Oxford City Council has rejected the Bodleian Library’s controversial plans to build a £29million book depository at Osney Mead, as well as a major redevelopment of the new Bodleian library in Broad Street.

Despite approval by the city’s strategic development control committee, the plans were rejected due to flooding fears and the “sensitive location” of the proposed depository, with critics worried that the famous dreaming spires skyline would be ruined.

The rejection of the Bodleian’s plans puts the future of the library in jeopardy. With Bodleian Library’s collection currently growing at a rate of three miles of shelving per year, the depository plans would have helped to keep the texts close to the central site. The library now faces placing more of their collection in expensive, inaccessible rented storage space outside of the city.

While the oxford skyline is safe for the time being, James Lamming, Vice President of OUSU, said that “students will be very disappointed”. Dr Sarah Thomas, the Bodley’s librarian has described the Osney depository plans as “the only viable option” to preserve the Bodleian’s reputation as one of the “best university collections in the world.”

By Emma King 

Many consumers believe that ‘organic’ is synonymous with being more nutritious, better for the environment and tastier than conventionally grown food, but how do the two really compare? 
The Environment

At first glance, organic appears to win the points for environmental protection. The range of pesticides and fertilisers available to organic farmers is restricted to a handful of natural chemicals and their use is limited. This should mean less fertiliser run-off into rivers and fewer chemicals persisting in the food chain. 

But using ‘natural’ rather than ‘synthetic’ chemicals in organic farming doesn’t necessarily make organic farming superior.  A natural chemical may be just as harmful to the environment as a man-made one, and synthetic compounds may be just as benign as natural ones. Also the amounts of chemicals used in conventional farming vary widely depending on the crop.  For example a cotton field needs many more pesticides than an olive grove. So we shouldn’t assume than a conventionally produced crop is necessarily more damaging to the environment than any organic crop. 

Organic farming is also less efficient.  Conventional crops give greater yields so less land is taken up than for organic crops. Less land for agriculture means more land that could be set aside for nature. 

Welfare

Organic retailers often boast about the benefits of being organic to animal welfare, but it would be somewhat unfair to think that conventional farmers don’t look after their animals too. A recent report comparing dairy farms in the UK found no significant difference in animal welfare between organic and conventional farms: organic farms were found both at the top and the bottom of the table for lameness, a big problem in dairy farming. The UK’s organic laws do ensure a minimum standard of animal welfare, but so does the ‘Red Tractor’ symbol on conventionally produced food. 

Fairtrade

How many of us have bought organic chocolate thinking it was fairtrade too? I’ll admit I was surprised to learn that only one Green & Black’s product, Maya Gold chocolate, was fairtrade. Both organic and non-organic food can be fairtrade, but being organic alone doesn’t mean a product is fairtrade – it’s only fairtrade if it carries the fairtrade symbol. 

Climate

When it comes to carbon dioxide emissions, the difference between foods lies more in how they get to the consumer than the way in which they were farmed. Both organic and conventionally farmed items need diesel-fuelled farm machinery, and when grown abroad, both types of crop need to be imported by boat or by air.  

The arguments for and against organic get complicated when talking about carbon dioxide and methane, but on the whole, the two types of farming produce about the same amount of greenhouse gas. 

Nutrition

Most research so far shows that organic and conventionally produced foods have much the same nutritional content, although a few studies show that some organic foods are more nutritious. Flavonoids (antioxidants) have recently been in the news for being at levels nearly twice as high in organic than conventional tomatoes. The researchers think that this is because the conventional tomatoes were over-fertilised; they didn’t need to produce the flavonoids to take up nitrogen from the soil. 

The organic lobby complains that conventional crops are soaked in pesticides that are bad for our health, but studies have found pesticide residues on conventionally grown foods are almost always nil. 

Taste

Better taste is highly-trumpeted claim by organic retailers, but taste more often depends on the variety or breed, country of origin and the season than whether it’s organic or not. Of course organic chestnut mushrooms will taste better than conventional button mushrooms; button mushrooms have no flavour anyway. The same goes for strawberries – the only conventional variety available in supermarkets all year round is the cardboard-flavoured ‘Elsanta’, any other variety, be it organic or not, will taste better than that excuse for a fruit.
 So what’s the verdict?
There are good reasons to buy and not to buy organic, but if you do want to be more ethical on a student’s budget, the ‘Red Tractor’ symbol and fairtrade mark are the one’s you should be looking for. 

Photo taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/panos_voudouris/1295208738/

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by William Green

‘Slounge’ is a new night of culture funded, organised and performed by Oxford Contemporary Music (OCM), Hammer & Tongue, Oxford’s finest Slam poets, and the Oxford Film and Video Makers (OFVM). Throughout November and December they’re doing their highly artistic thing in The Vaults Café, in Radcliffe Square.

It’s a great venue; the cold stone of the church building is offset by the warmth of the atmosphere, the packed tables, and the delicious home-made food served from seven onwards whilst a DJ gets things started with some inoffensive background musak.   Admittedly, it is a little bit Nathan Barley. The place is full of weekend hippies, blokes with white-man dreds talking about the difference between Old World and New World wine, and women painstakingly sculpted into the casual boho look. I suppose that explains the name: ‘Slounge’. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. As far as I can tell, it is lounge with an 's' on the front. But if you can get over these little niggles, it really is a nice atmosphere.

First on the bill was current International Spoken Word Champion, Steve Larkin. Except, he had flu, which was a shame as he truly is excellent. In his stead was Sophia Blackwell, who is gay, by the way, and wants you to know it. After a shaky start- a rather contrived poem about fairytales and teenage romance-she got into the meat of her material. Given the church setting, her pounding meditations on religion and death were oddly appropriate. The stand-out poem, however, was a beautifully crafted conceit called ‘Buying Tomatoes’, in which her rhymes and rhythms hit the heights of inventiveness and wit which her other works had tantalisingly suggested. If this is a sign of her progression then I look forward to seeing her again.

Following Sophia was a set of four short films by the OFVM. I sipped my nicely chilled red wine and suppressed the urge to laugh. Sorry, but they were a bit stupid. In any other context they would be an acute parody. First, a film about a man jumping a pole vault; then a heart-wrenching narrative of a box which gets carefully made and discarded. The third film was so bad I’m not even going to write about it, and the final picture-an interesting concept of narrating the break up of a love triangle through the medium of dance-would have been quite good if the dancers hadn’t been so obviously amateur. There is a bit more to dancing than jumping against walls.

The evening was slipping away, and it needed something special from ‘winsome folk-punk harpist’ Serafina Steer to rescue the night. Fortunately, she delivered magnificently. Her classical training on the harp was immediately evident and beautifully complimented her achingly fragile voice which constantly seemed on the brink of breaking, yet still managed to hit that extra note higher. Her lyrics were dynamic and broad, telling tales of tigers, peach hearts and rivers in a way which simultaneously managed to be dreamlike and incisive. Her forcefully demanded encore, ‘Curses, curses, curses’ was sublime, demonstrating that even obscure comedy folk songs like ‘Valerie Wilkins’ were not beyond her scope.

After Serafina came another six films, but I didn’t stay to watch them. Having heard something so good, I really didn’t want to spoil it.  Perhaps that was rather close-minded of me, but I don’t regret it. If you ever get the chance to see Serafina Steer, then take it.

The next Slounge event is Wednesday 5^th December, featuring Mercury nominated acoustic/electronica songwriter Leafcutter John and the interactive art of Lisa Busby.

by Rosie Pope

Les Biggs – Trace  

Pitt Rivers Museum, 20th October 2007-29th June 2008

High-street homogeneity and disposable culture are intrinsically hateable, yet, as any Primark-goer will testify, they are also a persistent part of student life. For those who appreciate craft, who believe in looking after things, the Pitt Rivers Museum is the ultimate eye-feast. Even if you have frequented the legendary building tucked behind the Natural History Museum before, there is now the chance to peep at Les Biggs’ installation Trace, and extend that inter-essay musing.

The artist has reacted to the museum’s extensive collection, much of which is not on show to the public, but is kept in storage, carefully labelled and boxed. It is this neat and meticulous system of ordering behind the scenes that was the main inspiration for Trace.

A homage to orderliness, the artwork is comprised of over a hundred ceramic boxes with delicate quotes and fictitious artefacts fired-on underneath their glaze. The little doodleish watercolour images could be taken for actual objects considering the sheer quirky range of things housed in the museum. However,  they are merely products of the artist’s imagination. The quotes beside them are seemingly whimsical but are factual, dictionary definitions of words, quotes and references to cultural eccentricity. The porcelain boxes’ interiors are open to imagination. Their labels are suggestive and at times comic. The installation is almost magnetic as it is presented in a museum-like cabinet, encouraging passers-by to peer in.

Yet passers-by are all who look. Modesty is the name of the game here. Tucked away in a remote corner of the museum and barely advertised (the security guard didn’t know where it was!), the piece tries to, and succeeds in, simultaneously blending into and standing out from the museum’s dense displays. The installation is even more entwined with the collection than meets the eye, as 96 of the boxes are dotted around the rest of the cabinets, sitting next to masks, knives, shrunken heads and voodoo dolls.

Trace is an antidote for those tired of clinical white-box artwork and of factory produce. The close relationship with the thousands of beautiful, curious, unique objects housed within the glass cabinets and labeled boxes is palpable. Biggs has succeeded in creating a self-effacing display which instead turns the viewer back to the curious around him.

An Elizabethan tapestry map previously thought to be lost forever is to go on display at the Bodleian Library in January. The 16^th century map is part of a set of four huge pieces woven from wool and silk, which would once have covered some 80 sq ft of wall space. The Bodleian already has two of the four maps and a third is in the Warwickshire Museum. This newly-discovered part of the jigsaw depicts Worcestershire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Warwickshire. In the years when it was missing it is believed to have been used as a fireguard in a private house. It was discovered last year and bought by the Bodleian for £100,000 with the help of the Art Fund, charities and private donors. The combined maps offer a unique representation of the countryside at the time of Shakespeare, when modern mapmaking was in its infancy.

Oxford pubs are under threat, with as many as one pub closing every eight weeks as a result of the smoking a ban.Since September, both the White House pub in Botley Road and the Marlborough House, at the corner of Western Road, have both closed and with the winter months setting in, it is predicted that the problem will worsen, with smokers reluctant to stand outside to smoke.Tony Goulding, chairman of the Oxford branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) said: "Pubs are closing at an alarming rate and the situation is getting critical. In the old days, people went to the pub and the cinema – those were their main distractions – but people lead such busy lives nowadays and it's hard to get them to come out to community pubs."In Oxford, estimates suggest that trade in pubs has dropped by around 25%. According to the Oxford Mail, there are currently 28 pubs for sale in Oxfordshire, including four within Oxford. John Madden, of the Guild of Master Victuallers, said the problem is worse when considered on a national scale, with as many as two to three pubs closing daily.

I have spent hours telling potential applicants that Oxford is not that odd. Reassuring them that although we do have to work harder than at other universities, student life here is not that different to anywhere else.  Forget ‘Brideshead Revisited’: we are a perfectly normal set of people.  

But, let’s be honest, there are quite a few things that you get at Oxford which you just won’t find anywhere else. And although the thought of such things unnerved me a bit before coming up, I have to admit that now I’m here, I quite like some of the quirky traditions we have.  Public School-like it may be, but ‘sconcing’ is one of them. 

Sconcing, as it is understood by the students who practice it today, does not follow exactly the same procedures as it used to.  It can be traced back to at least as early as 1617 when the word ‘sconce’ meant a fine or penalty.  A person would be ‘sconced’ at a formal dinner if they broke table etiquette – for example by talking about women, religion, politics or work; by referring to the portraits hung in the hall; or by pronouncing the Latin grace wrong.  All very serious stuff.  The tradition then evolved from being a monetary fine to the penalty of having to drink a tankard of ale which the sconced student could share with his fellows, thus making amends to those who suffered his breach of etiquette. Only the master or senior scholar at the table was able to impose a ‘sconce’: if other people at the table felt that a sconce was necessary, they had to make their request to their senior in Latin or Ancient Greek.

Nowadays sconcing is practiced in different ways by different colleges, and the variations are quite revealing.  The standard format goes something like this: At a formal dinner someone will stand up and say “I sconce anyone who… (insert amusing/offensive/salacious comment here)”. A particular favourite of mine was the person sconced for falling over while thinking about prime numbers.  The people or person who fits that description then has to stand up, and has to down his or her drink 

In most colleges sconcing is mainly practiced by rowers, which perhaps tells you about the love of tradition in boat clubs.  However, subject societies and other sports societies do it too. In Hertford the Tanner Society (for physicists) and the Music Society are known to be keen sconcers, although I’m told by a Hertford physicist that sconcing only happens after dinner, not during it, because the two don’t go well concurrently.  Civilised sconcers indeed. The fact that we’re still eating dinner has never stopped anyone I know.  

In Balliol ‘revenge sconcing’ is frowned upon – for example sconcing people who row on bow side cannot be countered with a sconce against those who row on stroke side.  Balliolites demand ingenuity in their sconces.  An ‘incorrect sconce’, i.e. a sconce description which doesn’t fit anyone present, is met with the cry of SHOE! This then results in the abashed would-be-sconcer having to remove their footwear, pour their drink into it, and down it from there.  Pretty gross.  This doesn’t happen in all colleges that sconce though.  A St Hughs student told me that they’d seen it on a crew date but had wisely avoided adopting it.  Not so in Oriel.  Apparently it has to be the president of the boat club’s shoe which is used and because of its popularity he has particular shoes for the purpose, so that the others don’t get ruined.  Presumably this is a remnant of the old tradition when only the master or senior scholar could impose a sconce.  Clearly Oriel is more traditional than most. 

At St John’s sconcing seems to be less popular now, but until recently it was traditional for rowers to ask for permission from the president of the boat club to sconce people, and to do this in Latin.  They have giant solid silver flagons which are worth about £16,000 each that they put out at some formal dinners. It is suspected that these might be old “sconce pots” which are mentioned in early accounts of sconcing. 

  Sconcing isn’t something done in all colleges though and its not done anywhere in Cambridge.  Wadhamites for example, are clearly too cool for any of this sconcing lark. As one Wadham third year put it “it sounds like a slightly uprated, posher, boatier version of ‘I have never’”. He perhaps has a point.  Sconcing is daft, posh and ultimately very Oxford.  It can get offensive if done by certain people, but I think generally it is quite good fun and pretty harmless. 

by Jack Farchy

Why would anyone want to be in a 24-hour play? Land a part in a play that is conceived, scripted and rehearsed all in the space of 24 hours and you’re likely to find yourself rushed on stage, lines half-learnt, to fudge your way through a play that feels like it was written at four in the morning, because it was. And then the lights go out.

There were plenty of painful moments in the five short plays on show: in one, the actors delivered their bedroom conversation with such intimacy that no one else in the theatre could hear it; in another, an actor was spotted surreptitiously reading his lines off his hand. But there were, in the course of the evening, little moments of quality that glimmered fleetingly, and made the whole exercise worthwhile.

Much of the acting was below par – it is a shame that few of Oxford’s starlets could be coaxed out of their more glamorous spotlights. But there were some striking performances: Iante Roache gave an unusual and powerful monologue as a girl waiting in an airport, reflecting on the child she aborted. Her strong Italian accent, her deadpan delivery, and her unflinching eye contact with the audience gave her performance a mesmeric quality. Kabir Soorya showed an uncanny natural ability for playing a schizophrenic, lonely man who lives on take-away pizzas. My favourite moment of the whole evening came when he choked on the piece of pizza he was eating, while delivering the line, ‘I love eating pizza’ – followed by a characteristically twitchy, coy smile to the audience.

Perhaps the most fully realised play on offer was Tom Crawshaw’s Most Suspect. A classic farce, it employed some well-crafted exaggerated physical comedy, featuring a foolish detective, a drunken vicar, a cross-dressing wing commander, a fainting hostess, and – my favourite – a saucy west country cook, played by Melissa Julian Jones.

The most interesting writing came from Tom Campion and Cathy Thomas. Their two characters engaged in a fast-paced free-association dialogue in which sometimes lovely descriptions of imagined worlds and situations were bounced between them. Unfortunately, though, the play went on too long, and much of its sharpness and mystery was lost.

  Why would anyone go to see a 24-hour play? You shuffle into a half-empty theatre to watch a series of plays that begin falteringly, struggle about the stage for a quarter hour, and then end abruptly and often inexplicably. But there were enough moments of freshness and quality in this show to make me hope the event will become a regular fixture.

by Paul Hallows

Pagan Wanderer Lu – Perfection R.I.P.

****

Firstly, I feel as though I should apologise to Andy Regan, A.K.A. Cardiff’s very own Pagan Wanderer Lu. I have certainly given records more auspicious first plays than as accidental soundtracks to my sleepy washing up. Unbeknownst to me, his new E.P. ‘Perfection R.I.P.’ filtered through to my bathroom, leading me to think that iTunes had rather pleasingly found me a new Belle & Sebastian album. Wait, how long has Stuart Murdoch been sticking glitchy bits in his songs for? And did I just hear the line “spray the foam on the boy’s pectoral”? Upon closer inspection, what turned out to be Pagan Wanderer Lu’s latest effort combines the three features that underpin those questions beautifully. Melodies that scream pop while staying on the right side of cloying are offset by some extremely dark, witty lyrics delivered in an endearing Bolton accent. The opener ‘The Gentleman’s Game’ is possibly the best representation of this, with shimmering electronics underpinning wonky bass and Casio beats with plaintive reflections on how “we are loath to live vicariously, through the sporting achievements of our country”. The quality doesn’t let up from hereon in, and I defy anyone not to start happily singing along to “Perfection of a Simple Life” before suddenly stopping with the slow, cold realisation that you’ve been merrily mouthing lines like “and if they find those bodies buried under your immaculate lawn…”. As a whole, it’s an E.P. that’s a world away from its self-deprecating title. Indeed, as new single and highlight ‘Tree of Knowledge suggests”, if you don’t like it, you can “fuck his apples”. Charming.