Three Oxford students were victims of what is thought to have been a homophobic attack outside Coven II last Friday. The incident is the second triple attack in the past two terms, with gay clubbers fearing that the nightclub is unable to cope with homophoic violence in the area. The students, all in their second year, were returning home from the night club via a nearby car park when they were set upon by three men. One student from Brasenose, who wished to remain anonymous, said, “We left the club around quarter to three. The route we take passes a car park, which we cut through to get to Norfolk Street. We didn’t notice these guys until they were right up next to us. There was no provocation, they didn’t even say anything. I got grabbed by the shoulder and they hit me square in the face.”“They didn’t even say anything. I pushed one of them away and called the police. They didn’t make any effort to get out quickly, or flee the scene.” A second student, from Wadham, was hit in the back of the head and a third from Keble was kicked in the stomach.  All sustained injuries as a result of the attack. One student said, “I spoke to the police on the phone and told them that this area is renown for homophobic attacks, and that we could see the men heading off in the direction of the club. I’m aware that violence of this sort is happens in all cities but what disturbs me is that I can be attacked for something that is inherent and unchangeable about me.” Last term, three male St Peter’s students were beaten up near the club, which is located on Oxpens Road near the Oxford Ice Rink.The three students reported the attack to Thames Valley Police the following day, who will use CCTV footage to try and identify the perpetrators. A spokesperson said that the attack was being investigated as an act of violence rather than specifically homophobic, due to the lack of verbal exchange.  
However, the Brasenose student said, “I fundamentally believe that it was a homophobic attack.”
He added, “I’d like to see clubs taking more responsibility for their punters when they’re leaving. Given that Coven II’s clientele is majority queer on a Friday night, keeping an eye out would be no bad thing.”“It’s essentially a problem of education. You can put a massive police presence in the area but eventually the problem will just move elsewhere.”

OUSU’s referendum on its controversial ‘No Platform’ policy could be scrapped after Council postponed a vote on the issue last week.

The debate surrounding OUSU’s No Platform stance – which actively opposes allowing fascist or racist speakers to air their views – came to head after the high-profile ‘Free Speech Forum’ at the Union last term, and has divided JCR opinion across the University.Some common rooms have already voted to back a new, amended version of the policy, while others have rejected it outright, demanding a University-wide referendum.Under the newly-drafted policy, only individuals who use OUSU platforms to actually advocate violence are prevented from using them, whereas the old policy barred anyone who had previously advocated violence against a minority group.In addition, the new draft specifies that OUSU mediums covered in “independent agreements” – including The Oxford Student and Oxide Radio – would be independent of the policy.The policy would no longer be called ‘No Platform’, in order to emphasise its distinction from the NUS No Platform policy. This would leave NUS delegates to OUSU Council free to vote as they choose for the Oxford policy without being restricted by their NUS position.“It is better to leave the new policy unnamed, because of the negative connotations associated with No Platform,” said OUSU President Martin McCluskey.McCluskey called the referendum at the end of last term in response to the demands of JCRs.The new version of the policy , which was adapted by James Lamming, VP for Access and Academic Affairs, has been drafted in order to avoid the cost of holding University-wide vote on the current policy. “This was going to dominate the entire term and cost a lot of money,” McCluskey said.It has also been suggested that the poll, which had been scheduled for fourth week, was postponed because most students did not know enough about the details of the policy to make a well-informed decision.OUSU Council will vote next Friday to decide whether to go ahead with the poll, or to adopt the altered policy.
So far, Merton, Queen’s, St Peter’s and St Catherine’s have voted to accept the new draft, while Keble and Lincoln have voted in favour of a referendum. Other common rooms are due to vote on the issue this week.Keble JCR President John Maher said that while the new draft was better, it failed to resolve the fundamental problem. He said, “The compromise addresses specific issues in the old No Platform policy, but not the underlying issue of free speech. No Platform policies send out the message: ‘Free speech? No thanks.’ If people can’t speak freely at Oxford, then where can they?”Lamming disagreed with Maher’s comments. He said, “I completely agree with freedom of speech. But if we have a member who exploits our resources and breaks the law, we could be taken to the cleaners. It is difficult to believe there is anyone who would support the idea that OUSU should help people break the law.”Jonny Medland, JCR President at Queen’s, originally argued in favour of a referendum, but now supports the amended policy. He said, “We’ve been debating for over a year without understanding the issues. There is no longer any real interest in the debate: people just want the issue to go away.”St Peter’s JCR President, Joel Mullan, also expressed frustration with the process. He said, “I personally support the No Platform policy – I do not believe that our Student Union’s resources should be used to assist those who want to incite violence. However, OUSU has got to resolve this issue once and for all, so that it can stop wasting time debating No Platform and get on with the essential work it needs to be doing on things like rent, academic affairs, and welfare.”However, some believe that the newly drafted policy is too lenient. Dani Quinn, JCR President of Merton, said, “When freedom of speech is being exercised to the degree of inviting or promoting people who hold views that most Britons find abhorrent, I think that ignores other responsibilities and starts to inhibit other sorts of freedoms and hinders progress.”by Jack Farchy

Renate Künast, co-leader of the Greens in Germany, was making a parliamentary speech and quoted a piece the political columnist Hugo Müller-Vogg had written in Newsweek in October. The article, like her speech, was attacking the centre-right Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Künast meant to say

Hugo Müller-Vogg, political columnist for the Bild newspaper, is right.

but it came out as

Hugo Müller-Vogg, political communist for the Bild newspaper, is right.

Much laughter ensued, as well as much embarrassment.

Hat tip: Limbourgs Welt (view the clip there at 4 mins)

Cherwell 24 is not responsible for the content of external links

For a modernised setting of a Renaissance play to work, the adaptation must do more than simply court the ‘r’-word – ‘relevance’ for a modern audience. Tom Richards’ version of Christopher Marlowe’s classic has its starting point in May 1968, an East End world of hard-accented mobsters, neon nightclubs, protection rackets and leather-clad gang violence. The arrest of the Kray twins leads to a power vacuum like that after the death of Edward I (“Longshanks”, “Hammer of the Scots”): the barons struggle for power with the foppish but legitimate new king (Ben Galpin), who makes favourite the outsider, homosexual Piers Gaveston (Krishna Omkar). The cruel gangland world of guns, baseball bats and executions behind closed doors, harmonises exactly with the brutal politics of Marlowe’s play.The play then centres around these two major characters. Omkar gives a superb performance as a loving, ambitious Gaveston, and Galpin’s Edward in the first half combines camp and splenetic in perfect balance, while in the second he is brilliant in tragedy: ‘Yet, shall the crowning of these cockerels/ Affright a lion? Edward, unfold thy paws,/ And let their lives’-blood slake thy fury’s hunger’. His anger does not end with Gaveston’s exile and death, but rages on at the rebels from his father’s power. Liam Welton gives a strong performance as Kent, vacillating between rebellion and support for his brother the king. James Utechin (you might have seen him as Young Remus Lupin in the last Harry Potter film) is a wonderful Young Edward – soon to become Edward III – a teenager reluctantly drawn into the warring factions of his family. Richards himself takes the part of Mortimer the Younger, Edward’s anti-self, pursuing him to death first for a vision of an England free from nepotism and tyranny, but increasingly for the sake of his own power. This is a well-packaged, well-presented play, with a stylish aesthetic, a great East End street set designed by Alice Saville, good music (though really rather loud gunshots), and some excellent acting. The time-period is such an apt choice that one almost wants more than Richards gives us. The cutting of the script is sensitive, but perhaps what is needed are some more scenes of action outside the script, a sense of court-life (or the life of the gang’s HQ), and a sense of the violence threatening on every border. These might give a clearer picture of the power-relations and hierarchies which are so important both to Edward II’s and to the Kray twins’ courts, and which shape the whirlwind of political events – rebellion, assassination, and execution. Nevertheless this is a finely conceived and cast play, well worth a trip to “Eddies”.
by James Potts

Belcea Quartet
EMI Classics
4/5‘A keystone of the chamber repertoire’, says the Observer’s Anthony Holden of Bartok’s six string quartets, which are less than one-hundred years old.  This recording is the tenth CD by the World-renowned Belcea quartet, which formed at the Royal College of Music in 1994, and is now the quartet in residence at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.The quartets vary hugely, from the romantic first quartet, which displays Bartok’s love for Stefi Geyer, one of the students at the Budapest Academy of Music, to the final quartet written in 1938, which was the last he wrote in Hungary since he travelled to the USA to escape World War II.  The agitation and sadness juxtaposed in this quartet were due not only to the worsening situation in Europe in the lead up to the war, but also to the illness of Bartok’s mother, which led to her death in the year following the quartet’s composition.The unconventional rhythms and bizarre playing techniques (such as col legno: playing with the wood of the bow) written by Bartok add to the mystery of his music, and are carried off fantastically by the Belcea quartet.  This CD is full of fascinating music, influenced not only by composers contemporaneous with Bartok, such as Alban Berg, whose piano music Bartok performed, but also by traditional Romanian folk music, which is evident from, among other things, the uneven ‘aksak’ rhythm used.The Belceas have performed all of Bartok’s quartets at the Wigmore hall, where they were quartet in residence until 2006, and their vivacity is well suited to Bartok’s compositions.   An accomplished performance throughout makes the CD well worth buying, although three hours of Bartok (over two CDs) in one go can be very draining for the listener!

Name: Anthony Bradley

Club: Oxford University Rugby League Football Club

College:University

Year: 2nd Year Chemist

Position: Prop

Q: What's the highlight of your Blues career thus far?
A: The tour this January to Europe, which included training with the Catalan Dragons – a Super League
side.

Q:Which sportsman do you model yourself on?
A:Bradford Bulls forward Sam Burgess.  He has only just turned nineteen so we can really identify with  him. And his work rate and attitude are phenomenal.

Q:Do you see yourself playing after University?
A: Possibly, but I don't imagine I'll play beyond the level I do at the moment.

Q:Who's got the best banter on your team?
A: Batman.  A very entertaining character with some interesting nocturnal habits!

Q:Does your status as a Blues player lead to your being approached by
star-struck  fans on the street?
A:Yes, frequently.

Q:How are you feeling about Varsity?
A:Very excited indeed.  We were delighted to win last year, and Cambridge will be out for revenge.  It's  on Thursday of 8th week at Twickenham Stoop.  Tickets go on sale soon.

James Gilchrist, tenor
Anna Tilbrook, pianoAs a singer myself, songs in a foreign language always present challenges. Not only are there tricky pronunciations to distract me, but also there are the complexities of communicating the song's meaning.  The composers featured in the first half of this concert, held at the Holywell Music Room on 21st January, must have experienced similar challenges.James Gilchrist opened the programme with two settings of Shakespeare in German, which could not have failed to be interesting for a native English speaker.  Schubert is the comfort food of the lieder audience, allowing us to ease away from the wet January night outside into a world where, in the words of the second song, Ständchen: "Der Ringelblume Knospe schleußt / Die goldnen Äuglein auf" ("The marigold's bud opens its golden eyes").  Here Gilchrist first allowed the full power of his voice to fill the Holywell's delicate acoustic, exhorting "Da süße Maid, steh auf!" ("Sweet maid Arise!").After these musical hors d'oeuvres, Gilchrist introduced a much meatier course: excerpts from the Italienisches Liederbuch, set by Hugo Wolf (1860-1903), which as Italian folk-poems, set in German by a German composer, continued the concert's theme ideally.  According to Gilchrist "they explore the Italian quality of wearing one's heart on one's sleeve"— which was exactly where Gilchrist proceeded to wear it!  A particularly operatic performance was given in "Hoffärtig seid Ihr, schönes Kind" ("You are haughty, beautiful child"), which reached the impassioned climax “Willst du nicht Liebe, nimm Verachtung hin” ("If you don't want love, take scorn").  Not all the songs relied on powerful actions in the singer's body for effect: in "Und willst du deinen Liebsten sterben sehen" ("And if you would see your lover die"), Gilchrist slowly, and movingly, spread out his arms from his chest, and remained almost motionless for the final excerpt, "Sterb ich, so hüllt in Blumen meine Glieder"
("When I die, cover my limbs in flowers").The anonymous medieval Irish monks who scrawled in the margins of manuscripts could never have imagined that their fragments would be collected, almost a millennium later, by Samuel Barber (1910-1981) into the eclectic Hermit Songs.  For Gilchrist, the monks' uncanny insights are both "deeply heartfelt moments of reflection, but also of a remarkably profane nature."  This comic side was particularly apparent in "Promiscuity", which features speculation on a fellow monk's bedfellow that night, and in "The heavenly banquet", containing the unforgettable line: "I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings."  More sublime was "St Ita's vision", a soaring lullaby, and "The monk and his cat", which would resonate with any work-weary student who takes solace in the companionship of a pet!  At various points in the programme Gilchrist tried, with varying success, to create a whispering tone in the intimate acoustic of the Holywell, but pulled this off most convincingly in the sustained last note of "At St Patrick's Purgatory".After these exotic, culture-crossing songs, Gilchrist indulged the audience in the second-half with some thoroughly English material: Britten's Winter Words, settings of poems by Thomas Hardy.  Here we saw Gilchrist the storyteller, subtly modulating his voice to take on roles of narrator, vicar, young boy and even the creak of a little old table in the imaginatively titled "The Little Old Table".  From the entire programme, the Britten gave most opportunity for the piano, from the train horn and click of wheel on rail, in "Midnight on the Great Western", to the strains of a fiddle in "The Convict and the Boy with the Violin". Gilchrist and Tilbrook made an impressive pairing, managing entries and co-ordination flawlessly without need for eye-contact.Last year saw many composers’ anniversaries, and Gilchrist was quick to point out in his introduction that 2008 is the 50th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan-Williams' death.  The programme concluded with six songs from this quintessentially English composer and collector of folk-songs, including the old favourite "Linden Lea", as well as the lesser known "Winter's Willow".  The final song of the concert was "The sky above the roof", a translation from French of a Verlaine poem.At the risk of overusing culinary metaphors, the encore, Quilter's "Go, lovely rose" reminded me of Worcester College's lemon tarts: a little too sweet and intense.  But I would not hesitate to recommend Gilchrist and Tilbrook for a Michelin star!by Matthew Silverman

Oxford University’s Jewish Society and the Aegis Society , a grassroots movement against genocide, will organize and sponsor a torch-lit march through Oxford city-center for Holocaust Memorial Day on Sunday, January 27th.

The march will be celebrating the 63rd anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1945 – the very end of the Second World War. The commemoration walk is scheduled to begin at the Jewish Centre in Jericho at 5:45 pm.

OUSU president Martin McCluskey thinks the significance of this event is heightened after the Holocaust denier David Irving’s controversial visit to the Oxford Union last term.

“Education about the Holocaust seems even more pertinent now. For people who haven't heard a Holocaust survivor speak before, it's incredibly powerful and brings home how horrendous it was,” commented McCluskey to the Oxford Times.

Other commemorative events are scheduled for Sunday, including a talk by a Holocaust survivor at the Jewish Centre, at 4 pm. Oxford University Chabad Society will be holding a lecture on Sunday by Professor Sir Michael Howard, president emeritus of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and who was Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. His mother was Jewish, fought in the Italian Campaign during the Second-World-War and was twice wounded and won a Military Cross at Salerno. The lecture will begin at 8 PM at the David Slager Chabad Jewish Centre on George Street.Cherwell 24 is not responsible for the content of external links

by Tom Carpenter, Deputy Editor, C24

A comment and opinion article

Imagine my horror yesterday morning when, dehydratedly fighting my way out of my room in typical, randomised panic, I stumble upon a small, unassuming brown envelope. One that bore the Tick of Terror. The TV licensors were coming.

You may have noticed that TV licensing has been getting more aggressive over the past couple of years. Although I was aware I was not prepared for the crimson, underscored caps that red-blooded their way into my attention. 'OFFICIAL WARNING' it read, 'Your address is scheduled to receive a visit from our National Enforcement Division’

The letter went on to inform me that, as there was no valid TV licence for the address ‘Staircase 15 Room 21’ and I had not ‘responded to their warnings’, the NEDs would soon be paying me a visit. I remember the ‘warning’ well, a coolly-worded letter telling me I was ‘under investigation’ and instructing me to call their (0870 – more on this shortly) number so I would kindly inform them that I did not own a television and they could kindly cease their investigation.

I did not, and do not, own a television, but I was going to do no such thing! It galled me that not only was there an apparent presumption of my guilt but also that it was my job to disprove it! To add injury to insult, the number is a revenue-raiser. A common sum for the owners of 0870 numbers to be paid is 2p a minute^1. A quick look at the DFES website tells us that in 2005/6 there were 1.87 million home undergraduate students. Given this, and assuming that, oh, 50% of them were intimidated enough to call, each spending 5 minutes on the line, the Bristol-based companies collective stood to gain £93,500. These calculations are crude but they paint a damning picture. This figure only represents the money received by the company, of course – 0870 calling costs are higher and for students using mobile phones, the amount of money spent professing their innocence would have been staggering.

Let me take a moment to illustrate the tone of the letter:

“…official warning…enforcement division…as you have not responded to our warnings…this visit and its consequences…when our officers arrive at your accommodation…let me remind you that…committing a criminal offence…our officers on the ground…they will confirm the situation when they visit…”

It is a threatening whisper, a clipboard claw hammer, the smallness of you faced with peerless authority. And I don’t like it one bit. They have managed to combine the shadow of the police state with the shamelessness of the free market.

This is not the worst of it, though. The purposes and nature of these intimidatory tactics are not as bad as the means. The second letter arrived, as with the first one, under my door, not in my pidge. Presumably the college came to some arrangement where the scouts delivered them; I don’t know. What concerns me is the implication, “we know where you live”. People who have done nothing wrong are being made to feel as if it is their duty to prove it. Guilty until proven innocent. TV Licensing, contracted by a public body, has resorted to bullying. This simply isn’t good enough. Bring on the NED!

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¹ http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/0870-say-no#why

Unlike Daphne du Maurier’s heroine, I really had been back to my abandoned chateau.

Just last week, I was back in Oxford for the first time since June, and the experience was heavily laden with ghosts of the past. I entered the Bodleian and requested books with my old barcode and password. They were brought up by the same librarians. I read them in the same seat (number 208 in the upper reading room) that I frequented all of last spring. I drank G&Ds coffee. I ate in the Covered Market. And all the while it rained.

Oxford, it appears, is slow to change. That timelessness was one of the strongest impressions I took home with me about Britain . I wrote often last year about the contrast between the sense of constancy I experienced abroad and the obsession with change I associated with my home in the U.S. That Oxford in January 2008 looks much like Oxford in June 2007 was no big shock.

What got to me this time were my encounters with friends I hadn’t seen in months. I’m generally diligent about keeping in touch and, thanks to e-mail and Facebook, I was fully up to date on all the gossip basics of break-ups and new couplings. As a writer obsessed with new media, I’d assumed the physical separation and reunion would make minimal difference.

How wrong I was. Simple and sappy as it may seem, I was floored by the depth and force of emotion I felt seeing people face to face, hearing voices live and standing in physical spaces of college quads. It was a sharp reminder of the things that—at least for me—technology can’t yet replace. So I’m curious: do you, my fellow Gen Y, Web 2.0 readers, see limits in the things that can successfully be made virtual?