Activists have won the battle to get CCTV installed on the most dangerous road in Oxford.Four wireless cameras are to be installed along Cowley Road for a trial period of a year, after much controversy and years of arguments.At present, there are no CCTV cameras along Cowley Road, meaning that activity on the streets can only be recorded through in-store devices. Earlier this term, Supt Brendan O'Dowda launched a campaign to get Oxford City Council to back the installation of cameras along the most crime-ridden street in the city. Over the past year, more than 760 crimes were reported along the street, but without video footage, it is difficult to prosecute those involved.He commented that in the same space of time there had been more than 700 arrests where CCTV was in operation.O'Dowda confronted concerns that CCTV will result in less policing of the area, saying: "This was only about making the Cowley Road safer. It was never about replacing police."So far, responses to the £48000 plans have been positive, with OUSU President Martin McCluskey saying: "It's going to be good for student safety and I think it's going to reassure a lot of people living in the earea."It's certainly going to reassure me that there is going to be a lot of monitoring and more police freed up in the wider area of East Oxford."

Father Christmases will be hitting the streets of Oxford this Christmas. On December 2nd, hundreds of Santas will be turning up en-masse a month ahead of schedule to raise money for Helen and Douglas House and Help an Oxfordshire Child.Jo Mitchell, head of fundraising for Helen and Douglas House, said: "We can't wait to see hundreds of jolly Santas of all shapes and sizes running through the streets of Oxford."The two-mile run begins at 10am on December 2nd, and entry costs £10 per adult, £5 per child. Santa suits will be provided.

Oxford Fire Crews were called to Carfax last night after a box of fireworks caught fire.

The incident, which occured at around 2:15am, did not cause any fatalities or injuries. By the time emergency services had arrived at the scene, the fire had already burnt out.

Fire crews reported that it was a quiet evening for Bonfire Night: teams were only called out to one other location in Banbury during the night, which turned out to be a false alarm. Mike Bingham, Fire Risk Manager City of Oxford, said: "The county council's fire and rescue service is very pleased to report that on 5 November it only received two emergency calls that were related to fireworks or bonfires. Both were very minor incidents with no injuries."In an unrelated series of incidents, two cars were set alight in North Oxford on Sunday night.Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Services were called to the scene at 11:15pm, having been alerted to the fires by residents.Both vehicles were extensively damaged. Police are appealing to anyone who may have seen or heard suspicious activity around Woodstock and Banbury Roads, or the canal towpath, between 6pm and midnight.

by Theodore Peterson

“Burn this book.” So begins Mister B. Gone, the latest novel from Clive Barker. We find ourselves being addressed by a narrator, who takes a couple of pages to introduce himself as the demon Jakabok Botch. He urges us to stop reading and, what’s more, to destroy the book. We are thus presented with the central conceit of the novel: it addresses itself directly to the reader, and displays an acute self-consciousness regarding its status as text. This sort of post-modern playfulness is nothing new: Calvino did the same thing in ’79. But If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller didn’t have a demonic Archbishop or baths filled with the blood of dead babies, whereas Mister B. Gone has both of these things and more. It seems legitimate to wonder, then, why Mr Barker, whom the dust jacket informs us is “the great master of the macabre”, has decided to spice up his latest gory offering with a meta-textual meditation on the nature of reading.
For Mister B. Gone is really two books. The first of these is a relatively straightforward Bildungsroman concerning the adventures of the eponymous Mr. Botch, and the second is a rather high-minded exploration of the power of words. Grotesque demons and reader-response theory may seem like somewhat uneasy bed-fellows, and there are times in the early sections when Barker struggles to unite his themes in any meaningful way. But the book is given a degree of unity by the figure of Jakabok, at once narrator and actor. The work is cast as his own personal recollections. He himself presents it as such: “This is my memoir, you see. Or if you will, my confessional. A portrait of Jakabok Botch.” We might think we know what to expect: part Tristram Shandy, part Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. But the usual conventions of confessional literature are given a twist by the fact that Jakabok claims to be alive within the book. We are not simply reading his memoirs. He is actively relating them to us, and makes frequent reference to the fact that he is doing so. The book therefore shifts between a narrative of events, and direct addresses from Jakabok, making plenty of remarks about us, the reader.
The story itself is only moderately diverting. We hear how Jakabok was captured from the Ninth Circle of Hell by humans, managed to escape, and set out on a journey through the Upper World. The narrative is undoubtedly lively, filled with murder and intrigue. But it is marked by a certain incoherence. We are given all sorts of grotesque details about the ‘Demonation’ and its diabolical inhabitants, but the world with which we are presented remains somehow fragmentary and difficult to grasp. The novel reaches its climax in Mainz, on the occasion of the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1438. This is presented as an almost apocalyptic event, which prompts vicious fighting between the forces of Heaven and Hell as to who will control this device that is destined to change the world. The end of the book therefore brings together its two themes, the power of demons and the power of words, but it is all almost too bizarre to be convincing.
Ultimately, this is an intriguing book that threatens to collapse under the weight of its ambitions. Its vivid and gory narrative would almost appeal to children rather than adults, if it weren’t so explicit. The most interesting things about the book turn out to be the ideas it raises regarding the process of reading, and the dynamic between author and reader. Jakabok’s existence within the book literalises the concept that a novel is only really realised in the act of reading. His compulsion to reveal is paralleled by the reader’s compulsion to take in these revelations, and the failure of Jakabok’s paradoxical entreaties to us to burn the book, though at times they become wearisome, demonstrate that the only real way to stop someone reading is to stop writing.

The vogue topic in Germany is the environment. You never stop hearing about it. You can't even get a plastic bag in the supermarket without paying, and the different rubbish bins soon drive you mad.But at last, here comes someone with a bit of sense to stop what is rapidly become a compulsive obsession. Thomas Deichmann, editor of the political magazine Novo here in Frankfurt, thinks the Germans have gone crazy, and tell it like it is at a debate on recycling in London last week. He's the first speaker (at about 2min45 on the video). If you can't get the video to work, try this.

I'm still waiting for the knock on the door from an inspector telling me I'm getting my rubbish separation wrong.
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One for the anoraks this. The Sueddeutsche are running a taxing (geddit?) German number plates quiz and even have a contraption to produce a seven-digit score (no idea why) calculated from your number of correct answers and the time you did it in. I got a miserable 8.300.537 – 10 right in 3min15 – having guessed most of them. See how you do and post your scores below.Cherwell 24 is not responsible for the content of external sites

by James Pickering

**

Probably the first thing to strike you about Napoleon IIIrd is the sheer uniqueness of his musical style. The Wakefield-based musician is best know for his use of reel-to-reel tape players on stage (occasionally with surround sound), and with this in mind one can quite easily guess that what you will be listening to is refreshingly unorthodox. The dramatic opening to the album, Introduction to A, and the opening few seconds of This is My Call to Arms show that, despite the ‘indie’ genre he is labelled with, this will certainly not be any standard run-of the mill rock-pop record, but the fusion of acoustic guitar, electronic and Oldfield-esque melodramatic sounds makes a nice change from the tired moanings and feeble guitar riffs often attributed to the modern indie scene. This does give the album an experimental feel, for which it may suffer. The stop-start nature of some songs and off-beat play, though difficult to enjoy at first, can be quite charming after a while. Indeed, if Napoleon put his mind to it, he could be a modern, indie Frank Zappa. However, while Zappa could occasionally sing, Napoleon IIIrd’s offering suffers most because he can’t. He often sounds like a male Kate Nash, which may sound like aural pleasure to some, but when mixed as eccentrically as he does sounds more like a concert of hoarse tramps. All this over the top of such a complex soundtrack makes the album rather difficult to enjoy when first listened to.

This is a shame, because lyrically it is often very good, such tracks as Defibrillator and The Conformist Takes it All exhibiting Napoleon’s emotive style, even if Defibrillator’s outro (“my bleeding heart”) sounds as if he just banged on part of a death metal track for the hell of it. This coupled with the musical style- beginning raw and melodramatic, through to soft acoustic and finally up-beat indie- means that if you can get over the at times terrible singing and difficult musical style, you may well find this album very rewarding. However, for the casual music listener, listening to this album will give the sense that while there’s a lot of opportunity for Napoleon to do well, it’ll only happen if he either A.) learns to sing; or B.) finds himself a band, in which case his true skill, the Zappa-esque experimentalism with music, could shine quite brightly.

Students at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, have been made to cancel their famous May Ball this year due to concerns over academic performance.

The college has decided that the event, which has previously been held biannually, will now take place only once every three years.

Peterhouse did not do well in the 2007 Tompkins Table, which ranks colleges according to their students’ performance in exams.

JCR President, Ben Fisher, admitted that the amount of organisation required by the ball had affected students’ academically. He said, “Every member of the May ball committee last year dropped a class in their exams from what they were predicted.”

He added, "It's a shame that we're not having one. I would like to have a May ball as much as the next person but I think the college's rationale is that the members of the May ball committee were having to put so much work in they were getting distracted.."

A ten-day-long ghost festival has just begun in Oxford, in an attempt to find out if it is one of the most haunted cities in England.The event, which began at the Oxford Castle on Friday, will involve a week-long experiment into paranormal activity around the complex, where ghost-hunting experts will try and record any occurances using dictaphones, cameras, camcorders and laptops.For festival-goers, there will be plenty to get involved in, including ghost walks, ghost hunts, mediumship demonstrations and psychic workshops.Martin Jeffrey, Director of Fright Nights, said: "Oxford is famous for its university but people have not recognised how historic Oxford is from a haunting perspective. We have been literally amazed."We're finding that Oxford is a real centre for hauntings and you can go down literally any street in Oxford and get lots of stories."

by Emily Packer

With thanks to Miranda Dawkins for interpreting the interview.

Though his name may not yet be familiar to Anglophone audiences, Albanian Fatos Kongoli is one of Eastern Europe’s most celebrated literary exports. His books, seven in all, have been translated into French, German, Italian, Greek, and Slovak. His novel The Loser (I Humburi) earned a Writers in Translation award from the International PEN Foundation this year. In the article ‘A Literature Review – Borderland,’ authors Jens Becker and Achim Engelberg report: ‘Whoever wants to improve their understanding of Albania will be unable to avoid Fatos Kongoli’ (South-East Europe Review, 1/2004).

With the help of a student translator – St. Hilda’s linguist Miranda Dawkins – I spoke to Mr. Kongoli at the Maison Francaise, where he was preparing for a reading from The Loser, the first of his novels to be translated into English. (Mr. Kongoli speaks French but not English, and I English but not French, so regrettably I shall be unable to render many direct quotations). Mr. Kongoli is a thoughtful, unpretentious man who values precision and individualism. Asked about the greatest problems facing Albania’s youth today, he comments that the question is too broad to be answered adequately; an inquiry about the country’s literary culture meets with much the same result.

Though Mr. Kongoli is hesitant to make sweeping statements about his countrymen, his personal history provides us with material for discussion enough. Kongoli hails from one of the most interesting nations in Eastern Europe. Ruled by hardline communist Enver Hoxha from the 1950s to the 1980s, Albania broke early from the Soviet Union and allied itself, alone, with China, where Mr. Kongoli studied between 1961 and 1964. Indeed, Mr. Kongoli singles out this period as one of the most important of his life;. He was shocked by the poverty endemic there, but deeply moved by the welcome he received from the ‘magical’ people. Yet in time the alliance with China crumbled too, and throughout much of the seventies and eighties Albanians endured frequent penury and political isolation. Mr. Kongoli protested against the dictatorship, and ensured his own safety, by refusing to publish seriously until the end of Communist rule, instead whiling away his spare time in extensive reading and pursuing a career as a mathematician, because ‘there was no Marxist strategy for mathematicians.’ His father, a violinist and Communist, impressed upon him the precarious position of artists in a dogmatic state.

Mr. Kongoli’s virtual silence under the Hoxha regime is all the more poignant because he is careful to stress that he is not solely or primarily a political writer. The Loser never mentions Hoxha or the communists by name, though the protagonist eventually falls victim to the skewed justice system of the Party. Regarding more recent political issues, I ask Kongoli whether he intends to write anything about Kosovo, a subject which has preoccupied notable Albanian authors such as Ismail Kadaré. ‘Leave it to the historians,’ he replies, adding that he has other fish to fry. Mr. Kongoli is happiest instead when talking about his characters and his literary technique.

Though Kongoli describes writing as the process of forgetting everything but ‘you and the white page,’ The Loser is deeply influenced by the French existentialists Camus and Sartre as well as by similarly bleak literary greats like Kafka and Dostoevsky. The novel, set half in the seventies and half in the nineties, follows the travails of a young Albanian by the name of Thesar Lumi. Bound for a freer Italy aboard a refugee boat, he chooses instead, almost inexplicably, to disembark and return to his dreary and stagnant homeland. The remainder of the novel recounts his motives and his past, in which the communist elite persecuted him at every turn and put an end to his forbidden affair with a prominent widow. Thesar Lumi is a curious creation, more a witness or accomplice to the actions of others than an active agent in himself. Mr. Kongoli confirms that his choice of protagonist was deliberate; Lumi is ‘neither a hero nor a revolutionary,’ distinguished chiefly by his capacity to think, reflect, and suffer. Lumi’s sense of the futility and absurdity of life elevates him from a mere product of his place and time to an emblem for all young people robbed of their potential by a repressive environment.

Translated from Albanian by Robert Elsie and Janice Mathie-Heck, The Loser is now available on amazon.co.uk and scheduled for a full international release in April 2008. Mr. Kongoli says that he would love to see more of his books in English editions, but for the moment he is at the mercy of the public and of his publisher. For now, he offers an earnest thanks to the people of Oxford and of the other English institutions which have welcomed him.