It’s perhaps understandable that there are a lot of symbols that are used to indicate gay pride. The whole concept of being closeted seems to indicate a need for a code, a covert way of indicating we’re-here-and-we’re-queer, whether or not that symbol will register in wider society. But if there’s a gay pride symbol that everyone in the western world knows, regardless of their own orientation, it’s the rainbow flag. Seen hanging out of pubs, clubs, bars and bookshops, it’s an unashamed proclamation – this is a place where queer people are welcome.
With that in mind, it’s probably unsurprising that the first time a rainbow flag was used as an unambiguous symbol of gay pride was in San Francisco.
In 1978, local artist Gilbert Baker designed the first version of what would become the rainbow flag. The initial version had eight stripes, hand-dyed, with hot pink and turquoise in addition to the commonly-seen six colours. Later in the year, the city responded to the murder of its first openly gay supervisor, Harvey Milk, by draping that year’s Pride Parade with a modified version of Baker’s flag. This new version, a symbol of the city’s defiance, was modified to enhance its symmetry, and the subsequent six-striped flag became the one most often seen today. As for why rainbow stripes were used at all – history seems a little reticent on that point. But it seems clear that the bright colours have taken root in queer cultural consciousness since.

So much so that the self-proclaimed “queer nation”, the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands – which claims to be a country in its own right, having seceded from Australia, complete with its own mail service, currency and national anthem – has, perhaps inevitably, claimed the six-striped rainbow as its official flag. There are other pride symbols – notably, the pink triangle, originally used by the Nazis as a symbol to be worn by homosexuals in concentration camps, and reclaimed as a queer symbol afterwards, and the black triangle, used for lesbians specifically. There are other flags, too, denoting bisexual pride, transgender pride, family pride, even leather pride – but the rainbow flag did it first. There is no permanent settlement on the Gay and Lesbian Islands, so no embassies or ships fly it, but do they need to? It’s bright, it’s eye-catching, and it’s already flying in hundreds of places all over the world. 
By Iona Sharma

 The word ‘genteel’ seems appropriate to the point of cliché when talking about Cheltenham. A town of Regency terraces and horse racing, antique shops and tea rooms. Hardly the ideal place to test the waters of feminist thought, we might think.
But every year in October Cheltenham is shaken up – just a little – as the famous Literature Festival rolls into town. For nine days the pristine Imperial Gardens bristle with leading figures from the worlds of art, broadcasting and politics.
This year the theme is ‘What does change mean to us?’ and investigations into attitudes towards women are high on the agenda. Stripy tights and silver pumps are the order of the day as Germaine Greer strides onto stage in the ornate Edwardian auditorium of the Town Hall. The windows are covered with long velvet awnings and a warm light from under the balconies provides an intimate atmosphere. She talks for an hour on her latest book, Shakespeare’s Wife.
 “Every time I hear a man at a dinner party tell his wife to ‘shut up dear’, I want to take him outside and shoot him” she begins. Well-natured laughter ripples through the audience. Her introduction soon gives way to the argument. Gesticulating passionately, she outlines a radical biography of Anne Hathaway; speculative, controversial, and persuasive. A broad sense of revelation follows every new piece of conjecture. Presumptions they may be, but Greer’s claims that Hathaway had a significant impact on Shakespeare’s work seem no less valid than those of the scholars who see this mysterious character through the filter of chauvinism.
In the course of the hour, Greer piles on the questions. Was Hathaway really illiterate and uncultured? Did Shakespeare really write his plays away from home? Was the model of accomplished, emotionally intelligent womanhood portrayed in Portia, Cleopatra and Silvia really a work of pure imagination? Greer describes how Hathaway is perceived by academics: “Shakespeare, an innocent youth, is skipping down the lanes of Stratford when out comes Anne Hathaway, a big, hairy, randy old woman who wraps her legs around him and gets herself pregnant.”
Of course Greer is following a feminist agenda with her reappraisal of this image. She owns up to a temptation to claim that it was Hathaway who wrote the plays, “but I’m not as brave as that”. Nevertheless, Greer’s ideas are all supported by what is known about society in Stratford at the time; it is hard not to agree with her that this has to be a better approach than groundlessly disregarding Hathaway’s relationship with the Bard. She admits that her conclusions are but guesswork, adding that “some guesses are better than others”, those ‘others’ being “informed with a casual contempt”.
Her speech is met with resounding applause from the audience, Greer moves onto the questions and the lights are raised in the auditorium. Here we see hints of her tendency to play up her own image: “Who’d like to go first? I’d rather it not be a man”.
“What about the bed?” chirps in an elderly lady near the front, alluding to the main weapon in the armoury of the Hathaway-detractors, the fact that in his will, Shakespeare bequeathed to her only his second-best bed. Here the strength of Greer’s arguments come to the fore, as she explains that it was typical for a husband to leave his widow the ‘everyday’ bed, on which conceptions, births and deaths took place, rather than the more lavish but less emotionally significant guest bed.  
The next question is from a man. The questioner stands up, takes hold of the microphone and, in a self-satisfied voice, asks “What about those women who tell their husbands to ‘shut up dear’?” There is a pause, and Greer bites her lip, the audience awaiting her response on tenterhooks. “It should be possible for spouses to communicate” she responds calmly, “This is why I can’t watch the Jeremy Kyle Show”, and points out that in Shakespearean drama women and men tend to communicate well, noting that this too could cast light on the marriage.
As Greer leaves the platform at the end of the hour she is swamped by middle-aged women in cork sandals, the water pitcher is refilled for Douglas Hurd, and the hall is alive with conversation as the audience files out. Snippets such as “I had no idea”, “What I don’t like about her is…”, and “But I thought she didn’t like him?” indicate the strong impression she makes on the public.
She revels in controversy, provokes inspiration in some and loathing in others, and is perfectly aware of this.
But whatever you think of Germaine Greer, an hour in her electric presence leaves you unable to deny her energetic sense of purpose in questioning assumptions, unexamined truisms and the lazy acceptance of ungrounded dogma. Genteel she ain’t, but that just wouldn’t suit her. by Jeremy Cliffe

Homer’s Iliad remains an excellent introduction
to poetry for the under-fives; its
language proves accessible, and the available
Greek translations help you encourage
children to foreign languages at an early
age. Split into bite-size 1000 line chunks
(easily readable, say, at bed time) this classic
nonsense anthology has lasting appeal.by Chris McCartney 

Elenor Matthews defends the rights of those who want to travel for less 
If Ryanair was a night-club it would almost certainly be Filth: only after the inevitable mix of binge drinking, Justin Timberlake, kebabs and casual sex do we remember that it’s trashy and vulgar, and will inevitably leave us feeling somewhat grubby. So why do we still do it?

Cheap-flights certainly aren’t good for the environment and there’s no point in kidding ourselves that we’re not contributing to the speed up of global warming when we use them. However there is nothing which makes a flight on Easyjet more inherently polluting than on Silverjet, and business-men commuting back-wards and forwards from New-York twice a week are as much to blame for the climate crisis as groups of chavs or, for that matter, students going to Ianapa for the weekend. In fact, I sense a rather unhealthy air of snobbery under all the cheap flight hysteria which seems to suggest that you have to pass some kind of financial litmus test to leave the country. Basically a kind of horror that now almost anyone can get to that Villa in Tuscany.

We may groan at stag groups in Prague; however, in the modern world a society that travels is far healthier than one that doesn’t- just look at the number of citizens of the US who don’t have passports. Travel is one of life’s greatest levellers and without cheap flights those who need it the most – the young and the terminally bored – will struggle to get further than Calais. Although travelling on a big bright orange plane is admittedly less romantic than on the Marrakech Express, surely it’s better that now the vast majority of people can go and see Eastern Europe or the Arab world before they start whining about ‘all of them over here’.

If we are really dedicated to cutting CO2 than perhaps we should ban aviation all-together, but getting rid of cheap flights is as half-arsed as David Cameron’s stupid bicycle helmet and private jet combo. It will not stop people who can afford to fly. In fact it will probably just lead to stagnation in the fuel-saving technology that airlines must develop to stay competitive and which are constantly making flying greener. More people are flying, but more people are also driving, and just as cars have become less gas-guzzling so have flights become 70% more efficient than forty years ago. Much like Filth, this is a case of something sordid being so wrong it’s almost right. So by all means offset your carbon footprint, but don’t knock Ryanair until you’ve stopped eating apples from New Zealand.

Rhion Harris attacks plane users who are destroying the environment.
Fifty pound flights to Dublin, seventy pound flights to Paris and just ninety to Prague… Cheap flights have become so commonplace that for five years we have been able to jet across the world at rock-bottom prices. And directly as the price of flights has diminished the cost to the environment has increased. UK airports recorded an 120% increase in the number of passengers between 1990 and 2004. How, then, are we going to reach the Kyoto Protocol’s target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 20% by 2010?

Everyone knows about the carbon dioxide emissions from aeroplanes which, after their release in the upper troposphere, trap long-wave solar radiation and lead to global warming. Fewer people are aware of the extent of the damage caused by contrails. Contrails are formed when humid air expelled by aeroplanes meets cold air in the upper atmosphere and condenses to form thin cirrus clouds. These trap heat in the atmosphere, just like carbon dioxide but with three times the strength. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has forecast a temperature increase of between 1.4- 5.8 degrees Celsius by the next century.

It’s understandable that people would want to take advantage of going on a nice holiday for less money. The problem is that people see the prices and then find a reason to travel; it ought to be the other way around. There are also less environmentally damaging modes of transport – cars, ferries and coaches. What’s so wrong with holidaying in the UK? Some people have begun to try to reduce the negative environmental impact of their flights using ‘carbon offsetting’ schemes, where they pay to have trees planted on their behalf, but there are doubts about its efficacy, and these schemes do not provide the change to the underlying behaviour that is so badly needed.

Another psychological problem is that the rapid expansion of airports at the moment. The plan to expand 30 airports in 30 years is sending completely the wrong signals to the public about the morality and impact of flying. As an aside, airport expansion also causes loss of green land, noise and air pollution.
It is now time for us to start taking the threat (or, in fact, the reality) of climate change seriously. Soon everyone will be forced to take action, whether it be flying just once a year, offsetting our carbon emissions, or even opting for a holiday in Britain instead of abroad. Forget SAD – guilt will soon make you feel worse.

Guy Pewsey talks Neighbours, drugs and kilowatt smiles with Jason Donovan
 
When we sit on our sofas and watch television, it’s often clear that the image presented to us of our favourite celebrities are just a façade. When the cameras stop rolling, they call the entourage, make some demands, and move onto the next booking in their ultimately miserable lives. This however, is not the case with Jason Donovan, who has just spent more than an hour signing copies of his new autobiography for the many adoring fans who lurk in an orderly yet undoubtedly intimidating queue. When they have finally dispersed, we retire to the staff area at the Magdalen Street Borders. Before the interview can start, he has to sign a stack of seventy more books, and as he makes light work of the imposing pile, he’s still smiling. His new autobiography, Between The Lines, charts his eventful life, focussing on his pop career and hasty decline into class A drugs before eventual comeback via ITV reality show, I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. It might not make the list of books to read before you die, but it’s an honest recollection of how things can go wrong when the ugly side of fame rears its head.

When Jason finishes signing the last book on the trolley, he puts the pen down and tells me to sit down. He’s clearly eager to move onto the next event, but he’s still smiling. I ask him if he finds such events laborious, whether he finds it difficult to switch on the ‘kilowatt smile’ (which, consequently, is the name of chapter three). The answer seems to be the usual response from a seasoned performer such as Jason, but the delivery is so pristine it’s difficult not to believe him. ‘To an extent it’s programmed into me, but it’s not easy. When people have queued up for an hour though, it’s only fair that I give them my respect. I’m really very grateful for the loyal fans I have in this country and I’m always happy to maintain that’. And maintain it he does, as in the last couple of years he’s appeared in Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang on the WestEnd, done a tour, and reminded millions of his existence through the last series of I’m A Celebrity. His fame was initially established in Britain after his debut on Neighbours in the late eighties, and so it wasn’t long before opportunity knocked in the form of pop svengali Pete Waterman. Twenty years and 3 million records later, he’s still known by many as Scott Robinson off Neighbours, and is forever united with Kylie Minogue due to the shameless publicity stunt that was their completely artificial relationship. On whether or not he minds such an eternal connection, he is adamantly content; ‘I don’t mind’, he says, ‘I can certainly think of worse things to be associated with. Neighbours was a great time of my life, so I can’t complain that people are still asking about me now.’ When I assure him that the student population of Oxford show no signs of letting the Australian soap opera be forgotten, he gives a wry smile, and I move on.

Jason is also famed for his incredibly successful run as the lead role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat. His career has gone from acting, to pop, to mixing the two on stage, and he’s eager to establish that he loves it all the same; ‘I’m all encompassing,’ he insists with just an air of conceit. ‘I’m very happy to move between all mediums. I love the variety.’ His experience with Joseph led to him being invited to join Donny Osmond and Any Dream Will Do winner Lee Mead for a musical medley at the recent Concert for Diana. ‘I was honoured to be part of the Lloyd Webber line-up, and it was a wonderful day with great atmosphere, both onstage and backstage.’ For a moment he pauses, appearing to word the response correctly before he answers. ‘It was great to be celebrating her life, celebrating something good rather than all the bad surrounding it.’

The release of a celebrity autobiography is usually timed to follow a reality television win or to benefit from the Christmas rush, and so I ask why he’s chosen now as his time to write the book. According to the forward, despite the many offers that he’s received for book deals, this was the first time that he felt mature enough to make a decent go of it. I suggest that, perhaps, it corresponds with what is potentially the final peak in his career. He is quick to deny such a theory; ‘I would hope that there is more to come, highs or lows’ he replies with another cheesy yet earnest smile. ‘I’m in a good place right now, but it’s about learning to work with life’s curve-balls.’ The curve-balls which he refers to are mostly to do with the severe drug problems which he has dealt with during the height of his career, and then again in the late nineties when a very public cocaine-induced seizure led to the disappointment of his family and a multitude of ‘whatever happened to Jason Donovan?’ comments in the national press. While his memories of such experiences litter the book, I am eager to ask for more on the topic, but Jason Donovan seems happy to dwell on the present; ‘I have two gorgeous kids, and a wonderful wife, so I’m happy.’

I had of course prepared myself for Jason Donovan, cheeky and cheesy pop star, but it was impossible to anticipate just how perky he would be even when greeted with questions on his past problems. ‘Regret is a cancerous word. It leaves you nowhere. The lows that have fashioned my life have given me all the ups I have now.’ He is clearly referring once more to his wife and children, who he clearly adores. When security guards at the concert for Diana refused to let anyone other than him through to the backstage party, he dutifully decided that he came as a package, and left with his family. ‘What ifs are hypothetical, so no regrets.’

Towards the end of the book, Jason informs his fans that there could be more to come for those who like his way with words, a book which he’d like to call Be Careful What You Dream Of. This, he says, would be a warning to young people of the hazards of fame, using his own experiences in the limelight as a stark example. I ask him if this ambition is inspired by the people you see plastered on the covers of the tabloids such as Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears, people who became rich and famous at a young age and are now having difficulties. He is quick to show his disdain for anyone who would judge such individuals. ‘The thing is, you don’t vote your pop stars to be politicians. Creative people are creative people. These girls at the moment, they want to rebel against their own fame, doing what I call in the book ‘Searching for cool’. I can tell that he thinks he’s come up with an amazingly insightful phrase, but he’s just so visibly gleeful that I am unable to even show a hint of an eye roll. I move on, and ask if he was nervous about how the book would be received, both by his public and the family and friends who helped him through his problems. ‘Look, I’m nearly forty and I’m not a child anymore. I have an opinion.’ He is clearly proud of the autobiography, and dispels any suggestion of the ghost writers frequently used to assist the less literate stars; ‘It’s always my take on things. It’s all subjective and it’s not there to criticise. It’s just very honest.’

The time-limit which was established beforehand is coming to an end, so I finish with the obligatory question; ‘What’s next for Jason Donovan?’ He seems relieved that I didn’t try something a little more demanding, and mentions his new show ‘Echo Beach’, an upcoming show from the makers of Spooks and Hustle which he describes proudly as ‘Extras meets The O.C.’ And after that? ‘If that goes well, which I predict that it will, I’ll continue with that. We’ll see. It’s all good’. The interview ends, and I am hurried away as he and his publicist get ready to leave. Unsurprisingly, he’s still smiling.

OUSU COUNCIL passed an emergency motion condemning the Oxford Union last Friday after its decision to invite Nick Griffin and David Irving to address members.
Both British National Party leader Griffin and controversial historian Irving had originally been invited to debate at an Oxford Union free speech forum on 26 November.
Religious societies including the Oxford University Jewish Society, the Islamic Society and the Aegis Society voted to mandate OUSU President Martin McCluskey to write to Union President Luke Tryl, asking him to cancel the event.
If the Union did not, the motion called for OUSU to work with the National Union of Students and the Union of Jewish Students to oppose the event, and encouraging JCRs to debate the matter.
But Christ Church and Jesus JCRs also passed motions last week, with large majorities supporting the Union’s invitations.
McCluskey warned assembled delegates, “Irving and Griffin pose a threat to the welfare of individual students. There are students in this room now who will support this motion on the basis that they do not want to be harassed or intimidated by these men or any of their followers. There are students in this room whose race, ethnicity or sexuality has been verbally attacked by Irving and Griffin in the past and they do not once again want to be attacked in their own city.”
In an email to all Union members, Tryl criticised OUSU’s attitude to the speakers, emphasising that censorship was counter-productive.
“Stopping these people from speaking only allows them to become free speech martyrs, and from my own experience back in Halifax, which has suffered from race relations in the past, groups like the BNP do well if they look like they’re being censored,” he said. “Unlike OUSU, I think it’s patronising to suggest that Oxford students aren’t intelligent enough to debate these people and I do have great faith in the ability of Oxford students to challenge them.”
Tryl also said that membership fees would not be spent on entertaining speakers, and that the speakers would not be given a platform to discuss their ‘extremist’ views.
David Irving also attacked journalists at The Oxford Student as “mindless idiots” for misrepresenting his views by claiming that he was a Holocaust denier. For over a decade, Irving has publicly stated that he believes the Holocaust did occur.
“People who call me a Holocaust denier are mindless idiots: it shows they have not read my books or writings, and do not intend to,” he said. “They are willing to wound but afraid to strike, the mark of the bully.”
Earlier this week, Griffin claimed that he had been forbidden from speaking at the debating society in a video posted on the Internet.
Responding to Griffin’s claims, Union President Luke Tryl said, “Mr Griffin must be confused, we were considering having him speaking at the forum and this remains the case.”By Mohsin Khan

Heid Jerstad visits the Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan in search of temples, politics and the truth behind Gross National Happiness
 Young people these days are cynical, they say. The time of utopias is gone, wars continue, democracy becomes meaningless as political parties converge, religion is outdated and commerce reigns – so one might as well take that job with Goldman Sachs. But rather than give up on modern life entirely, throwing yourself into a completely alien culture and discovering a different, alternative way of life could be just what you need to regain some of your interest and faith in the world around you.

This summer my normally stingy college granted me five hundred pounds towards making a six-day trip to Bhutan. This Tibetan Buddhist kingdom locked between India and Chinese Tibet set up a monarchy in 1907 and has ruled itself since, with India as its main trading partner and mentor. Wherever we went roads were being built by Indian workers with whole families splitting stones or shovelling gravel – and an Indian army soldier keeping an eye on them. I never actually took photos of this (being slightly nervous about what the army might think) but the sight of these low-caste women, teenagers and old men doing such backbreaking work as we drove by in our huge Toyota made me wonder why they didn’t use road machines. (I only discovered later that it is in an attempt to employ the poor, as was done in post-1929 America.)

Before this trip was suggested to me I hadn’t actually heard of Bhutan. This says a lot, as I did an option on the Himalayas last Michaelmas and studied Tibetan when I was 16. In my defence, tourism in Bhutan has been heavily controlled and gaining access to the country is difficult. A visa can only be obtained through an agent, and visitors can only travel in a group with a guide and driver. There are beneficial side effects to these limitations too; much of the detrimental impact tourists have had on countries nearby (notably India and Thailand) has so far been avoided in Bhutan –  there is a complete absence of beggars, for example.
Being a Buddhist country, all sentient life (and it is oddly evocative of Star Wars to hear men in robes talk of sentient life) is taken seriously – numerous stray dogs roam the streets without fear and the driver of our large SUV would always brake so as not to harm a bird or cat. Whether it really is compassionate to let animals live when they are obviously starving or ill is unclear to me, though dogs near monasteries always looked healthy and well-fed.

The importance of religion is immediately evident once you arrive in Bhutan. Whilst visiting Taktsang, the Tigers Nest, a temple complex situated more than half a kilometre above the bottom of the nearby valley, we met two middle aged ladies with their sleeping bags and food on their backs who were planning to walk up and around the auspicious mountain, sleeping outside if need be. Pilgrims must be the original backpackers and these ones were very cheerful, if rather out of breath.

So what of the population? Nobody actually knows how many people there are in Bhutan. Apparently (according to Wikipedia) the two million estimate given by CIA Factbook is inflated, invented because of a belief that nations with under a million people were not allowed to join the UN. The real number is probably closer to seven hundred thousand. There is a huge economic divide between the well-off urban population and the farmers who use traditional but labour-intensive methods on steep and remote fields. They seem to have found this situation acceptable until the arrival of satellite television in 1999, Though certain un-Buddhist and immoral channels were banned after a few years (MTV and wrestling – schools had seen a marked increase in violence) villagers still have access to a multitude of channels which of course make it clear to them what they are still lacking in thier lives, and shows a world where leisure seems to be the norm. New problems such as lack of family time and teenage drug abuse are side effects of this exposure, we were told.

The educated youth flock to the few emerging towns, attracted by the Bollywood glamour and high-status government jobs. But there are not enough of these to go around resulting in educated unemployment, while migrant workers from India provide manual labour. One industry that is supporting increasing numbers of young people is domestic film production, which is doing a thriving trade, having pushed Bollywood out of the competition in Bhutan without financial support from the government. We were guests of a filmmaker to see an unusually dark film about a curse, charmingly shot with cowpats littering the background, endless romantic songs and dance scenes and a dramatic suicidal ending.

I went to Bhutan primarily to assist my father in preliminary research for a documentary film on Gross National Happiness (GNH), a fascinating concept which is officially a policy of Bhutan. Unsurprisingly, measuring the happiness of an individual or population is far from easy. Various books have been written and studies done on the subject but it remains elusive, certainly in terms of national policymaking. Conclusions reached concerning money and happiness never seem to translate into social policy. For research, we visited the Bhutan Studies Centre, established to do cross-sectoral research (i.e. think holistically about what each ministry has separate responsibility for) which is working on GNH. The only women there were secretaries, so I felt a little out of place, receiving endless snacks and tea while the scholars explained their work to my father. They are halfway-through their mammoth survey (although the results are yet to be processed) with around half of nine provinces covered. The 123 page questionnaire is delivered personally by the researcher and takes up to 8 hours per person. The idea is to discover what aspects of life are important for people’s happiness. For instance, would they prefer their virgin forest to be cut down and sold (likely to cause erosion and farming problems) if it meant they could build a secondary school in the valley or would that be a lower priority than increasing crop yields or developing cash crops? After all, the importance of crops in Bhutan should not be underestimated – there is even a large market in Japan for certain Bhutanese mushrooms which resemble Viagra.

The reason this research into national happiness needs to be done now is that the first ever national elections are scheduled for spring 2008. The theory is that the data should inform the incoming government on what areas are important to the people.  Most of the duties of the king have already been delegated to a national assembly and cabinet of ministers and his powers will no longer be absolute when the democratisation process is complete. In fact, the coronation of the Oxford-educated crown prince (currently acting fifth king) will probably take place after the election, on a date to be decided by astrologers. The forming of political parties is becoming increasingly common, with educated individuals choosing to leave their jobs in the civil service or the media to become involved in politics. This phenomenon has resulted in an interesting situation in which only three ministers have chosen to stay out of the party system to rule the country until the election. Our meetings kept getting cancelled or delayed because the person we were supposed to meet had decided to enter politics.
We talked to the election commissioner (who had just received registration applications from the two main parties) about these issues and discovered an astonishing fact. Having only been there a few days, enjoying the food and friendliness I had not completely realised that Bhutan is not a Shangri-la, a Tibet that was never assimilated, a land of spirituality and utopia. Despite the many water-turned prayer-wheels, the harmonious coexistence of regional administration and monasteries in the same building complex and the picturesque architecture and national dress, it is a country with very real peculiarities and problems. In fact religion brings its own problems when Western-style politics are on the agenda. Islam is not the only religion which has a ‘democratic problem.’ In Ladakh, the partly Buddhist region of Jammu, and Kashmir, India, they have experienced this with their Hill Council. A few Rinpoches (high lamas, sometimes reincarnated) got into politics and won landslide elections, not for any particular policy but simply because of the respect the population had for them. What the commissioner in Bhutan told us (and there was even a leaflet explaining this) was that all robed (religious) persons would be excluded from any political activity whatsoever, including voting. Religion, apparently, is ‘above’ politics. Taken at face value this does reduce the validity of the Bhutanese political system, but perhaps it is a necessary measure. One wonders what the reaction would be like in Russia or Italy were priests to be denied the vote. 

After the election it will probably take some time before anything becomes clear concerning the success of their democratisation project. The apparent lack of corruption and the revenue from abundant hydropower are positive clues to what has so far been and looks like continuing as a success story. I would certainly be up for a heated discussion on humans being incapable of trying for something better. But then again, I am an optimist.

This is a book that needed to be written. It is a declaration of defiance and warfare against one of the most dangerous threats to civilisation today. This is ‘one man’s fearless exchanges with Internet spammers’.
Ostensibly written by Bob Servant, a 62 year-old ‘unemployed gigolo’, the book is essentially a transcript of eight e-mail conversations between ‘Bob’ and the spammers, people posing as anything from Russian brides to African military generals, all in an effort to extract money from naïve web surfers. In each case, Bob neatly turns the tables, leaving a trail of comic carnage as he gradually draws the unsuspecting crooks into his own outlandish schemes. Granted, the conversations hold little literary merit, but they are eminently readable and absurdly funny. Highlights include a supposed lawyer who becomes involved in creating recipes for ‘Uncle Bob’s African Adventure’, and an exchange with a man who claims to be the son of ‘late King Arawi of tribal land’ and ends up trying to persuade Bob that he can indeed send talking lions to a Scottish zoo.The book is similar in style to other popular humour, consisting principally of ludicrously surreal outbursts to complete strangers and, while certainly amusing, quickly becomes repetitive. Often the funniest parts of Bob’s conversations are the replies, as the bewildered victims resort to increasingly ham-fisted attempts to extract money from a raving madman. However, the book really succeeds as a manifesto on how to take revenge on those who fill our inboxes with junk. We can all sleep a little more easily now that Bob has taken up the challenge of out-spamming the spammers.By Jonathan Tan

Michaelmas…sub-fusc…matriculation…on top of my modern languages degree, this time last year I had to learn the oxford lingo and prepare myself for one of those special ceremonies that remind you just how damn superior you are supposed to feel to the rest of the world, and widens the town/gown divide. Once you get over the initial shame of parading through the streets looking like a Harry Potter reject, it’s actually quite fun once you get into the swing of things. Most of the morning is taken up with the college photograph, where you’ll undoubtedly be squashed between two complete strangers who have nothing more in common with you than your height.

After a couple of hours of posing in the cold, for it will inevitably be freezing, you get herded into the Sheldonian, past the paparazzi tourists who by this time are circling in a frenzy of unintelligible excitement like a flock of carrion crows, and you settle down to enjoy the show. The show is difficult to enjoy because it’s read out by the Vice Chancellor of the University in Latin, not hugely relevant to those of us who weren’t born and bred at Eton. But it does add to the feeling of sacred other-worldliness that makes up such a large part of our weird and wonderful institution (as it does Hogwarts, admittedly).

The words themselves are unlikely to register but Google tells me that they involve promises on our behalf to generally behave and refrain from leading any cattle or livestock we might own onto the fields of Christchurch. You are not officially a member of the University until this ceremony, and once over, you can emerge into the light feeling cleansed and godly while the uninitiated others flounder in the mud. This feeling of civilised supremacy will no doubt soon deteriorate into a debauched  and potentially messy pub crawl that will probably include the Turf and the King’s Arms somewhere along the way. Meanwhile, the rest of Oxford’s residents look on and mumble something about how young people today have too much money and not enough sense. I wish.By Victoria Lazar Graham

Deputy Fashion editor of The Guardian (and former editor of Cherwell) Hadley Freeman warns Daniel Rolle that fashion journalism isn’t all about doing lunch, meeting celebrities and bitching.Hadley Freeman is by no means the kind of journalist we usually associate with the hair-flicking, airbrushed world of Vogue, Tatler, or even the fashion section of the Guardian.  As she walked over to the reception area of 119 Farringdon Road (the Guardian HQ) she immediately struck me as quite a normal person. No ridiculously puffed-up hair, no huge bag stuffed with the entire cosmetics section of Selfridges – not even, it seemed, wearing any make up.  Fashion journalism brings with it images of a champagne sipping, celebrity mingling, Chihuahua-cuddling world. If we take Hadley for our model, so to speak, then this could not be further from the truth.

Hadley’s journey to her current position as Deputy Fashion Editor of the Guardian, and a contributing editor of Vogue, started surprisingly close to home. Hadley was an English undergraduate at St. Anne’s, which she descrbies as “that ugly, concrete one”; she also honed her journalistic prowess here at Cherwell, where she was Editor in Michaelmas 1998. “I knew I wanted to do some form of journalism at University, so I went along to Freshers’ Fair and picked up a card for both the student papers. When it came to going along to meetings, I found that Cherwell had been clever enough to put a map on the back of the card. So I ended up there, and started writing film reviews.”

Hadley is quick to explain that the world of fashion journalism differs greatly from the stereotypes generated by films such as The Devil Wears Prada. “Most fashion journalists are not calorie counting, champagne guzzling, peroxide-blonde darlings; the fashion world, and in particular fashion journalism, is a highly demanding, highly competitive industry.” Fashion journalism seems to suit Hadley Freeman, both personally and as a journalist: she comes across as someone who, thankfully, does not take herself too seriously. This is apparent from her writing, which is often very tongue in cheek without appearing to be aloof; a balance which is hard to strike when dealing with some of the characters she has to handle on a day to day basis. Her columns and articles on Guardian Unlimited are a testimony to this: topics range from Kanye West and his Derrida-esque linguistic strategies to Paris Hilton’s chihuahua’s latest brush with the law.  In essence, then, Hadley is quick to recognise the fundamental paradox of her trade: “As a fashion journalist you must be aware of the silliness of your subject, but not apologise for it. Fashion has a stigma; nevertheless there’s no reason to feel guilty about it.”

The fashion world has a marked relationship with celebrity and Hadley’s blog is filled with insightful, witty comments about celebrities and their ‘love’ for fashion. Our discussion led to the recent activity of Sean ‘P.Diddy’ Combes – ‘rapper’, ‘producer’ and all-round party animal. “I’m convinced that P.Diddy was sent to this planet to make me laugh…he’s like a pseudo-ghetto court jester”, Hadley notes.  Indeed, she has a number of excellent Diddy-related anecdotes, the best of which relates her experience at one of his own fashion shows. The star held it to market his clothing line Sean John, but it seemed little more than a front for nudity. He had a number of women walk out wearing nothing but suede bikini tops and g-strings – resembling what Hadley refers to as “Flintstones go porn.”
Any conversation concerning the fashion world these days undoubtedly touches on that media favourite, the body image presented by the industry and its effect on teenage girls.  Hadley’s stance on the subject is interesting; particularly her response to claims that modern fashion overly sexualises women. “The idea that feminism is incompatible with fashion is absurd. Feminism is not about having hairy armpits and wearing frumpy dresses. We have this idea that women’s fashion is designed purely for male gratification. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Moreover women lead the fashion industry wherever you look – it is a supportive industry, where it is quite normal for a woman to be incredibly high powered.”

The end of our discussion led us to the future of fashion journalism: where is fashion headed? What does the rise of the internet mean for the press?  First of all, Hadley quite rightly points out that print is very much still the way forward: “You can’t read a Blackberry on the beach – it just wouldn’t be practical; similarly, the fashion press isn’t going anywhere: we are like cockroaches”. Moreover, Hadley predicts a push within the industry towards more sustainable fashion and a move away from the throwaway culture of late.

Either way, it is clear that Hadley Freeman is one to watch in the future of fashion media. Whatever the next few years hold, she promises one thing: she will never forget those hours spent cultivating headlines for front pages, rewriting shoddily written features and formulating letters addressed to herself at ‘that little pink building next to Christ Church’.Hadley Freeman is by no means the kind of journalist we usually associate with the hair-flicking, airbrushed world of Vogue, Tatler, or even the fashion section of the Guardian.  As she walked over to the reception area of 119 Farringdon Road (the Guardian HQ) she immediately struck me as quite a normal person. No ridiculously puffed-up hair, no huge bag stuffed with the entire cosmetics section of Selfridges – not even, it seemed, wearing any make up.  Fashion journalism brings with it images of a champagne sipping, celebrity mingling, Chihuahua-cuddling world. If we take Hadley for our model, so to speak, then this could not be further from the truth.

Hadley’s journey to her current position as Deputy Fashion Editor of the Guardian, and a contributing editor of Vogue, started surprisingly close to home. Hadley was an English undergraduate at St. Anne’s, which she descrbies as “that ugly, concrete one”; she also honed her journalistic prowess here at Cherwell, where she was Editor in Michaelmas 1998. “I knew I wanted to do some form of journalism at University, so I went along to Freshers’ Fair and picked up a card for both the student papers. When it came to going along to meetings, I found that Cherwell had been clever enough to put a map on the back of the card. So I ended up there, and started writing film reviews.”

Hadley is quick to explain that the world of fashion journalism differs greatly from the stereotypes generated by films such as The Devil Wears Prada. “Most fashion journalists are not calorie counting, champagne guzzling, peroxide-blonde darlings; the fashion world, and in particular fashion journalism, is a highly demanding, highly competitive industry.” Fashion journalism seems to suit Hadley Freeman, both personally and as a journalist: she comes across as someone who, thankfully, does not take herself too seriously. This is apparent from her writing, which is often very tongue in cheek without appearing to be aloof; a balance which is hard to strike when dealing with some of the characters she has to handle on a day to day basis. Her columns and articles on Guardian Unlimited are a testimony to this: topics range from Kanye West and his Derrida-esque linguistic strategies to Paris Hilton’s chihuahua’s latest brush with the law.  In essence, then, Hadley is quick to recognise the fundamental paradox of her trade: “As a fashion journalist you must be aware of the silliness of your subject, but not apologise for it. Fashion has a stigma; nevertheless there’s no reason to feel guilty about it.”

The fashion world has a marked relationship with celebrity and Hadley’s blog is filled with insightful, witty comments about celebrities and their ‘love’ for fashion. Our discussion led to the recent activity of Sean ‘P.Diddy’ Combes – ‘rapper’, ‘producer’ and all-round party animal. “I’m convinced that P.Diddy was sent to this planet to make me laugh…he’s like a pseudo-ghetto court jester”, Hadley notes.  Indeed, she has a number of excellent Diddy-related anecdotes, the best of which relates her experience at one of his own fashion shows. The star held it to market his clothing line Sean John, but it seemed little more than a front for nudity. He had a number of women walk out wearing nothing but suede bikini tops and g-strings – resembling what Hadley refers to as “Flintstones go porn.”
Any conversation concerning the fashion world these days undoubtedly touches on that media favourite, the body image presented by the industry and its effect on teenage girls.  Hadley’s stance on the subject is interesting; particularly her response to claims that modern fashion overly sexualises women. “The idea that feminism is incompatible with fashion is absurd. Feminism is not about having hairy armpits and wearing frumpy dresses. We have this idea that women’s fashion is designed purely for male gratification. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Moreover women lead the fashion industry wherever you look – it is a supportive industry, where it is quite normal for a woman to be incredibly high powered.”

The end of our discussion led us to the future of fashion journalism: where is fashion headed? What does the rise of the internet mean for the press?  First of all, Hadley quite rightly points out that print is very much still the way forward: “You can’t read a Blackberry on the beach – it just wouldn’t be practical; similarly, the fashion press isn’t going anywhere: we are like cockroaches”. Moreover, Hadley predicts a push within the industry towards more sustainable fashion and a move away from the throwaway culture of late.

Either way, it is clear that Hadley Freeman is one to watch in the future of fashion media. Whatever the next few years hold, she promises one thing: she will never forget those hours spent cultivating headlines for front pages, rewriting shoddily written features and formulating letters addressed to herself at ‘that little pink building next to Christ Church’.
By Daniel Rolle