster, and craziness and what I, the Cherwell team, and the University community had to say about them. (Suffice to say that some takes were substantially hotter and more accurate than others!)

Each page brings you a different month of predictions and coverage.

Knee Deep

d'Arcy Yasar de France
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Knee Deep

the night to

hear the sky to

let the world run

through the veins

to let it all of it

run through

the veins

Image Credit: Debby Hudson via Unsplash.

His Dark Materials exhibition in Oxford museums brings Lyra’s world to life

Olivia Boyle
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His Dark Materials exhibition in Oxford museums brings Lyra’s world to life

Props from the BBC’s adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy have gone on display this week in Oxford museums. 

Together, exhibits at Pitt Rivers Museum, the History of Science Museum, and The Story Museum create a fan’s paradise, with props from the show including the alethiometer, Lyra’s scuffed-on-an-Oxford-rooftop pinafore and the ethereal subtle knife. Free entry to the Pitt Rivers Museum and History of Science Museum encourages fans to immerse themselves into “Lyra’s World”, the title of the display. 

The exhibition opens as the BBC’s third series comes to viewers’ screens. For fans, there seems no better way to celebrate than to see the amber spyglass, seed pods from the Mulefa World, and Mary Malone’s Ching Sticks at the Pitt Rivers. Indeed, the museum itself appears in The Subtle Knife and was used as a filming location in the programme. 

Props shown at The Story Museum include the subtle knife, the dress worn by the witch Serafina Pekkala, and airmail letters written by John Parry to his wife, which are displayed beside Pullman’s specially commissioned and permanently exhibited alethiometer. 

Meanwhile, The History of Science Museum offers a “What’s your dæmon?” experience to bring the much-loved stories alive. The experience ends by matching your given dæmon to particular “Women in Science”. Dr Silke Ackermann, director of the History of Science Museum has said how much of a delight it has been to finally celebrate the stories alongside “the stunning instruments in our collection that inspired Philip Pullman for many years”. Iconic costumes and Lyra’s alethiometer stand in line with astrolabes, astronomical compendia, and sundials. 

As well as the exhibition, the Oxford Botanic Garden marks the tree of Lyra’s and Will’s midday rendezvous with a sculpture. His Dark Materials naturally encourages tourism for a global fanbase, through these collaborative displays across Oxford. 

The displays will run until April 2023. 

Image Credit: Ian Wallman

Ghosts of Christmas Past: strikes and parliamentary self-fictionalisation. 

Isobel Lewis
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Ghosts of Christmas Past: strikes and parliamentary self-fictionalisation. 

I can’t say I was thrilled to wake up on 1st December to discover that my only advent calendar this year would be the media’s very practical strike action timetable. This used to be the best month of the year when you were ten years old and it was acceptable to eat a load of chocolate for breakfast every day. It feels like we could not be further from this kind of December now, but perhaps there’s an unlikely point of comparison to be found. 

There’s nothing magical about the way politics has been handled recently, but it is starting to recall that blending of fiction and truth which accompanied Christmas when you were younger.

With rounds of prolonged strike action drawing comment that we’re reliving the 1979 so-called Winter of Discontent, it’s hard to disentangle the truth of the present from emotionally loaded versions of the past. Then we have the fact that this is being dealt with by politicians who seem hell bent on creating a public personality ever since Boris Johnson made it, erm, cool. Combined, this is making for a political climate where narrative seems to be receiving at least as much focus as policy. Are these popular perceptions grounded in truth, or are they all mere fiction? 

Strikes in the age of Amazon Prime seem anachronistic. It feels a bit like we’ve got used to teleportation only to wake up one morning and be told we’ve got to start walking to the shops again. The ultra-convenient has become such a norm that it’s weird to encounter weeks-long delays or to be told we just can’t get somewhere. But when a pair of lululemon leggings doesn’t make it before Thursday morning’s yoga class, maybe it’s a bit premature to declare that the nation has been gripped by strike-induced anarchy, identical to that of 1979. The way strikes left the country in chaos during the Winter of Discontent has given it an almost folkloric significance. It’s popularly remembered in images of rubbish piling up on the streets and the drama of its name alone means it’s always at the ready to be deployed to create a sense of dread. But perhaps that makes it all a bit too easy to grimly diagnose that history is repeating itself,  trapping us in a cycle of doom. The facts tell a different story: 29.4 million work days were lost in the Winter of Discontent, while only 1.74 million days are predicted to have been lost by the end of this year.

Worse than the speculation that we’ve just lost 43 years of progress in one go is the apathy induced by the term ‘wage push inflation’. Now stay with me here. Perhaps I’m being unfair, but doesn’t it sometimes feel like this phrase is banded about to be intentionally obscure? It’s an effective way of putting a stop to arguments that we should just give people a wage they can actually live off. Nothing shuts people up like the danger of being caught out for not understanding a bit of economic jargon. 

I don’t buy into wage push inflation as the reason why we should all stand against those taking strike action. The argument goes that if a company increases the wages of its employees, it will then pass this higher cost of labour on to the consumer in the form of more expensive goods. If things are more expensive to buy, the worker finds that although their wages are now higher than they were before, they still can’t buy as much for their money. So real wages decline once more. However, that’s only inevitable if the cost is passed on to the consumer: if the company weathered a dip in profits for a while inflation would be unaffected. And that’s only in the private sector. Public sector wage increases are less likely to cause inflation anyway, because they aren’t related to the production of goods or services for a consumer. Nursing is an example of this.

Whether or not we should increase strikers’ wages is a matter of political opinion, rather than economic fact. So there’s no real need to sigh and say we’re in a quagmire, unable to increase wages because of the rules of inflation, unable to escape our twentieth-century national precedents. It is a matter of choice. 

Moving away from the twentieth century seems unappealing to some members of the Tory party, though, which is becoming swarmed with its many ghosts of Christmas past. No one has better Dickensian credentials than Jacob Rees-Mogg , lurking in the backbenches. Then there’s the run of Prime Ministers who try and build a public personality for themselves based on famous former leaders. Boris Johnson’s admiration for Winston Churchill was well documented, and his performative gravitas when making speeches was surely to try and make his rhetoric reach for his idol’s. 

Next came Liz Truss, the sheep dressed in Thatcher’s clothing. It is no coincidence that when her critics levelled the critical label ‘human hand grenade’ at Truss, she decided to embrace it. It recalls a certain Conservative party leader being condemned as an  ‘Iron Lady’ by a Soviet propaganda outlet in 1976. Thatcher adopted the title as her own, replying: “The Iron Lady of the Western World? Me? A cold war warrior? Well, yes – if that is how they wish to interpret my defence of values and freedoms fundamental to our way of life”.   

Then there’s ‘the lady’s not for turning’ epithet, which Margaret Thatcher declared (and meant) after her own attempt to liberalise the economy in 1980 left many calling for U turns. In fairness to Truss I imagine resolve is a little easier to come by when your ideas are only causing a bit of public unpopularity  rather than a visceral reaction in the market as well. It nonetheless made Truss’s humiliation even more profound. Somehow ‘the lady who was not for turning but then in a matter of days did, in fact, turn’ is just not as catchy. 

Which brings me to the point that Truss’s emulation of her chosen twentieth-century forerunner was not just about postulation like Johnson’s had been, but about policy too. Now I imagine that Johnson’s advisors were hard pressed to convince him that Laissez-Faire, or doing as one likes, was an economic policy rather than a relationship and lifestyle choice. Trussonomics, on the other hand, was an experiment in the same market libertarianism which Thatcher had believed in. 

The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) was formed in 1955 to promote free market economics among politicians. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher clearly viewed it favourably, giving it credit for “creating the climate of opinion which made our victory possible”. According to the IEA’s own website, their proponents ‘believe that society’s problems and challenges are best dealt with by individuals, companies and voluntary associations interacting with each other freely without interference from politicians and the state. This means that government action, whether through taxes, regulation or the legal system, should be kept to a minimum’. This formed the bedrock of Truss’s economic policy. It is perhaps even more sinister that this thinking actually underpinned her whole presence of government, if slightly less directly. Jon Moynihan, director of the IEA, raised half a million pounds to fund Truss’s leadership campaign.  

According to Nick Robinson’s Radio 4 summary of the Truss premiership, it all sounds a lot like a Tudor political coup. Much of the scheming for the mini budget took place at Chevening, in a big old building in the Kent countryside in the summer before she became PM. There Truss and her closest advisors discussed how to remove ‘treasury orthodoxy’ in order to cut taxes and promote growth as per the free market thinking she subscribed to. Ideally, this would entail a boycott of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) which George Osbourne established to make sure ministers’ economic plans were approved by an independent regulator before being put into place. 

Truss and her friends at the IEA thought this was all a bit of a waste of time. They saw it as a restraint on freedom, rather than a necessary barrier between the public and untested ideas of, say, a tobacco and fuel industry funded think tank. Right. Why use forecasts when you can just put in a policy and hope for the best? Tanking the value of the pound and forcing the Bank of England to stage a £65 billion pound intervention just wouldn’t have been as exciting if we’d seen it coming. God forbid that it might have been avoided altogether. 

Jon Moynihan is not a fan of Rishi Sunak, just falling short of blaming him for the Tory party ‘socialism’ which he feels undermined Trussonomics, in a Nick Robinson interview. So perhaps the government can be free of the regulations iconoclasm of the IEA for a while. Yet Sunak has links to right-wing think tanks of his own, having spent time at Policy Exchange before becoming an MP. And in response to the strikes,  he has avoided discussion with the trade unions about pay thus far. His decision to call in the military and promote ‘new tough laws’ instead makes it clear that he is engaged in a Thatcherite war against the Trade Unions. 

Rishi Sunak’s hard-line approach will be seen as the right thing to do for many, and perhaps it is. My worry is whether his attitude on strike action is made out of good political sense or out of a determination to emulate earlier policies for the image which is attached to it. Sunak is a Prime Minister with a lot to prove, emerging as disaster relief on a scene which many members of the public would rather have swept away in favour of a general election. I only hope he does so by striving forward, rather than continuing to chase his own tail in a bid to self-fashion in the image of a PM of the past. 

Image: CC2:0 Via RMT

Art is a form of “resistance”: In conversation with Liu Wei at the Oxford Union

Anya Biletsky
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Art is a form of “resistance”: In conversation with Liu Wei at the Oxford Union

Pioneering artist Liu Wei gave an exclusive interview at the Oxford Union as part of the Union’s Michaelmas Art Festival on the weekend of Sixth Week. Born and based in Beijing, Liu Wei employs a remarkable number and variety of visual media in order to produce his artworks, which are often skeptical commentaries on the socio-political situation in post-Cultural Revolution China and beyond. As discussed in the Union interview, however, much of his work branches far beyond this, and has more recently taken to exploring ideas about social media, urbanisation, and what the future may hold in store for humanity.

With Union Treasurer Sharon Chau translating from Mandarin, Liu Wei told the Union about his creative practice, his artistic and philosophical inspiration, and the impact of current affairs on his work. The interview, led by Union Librarian Daniel Dipper, began with a discussion of the “pandemic themes” Liu touches on in his work in his 2021 show at White Cube. Artists have been variously impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic; for Liu, the pandemic, although a “massive catastrophe” worldwide, helped to facilitate a “massive space for art to be created”.

Liu feels that the pandemic exposed the abuse of power by governments, exemplified through the notable increase in surveillance of people, as he experienced himself in China. For him, art is a form of “resistance” in response to such repression – “we all should have the freedom to commit crimes”, he tells the Union. This attitude of subversion is seen in many of his artworks and the media he uses to create them; his sculpture Indigestion II (2004) is a mound of excrement teeming with half-eaten toy soldiers, whilst Love It! Bite It! (2005) is a model city made out of dog chews, both commentaries on grotesque consumption.

Indeed, Liu is particularly conscious of the influence of urbanisation and technology on our lives in the modern day, and seeks to examine this through his art. He points out the duality of the need for art to both “incorporate and transcend” this increasing dependence of humanity on technology and social media, and believes that the purpose of art is not merely creation, but it also functions as a “salvation” in our modern world, to change the way we understand and live our lives. Liu’s inspiration comes not only from observing the world around us, but also from a deep engagement with philosophical writings, especially those of 80-year-old Italian humanist philosopher Giorgio Agamben. Liu refers to Agamben’s influence multiple times during the interview; he explains that he sees the philosopher’s work as “poetry”, and that it has encouraged him to think about the beauty and aesthetics of art.

As well as exploring the effect of distinctly modern phenomena on humanity and the world, Liu’s work is striking and recognisable for its depiction of the human body, seen in works such as his painting It Looks Like a Landscape (2004) and his video installation Hard to Restrain (1999). He tells the Union that he is concerned with the “disappearance of the body”, which, he explains, is caused by the rise in social media and concerns over data privacy. Liu is pessimistic about losing the body to a wholly technological future civilisation, and this comes through in the fusion of sculpture and the human body in pieces like his Nudity series (2021). Referencing the story of Adam and Eve, Liu emphasises that “everything in art is about the body” and that the naked body is not something which ought to be hidden or considered shameful. Liu’s depiction of naked bodies coincides with the rise of the portrayal of the uncomfortable nude across the art world in the last century, as seen in works by his Western counterparts such as Lucian Freud and Jenny Saville.

Although based in Beijing – he flew to the UK specifically to deliver this interview – Liu’s artistic reach is worldwide, with his work exhibited in places including at the Venice Biennale, at MoMA New York, and even here at Modern Art Oxford. When asked how he feels about the fact that his art is now exhibited all across the world, Liu’s response is modest and brief – “really dumb”. Whilst he is grateful for the exposure his art receives, Liu believes that the context an artwork is seen in is crucial to its reception and for a piece to have maximum impact. Indeed, Liu is a distinctly self-aware artist, revealing that he constantly asks himself questions when creating his artworks; what is art? What is beauty? How can he improve his art?

Speaking on the significance of art in the modern day, Liu’s sentiments are similar to those of other artists. He insists on the ability of art to make our lives unique and to distinguish us from each other in a capitalist world bound up in the rapidity and homogeneity of the 9-5.

An artist who is manifestly conscious of his own practice, Liu Wei creates compelling and perceptive works of art responding to the contemporary nationwide and global state of affairs. He wants his art to “surprise” people – and it can be safely said that he has succeeded in doing so.

Image credit: Jim Linwood (CC by 2.0)

The House of Lords – Necessary reform?

Cartell Cheema
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The House of Lords – Necessary reform?

A recent YouGov poll[1] confirmed that the most important issues for Britons are; the economy, an overstretched NHS, and a beleaguered immigration and asylum system. Unsurprisingly, major constitutional reform is not high on the list of priorities for the average voter.

Yet the Labour Party has placed major constitutional reform on their agenda for the UK. The leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer, and former Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown, have joined forces to make the abolition of the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the UK’s parliament, a “radical” centrepiece of the Labour Party’s 2024 election manifesto[2]. Sir Keir has described the House of Lords in its current incarnation as “indefensible”[3] and pledged his commitment to abolition “as quickly as possible”[4]. In its place would stand a democratically elected assembly of nations and regions. 

The issues with the House of Lords

Admittedly, there is credence to the criticism that the Lords has become unjustifiably bloated in size and its composition unrepresentative of the UK. For instance, the size of membership is north of 800[5], which makes it globally second only in size to the Chinese National People’s Congress (which caters for a country of over a billion people), and the size dwarfs the 100-member strong US Senate. Not to mention that the average age of a sitting peer is 71 years[6].

There are also undeniable problems related to the manner of appointment. Despite the enactment of the House of Lords Act 1999 by New Labour, which removed the entitlement of most of the hereditary peers to the Lords, there remain 92 peers who trace their role in the legislative process of the UK to their birth[7]. The current system also places no real limits on the number or quality of members who may be appointed to the chamber by the prime minister. Despite the existence of the independent House of Lords Appointments Commission, which vets party political nominees for propriety, the vetting criteria is relatively narrow and the recommendations are not binding on the prime minister [8]. For example, in 2020, Boris Johnson could simply overrule the concerns raised by the Commission over the appointment of Peter Cruddas [9]. These shortcomings have ultimately led to concerns that appointments to the Lords have been “rather profligate”[10] and led to “unchecked political patronage”[11].

Advocates for abolition also focus significantly on the need to allow the nations and regions of the UK to be better represented. But, it is not clear that a democratic upper chamber, like the one in Labour’s proposal, would be able to deliver on this ideal. Voter engagement in the UK is consistently at a level lower than at most points historically[12], casting doubt on whether there is an appetite for yet more elections. One would need to carefully define how the chamber would interact with the devolved assemblies so that there is not a conflict of responsibilities, and there would be a danger that the party-political candidates nominated would simply duplicate the current diversity of sitting MPs, which one may argue is not adequately representative.

The case for retaining the House of Lords

Yet, there are more fundamental critiques of the case for abolition, especially in light of the idiosyncratic role that the House of Lords serves in our constitution. It is precisely the Lords’ uniquely unelected character and sui generis composition that enables it to enrich our dynamic political constitution. 

Firstly, the House of Lords is conventionally known as the ‘revising chamber’, given that its primary remit is to scrutinise and amend legislative bills drafted by the government. In this manner, it serves as a pivotal check on the power of government and functions as an effective counterbalance against elective dictatorship by preventing bills from being passed with minimal scrutiny by the party-political House of Commons. An elected upper chamber would upset the Lords’ remit in balancing the House of Commons. Currently, and indicative of its mature average age, the Lords is composed of a panoply of personally distinguished experts in their respective fields, from politics, the arts, finance and manufacturing, which can lead to debates of high quality and a broad level of intellectual firepower. It is this that makes peers uniquely positioned to temper problems with proposed legislation, maximise legislative effectiveness, and hold the government to account in a way that elected representatives may not be able to do. This is epitomised by how the Lords’ Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee was able to prevent a statutory instrument from being instituted by the government that would have slashed billions of pounds of welfare payments without a debate on the issue in the Commons[13].

Secondly, the unelected nature of the Lords facilitates independent thinking as members are free from the constraints of party whips or the ever-present threat of re-election, both of which affect the decision-making of MPs. Indeed, currently about a quarter of the Lords’ members sit without party political affiliation – ‘crossbenchers’[14] – and even the ones affiliated with a party need not worry about defying the government for threat of expulsion given their security of tenure. These facets of independence combine to enable the non-partisan scrutiny of government bills, less rancour and more collaborative debates, and concerted cross-party work, allowing peers to obtain a more nuanced understanding of the minutiae of bills and how the law will impact the UK. For example, in 2020, the Lords defeated the government and the House of Commons in its bid to enact the Internal Market Bill on the grounds that the provisions would break international law and erode the UK’s international standing[15]. An elected chamber poses a distinct risk of sacrificing this expertise. In all likelihood, the electoral system, with its campaigning, canvassing and electioneering, would encourage seasoned political operators (former MPs and Ministers) of the major parties to run for election, leading to the most politically astute candidates or best campaigners, not necessarily the most competent, winning on party-lines at the expense of the most expert and nonpartisan professionals. This political bias could limit the industry-based capital of a second chamber.

Thirdly, Labour’s report has not made clear the precise power distribution and relationship that their second chamber would have with the House of Commons; this is problematic because a new chamber could challenge the primacy of the House of Commons. The members of the new chamber would have just as much legitimacy as the members in the Commons, which could lead to the expansion of the chamber from a revising one and the upsetting of numerous political conventions constraining the Lords. Hence, the proposal could risk legislative inertia from longer delays and the frustration of the elected government’s legislative agenda due to blockages.

A more pragmatic approach to reform 

Instead of expending vast amounts of political endeavour on abolition, a more pragmatic approach would be to enact targeted reform to the existing model which would neatly preserve the Lords’ constitutional effectiveness.  

Firstly, as opined by the Lord Speaker’s Committee in 2017, its size could be capped to around 600 members, which would make total membership slightly less than the House of Commons but large enough to allow it to maintain its current level of activities and expertise[16]. This is a sensible idea and akin to what happens in most legislative chambers globally. If appointments could only be made when there are vacancies or prime ministers could only appoint members from an annual party allocation, the numbers would remain stable and appointers incentivised to only ennoble those genuinely intending to make a contribution to the House. This limit could be complemented by a mandatory retirement age, modelled on the compulsory retirement age of 75 years imposed on the judiciary[17]. The corollary would be the continued space for new members, refreshing the Lords’ expertise with up-to-date business insight, and the maintenance of public confidence in the health and capacity of members to work. 

Secondly, the House of Lords would greatly benefit from a more demanding appointment process and a more robust appointment commission. The independent House of Lords Appointments Commission could be endowed with a statutory mandate to veto ‘unsuitable’ nominations by the prime minister and political leaders. Buttressing this power should be more demanding propriety criteria, which could include requiring nominees to demonstrate a sufficient willingness and capacity to contribute to the work of the House of Lords. The robustness of the appointments process could be further reinforced by imposing on the Commission the duty to take account of the total number of appointments, overall size, and composition of the House (including peers’ political affiliations, geographic region of representation, and industry) when nominating members. These measures would take a leap forward in fostering a more fair and meritorious system and ultimately benefit the quality of law-making. It would lead to a broader pool of talent at the public’s service and enhance the legitimacy of the chamber without undermining the positive contribution that it makes to the UK.  

It is, thus, accepted that the House of Lords is imperfect and would undoubtedly benefit from constitutional reform. However, Labour’s answer is regrettably to use ‘a sledgehammer to crack a nut’. 

Image: CC2:0//Roger Harris via Flickr.

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