Here’s how it goes: a young band is spotted in the right place, at the right time, by the right person, who immediately signs them up and calls in every contact in his voluminous address book to groom them for fame. They get new indie-looking clothes and badger-stripe haircuts. They get studio time with the guy who produced the last Coldplay album, and sometimes with a collaborator, and an album is born, cleverly funded against the band’s future royalties – which leaves less commercially geared bands in debt to their record companies for years to come. Nnext, our boys and girls are paid on to a support slot for an established band. They are marketedas the Nnext Big Thing (think about it, when was the last time you read about a band who weren’t the Big Thing?). This draws on the old music fan’s desire to be the first to discover a band – “I liked them before they made it big”. The trouble is that many of today’s biggest bands made it big on their first album.They begin the merciless media cycle. From Saturday morning TV to late night radio, where there is always an opportunity to show off the carefullycrafted attitude complete with a pre-planned piece of crazy banter appropriate for the age demographic of the show. Meanwhile, back at the band headquarters, studious label staff pour over the statistics of viewer numbers and column inches in the right magazines and newspapers.Carefully timed within the music market’s consumer cycles, our band’s album is released with some kind of novelty launch gig. If it doesn’t sell massively, then they will be sent off on a tour of Poland and Scandinavia. If, however, they are a hit, then the whirligig of interviews and gigs will continue ad nauseam. The fledgling band will be cast out onto big, echoingstages with only a few half-decent songs to help them – remember Rrazorlight at Live 8, trying to play alongside the Floyd and U2, with only the fig-leaf of Golden Touch to preserve their modesty?Nnow, as Kurt Cobain discovered, record companies are wary of new material and therefore our boys’ debut album will be on sale for a year or even two, and seven singles released, before rumours of their next album are leaked to the press. Witness Franz Ferdinand and The Killers, two initially exciting but by now massively overplayed bands, whose follow-ups have been heavily deformed by the weight of pressure and fame. Bob Ddylan recorded three monumental albums in one year, 1966, and the fans, fame and fear never had a chance to catch up with him – some of them are still trailing. But nowadays the need for a longer product lifecycle dictates that albums must be spaced years apart.So, two years in and our band and their audience have stagnated, both blinded by the hype and their own image – would Ddoherty have become such a celebrity without the stoner-chic image which marketed the Libertines in the first place? Aall this while many of the genuinely interesting, original and innovative bands have been lost or perverted by this heady mix of marketing excitementand hard narcotics.Can we complain? Aafter all, you can’t just stop a band’s success, complainthat it’s all happening too soon like a protective mother over her daughter, can you? Whether we like it or not, bands grow up quicker these days, and the best thing, perhaps, is to treat them as serious bands, artists if you will, rather than sticking them in the pop playpen and focusing on what their favourite colour is.Aand for those few that survive, success comes only to hardworking bands who are challenged to stay fresh in a non-stop business. To stay on top means treading the fine line between holding the limelight while taking time to get the music right – an all but impossible balance.Still all is not lost for our band. Ten years down the line one of their lesser known songs gets on a film soundtrack and it all starts again. The records fly off the shelves and festivals are once again deperate to book the Last Big Thing.But in the meantime how do we tell what is worth the effort? Is it only retro that can compete for time, when new bands fall so easily by the way-side? The answer is no. Our music scene isn’t fallen or dying.It’s a supercharged demi-commercial audio-poetic digital retro kaleidoscopeon acid, incredibly rich, but, with its richness, often obscured by the corporate product which gets the biggest exposure and becomes the audio wallpaper to our daily lives. Perhaps all we can do is trust our own instincts, try to tell genius apart from tat marketed as genius, to listen to (not look at) new bands and love them like they deserve.ARCHIVE: 4th week MT 2005

The Beat That My Heart Skippeddir Jacques Audiardout nowA film that shows the transition of a man from sleazy debt collector to passionate classical pianistsounds as improbable as it does cheesy. However, Audiard’s French film, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, avoids all clichés. Intense, and more than slightly dark, it charts the emotional turmoil of Thomas Seyrs (Rromain Dduris) as he tries to break free from his life as a hard, unshakable rent fixer and fulfil his dream of becoming a musician.The film begins by sketching a picture of Thomas’ life as he visits his bosses’ properties and threatens the tenants by intimidation, violence and even by releasing live rats into their apartments. Thomas appears at first to be a sleazy bastard who enjoys his violent work and leads a life of reckless debauchery, not caring about anyone but himself. However, this all changes when he unexpectedly comes across his mother’s (a once famous concert pianist) former manager, who asks Thomas to come for an audition. Suddenly, his already frantic life becomes even more manic as he attempts to rekindle his talent as a pianist, taking lessons from a Chinese teacher, Miao-Lin (Linh-Ddam Phan) who doesn’t speak any French.Despite the language barrier, Thomasand Miao-Lin are drawn closer together through the music and Thomas’ talent is drawn out by her patience and encouragement. This tender, innocent relationship is contrastedagainst Thomas’ more daring exploits with women in the rest of the film: he embarks on a deceitful sex affair with his colleague’s wife, Aaline (Aaure Aatika) and even manages to seduce the girlfriend of a Rrussian gangster (Mélanie Laurent).The distinction between arthouse and blockbuster is definitely blurred in this movie, and Audiard manages this balance very well. On the one hand, certain elements of the film are quintessentially arthouse: the close camerawork (at one point, I thought the camera was going to hit face), the complexity of the characters, the tragedy of the plot. The direct dialogue, violence, crude sex scenes and stereotypical good guy meets bad boy dilemma, however, are all stock Hollywood devices. This is why, perhaps, this film has been brought out of France to American and Eenglish audiences. Aaudiard’s other films, such as Un Héros très discret (1996), were popular in France, but didn’t quite have the grit and drama required to attract Aamerican audiences.This is exactly what The Beat That My Heart Skipped does have, aplenty.The best scene in the movie is, without a doubt, when Thomas entershis father’s apartment to find him slumped dead on the floor. Duris’ pain and anger is utterly convincing and, unlike most gangster films, the emphasis is completely on the emotionalreaction of Thomas, rather than on his desire for revenge. acting is superb and only serves to confirm his position as one of the best French actors around at the moment. He strikes a perfect balance between the hard gangster and the passionate musician; the pain and frustration on his face when he plays the piano forces us to share the intensity of his emotions as they are released through music. Although dislikable at the beginningof the film, as he discovers the power of his music it becomes easier to identify with Thomas and become immersed in his world.This is a stunning film, beautifully shot and brilliantly written. At times, it flirts with being a bit cheesy, but ensures that the dream-world of classical music is balanced against the harsh reality of Thomas’ professional life. The Beat That My Heart Skipped is definitely worth seeing: whatever your preconceptions about French films, this film will change your mind.ARCHIVE: 4th week MT 2005

Thames bfi London Film Festivaldirs various19 October – 3 NovemberFairly bad behaviour abounded at this year’s London Film Festival, one of the finest in recent memory. The overriding theme of the past fortnight was that of dazzling female leads. Aamong the astonishing performances, Judi Dench delighted as a deliciously politically incorrect grand dame who enters the world of 1930s nude vaudeville courtesy of Stephen Frears in Mrs Henderson Presents. Come March, the Best Aactress Oscar will be highly contested.Yet it was Gwyneth Paltrow who threw the gauntlet down with an earth-shattering study of the many shades of suffering in John Madden’s gorgeously staged Proof. This chamberpiece, an adaptation of Ddavid Aauburn’s Pulitzer-winning play, deals confidently with constricting familial ties, mental illness and mathematicalgenius. Aanthony Hopkins, Hope Ddavis and especially Jake Gyllenhaal undertake supporting duties with real finesse.Honours for performer of the festival, though, must go to Juliette Binochewho is startling in two very different films, adopting perfect Eenglish for Bee Season and reverting to her native French for Michael Haneke’s Hidden. With their debut feature in 2001, The Deep End, Scott McGehee and David Siegel fashioned an elaborate film noir – in Bee Season the familiar visual panache is still in evidence, but the push and pull of family dynamics are explored with greater style and sophistication.Conversely, Haneke’s Hidden sees Binoche play one half of a media couple (along with a commendable Daniel Auteuil) who become the victims of a stalker in this subtly provocative psychological thriller. Whereas the Ddardenne brothers disappointed with the overblown social realism of the undeserved Palme-d’Or-winning The Child, Haneke revels in his explorationof a mediated society to destabilise his audience, using shot-within-shot, for example, to pose the urgent questions. Aand the suicide that forms the film’s climax is the stuff of a real nightmare, inciting more debate at Cannes than most films on show this year did in their entirety.Then arrived Walk The Line, James Mangold’s beautifully directed Johnny Cash biopic, which made me hurt in all the right places with Joaquin Phoenix and Rreese Witherspoon stepping up to the microphone for real and hopefully bagging Oscars for their pains next year. It came close to stealing the fortnight but the pick of this year’s crop was the debut feature documentary from famed photographer and video director LaChapelle, Rize. This is an intimately shot, extraordinarily fresh portrayal of the spirit and creativity in the youth of South Central LAa, as it follows the evolution of krumping, a striking new dance form. LaChapelle’s film is as striking in its honesty as his fashion photography is in its audacity.It is in the appearance of such a film in the programme that the perennial joy of the London Film Festival becomes apparent. That artistic director Sandra Hebron is enough impassioned by great film to throw such an inventive piece as Rrize in an already provocativerepertoire can only be a good thing. With this forty ninth London Film Festival being such a success, one can only imagine the delights in store for next year’s half-century celebrations.ARCHIVE: 4th week MT 2005

From bizarre experimental noodlings to next summer’s blockbusters, the beauty of the film festival is that it overthrows the idea that the two can never meet in one place. The London Film Festival, which closed only yesterday, for example, provides an un-segregated environment in which hardened blockbuster-hooligans and arthouse-freaks can (in theory) meet and remember each others’ faces. Although in practise they will probably be attending differentfilms.This year’s Times bfi London Film Festival’s opening preview of The Constant Gardener (starring Rralph Fiennes and Rrachel Weisz) hardly looks like the less mainstream moviethat a festival might want to take under its wing. But without the help of Cannes and Venice, gems like Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine (2002) and Wong Kar Wai’s 2046 (2004) would never have reached a wider audience. It’s easy for big Hollywood films to hit the Friday night Odeon-going audience, but to keep the variety of cinema alive it’s important to have another way in, something that makes international and experimentalcinema more accessible. In London, this year’s range of categories – from the straight-up Jonny Cash biopic, Walk the Line, to the inventive documentary of LAa street-dance, Rrize – demonstrates the diversity of modern cinema in terms of both subject and form. This diversity goes unnoticed by most cinemagoers; it the job of the film festival to change this.Having said that, it is a diversity that will probably continue to go unnoticed by most cinemagoers. Aas one friend said to me, “all the London Film Festival really does is favour the film buffs who know the programme months in advance – there’s no space for your average tramp wandering in off the street.” Aafter a scornful silence, I did mention to him that the programme of the London Film Festival was freely available in the foyer of the NnFT for anybody who could be bothered to go and get it, to which he deftly replied that only film buffs would be bothered to go and get it.All that remains here is self-confession: yes, I freely admit that I do go through the programme a month in advance, circling such worthies as “a short film about a cat with hands.” In fact, some years I have even been known to go through twice, once in pencil and once in pen. But if you’re not willing to do the legwork, such cutting-edge cinema as, well, short films about cats with hands, will pass you by. In making these films available to the paying public, think about how much more legwork film festivals are saving you: rental fees, shipping fees, and the mammoth task of compiling them in the first place. Grady Hendrix, who runs the Nnew York Aasian Film Festival, remembers putting on a retrospective of old kung-fu films in spite of the fact that “our prints looked like a collection of ex-convicts.” Yet it is only in film festivals like these that an audience would be able to see such films, often never released on video or DVD.For all the argument about whether indie film festivals like Sundance are selling out by bringingin big films to generate cash, or whether they are attracting a wider audience to the smaller films, it is sad to see that in many instances the smaller films still remain relativelyunnoticed. We all know the humiliation of ringing up to book tickets three weeks in advance, then turning up to find you’re the only person in the screening.Perhaps the real heroes, then, are the unabashedly monomaniacal film festivals. I am not here speaking of the Conservative Film Festival, recently opened in Dallas in response to the proliferation of Michael Moore-style films (“Aand we thought, where are the films for mainstream Aamerica?”). Rather, I mean such eccentric beauties as the fifth annual Bicycle Film Festival, feauturing such shorts as Messenger (2005), “a stunning portrait of the life of a bicycle courier.” Touring around the world (currently in Tokyo), its audiences in Nnew York reached seven thousand.The London Film Festival is only one of a plethora of film festivals, weird and wild, screening a variety of films – from mainstream to plain crazy – to please any tastes. Eeven Oxford has it’s own film festival, Oxdox, screening international documentaries. These festivals are happening all the time, all over the world, and need an audience to see what they have to offer. Ddon’t say you haven’t been given due notice.ARCHIVE: 4th week MT 2005

It is hard to ignore, now, that the sunshine of last summer is all but gone, replaced by those gloomy dark clouds that can mean only one thing: winter is here. Just as the seasons are changing, this week’s selection of movies from Oxford film societies reflect the theme of change.The tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was one of the largestchanges Eeurope has seen. It is also the topic of Wolfgang Becker’s Goodbye, Lenin! (2003), shown by St Aantony’s Eeuropean Film Society. Ddaniel Brühl stars as Aalex, whose mother was a fervent supporter of the Eeast German regime before she collapsed in a coma for several months. When she wakes up, Berlin is no longer seperate from the West, but Aalex and his sister maintainthe illusion that it is, to save her from any potentially dangerous shocks. Such an amusing concept naturally produces much comedy, yet there is a permeating sentimentalityto the film that is rather irksome.Worse still, it is not just the characters but the political backdrop that is made somewhat saccharine.If Goodbye, Lenin! is too full of sugar, then Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), screened by the Oxford University Film Foundation, is up to its eyeballswith rather more dangerously mind-altering substances. Aan adaptationof Hunter S Thompson’s hilarious piece of autobiographical “Gonzo journalism”, the film followsThompson (played with intoxicatinginsanity by Jonny Ddepp) and his attorney on a drug-fuelled trip to Las Vegas in 1971. Perpetually high on mescaline, ether, hash, barbiturates,acid, cocaine and andrenochrome(extracted from the human adrenaline gland), the two parade around town in a haze of confusion and hallucination. Their disillusionmenthighlights the central theme of the change that happened to Aamericaafter the sixties ended, when the dream, or at least the hippies’Aamerican dream, died. Shot with a twisted surrealism that only Gilliam could conjure up, watching this movie is about as close to eating a hallucinogenic cactus as you’ll ever get without actually heading down to Mexico to pick some peyote.achanging Aamerica is again the theme of John Ford’s classic western,The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance (1962), to be seen in the Magdalen Film Society. This time, though, the transition examined is from the gun-toting justice of John Wayne’s character, Tom Ddoniphon, to the lawyer’s justice of Rronsom Stoddard (James Stewart). When Stoddard arrives in the small town of Shinbone in the ‘wild’ West, his morals are outraged by the bandit Liberty Vallance (Lee Marvin) almostas much as his senses are titillatedby the heart-throb Hallie (Vera Miles). Stewart and Wayne play off each other excellently as the two contrasting models of the Aamerican hero, just as they are themselves the two models of the Aamerican movie star. The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance changed the face of the Western. Go see it.ARCHIVE: 4th week MT 2005

Supernatural ImagesThe Ashmolean MuseumEnds 15th JanuaryYou almost expect church bells and choir music when you wander into the Supernatural Miracles Eexhibition. The exhibition does not simply hang images of the Virgin Mary but createsa shrine-like display which puts you in the position of worshipper. Eeach small photo is hung behind a wall which is perforated with holes, just large enough to see the whole picture contained inside. Bathed in light and barred by the wall, each small photo makes a demand for the viewer’s reverence.The exhibition displays photos of certain statues and paintings which are believed to have had the supernatural power to cure the sick or save the damned. Behind each image of Mary or Christ is a personal story of divine intervention; possessed by the devil, caught in a storm at sea or impaled by bull’s horns, cult-worshippers believe a supernatural presence, embodied by the image, helped snatch them from the jaws of death. Together, the miracle stories, the shrine-like display and the rich embellishment of each picture combine to create a very intense and individual sense of the power that the Virgin Mary has had over history.Most striking is the humility and simplicity of the pictures – a mother tenderly holding her son, looking out with a serene, almost plaintive expression onto the viewer. Yet most of the images have been hyped up, literally hoisted up onto a pedestal, decorated with the most luxurious materials and exuberant colours. The pictures are surrounded by a throng of plump cherubs, rich ornamentation, crowns and jewels – all the pomp and ostentation which runs counter to the very meaning of the image itself.Of all the images in the exhibition, it is those that have been neglected over time, abandoned by their original cult-worshippers, that are the most intriguing. When the relic has grown old and battered, the impact of the image and the story behind it takes on a more poignant, more human edge. For instance, a wooden statue of Christ on the crucifix was about to be burned before the statue apparently opened its eyes like a living person. The sculpture has aged but the facial expression is still pained, plaintive and strangely restful. Its worn condition only intensifiesthe sense of Christ as once a human in suffering.Along with the religious statues, there are depictions of the miracles themselves. The variety – an eighteenth century photo of a possessed woman or a modern painting of a man falling out of a high-rise building – all share in common an apparition of the Virgin Mary, enveloped in a puff of smoke and hovering over the human activity below. Her cult-worshiptranscends history, providing a powerful figure for refuge from the turbulence of the lives of believers.Glorified with rich ornamentation, the images have become like divine beings in themselves, testified by the way in which strange curative powers have been attributed to them over the years. Many of the images have lost their poignant, human touch, saturated by the grandeur that goes with it. But the ingenuity of the display, and the stories provided with each image, bring the viewer closer to a sense of the mysteries that have enthralled so many.ARCHIVE: 4th week MT 2005

Against: Paul Sagar, a first year PPEist at BalliolThe Sun is offensive. It offends women, immigrants, asylum seekers and also those who
are simply offended when others are offended: those who do not wait till they personally are
attacked before believing something to be abhorrent. No matter how good The Sun’s
football coverage may be, it in no way compensates for its odious nature. With such an
issue, we would all do well to heed the words of Mill’s Harm Principle, that one is free to act
as one wishes until their behaviour causes harm to others. I can hold no objection to
somebody purchasing The Sun with their own finances and reading it in privacy. However to
propose that it be bought with collective finances and displayed in a JCr cannot be
permitted, because no matter how great the pleasure derived by the readers of The Sun
may be, if even one person is offended by the material printed within it, the offence caused,
which I would go so far as to say constitutes harm, far outweighs that pleasure gained. It seems best to begin by refuting the three most common arguments for stocking The Sun.
Firstly, that it makes for a more diverse JCr. The thrust of this argument seems to be that all
the newspapers currently stocked here in the Balliol at least, are of the same sort. However
one can easily point to the presence of the Independent, the express, the Guardian, the
Mirror and the Morning Star to cast serious doubt upon this argument. Furthermore, there
seems something odd about championing. The Sun as a source of diversity: let’s not forget
this is a vehemently right-wing publication, has repeatedly targeted ethnic minorities and
immigrants. The Sun is the antithesis of diversity, to claim otherwise
would be twisted logic indeed. Secondly some argue that the presence of The Sun will
diminish Oxford’s eliist image. This argument rests upon the view that the enough
people will visit our JCrs so as to convince the entire nation that because we read The Sun,
we’re all very normal. even if one accepted this as a possibility (albeit an unpleasant one,
as our JCrs, and not just our quads, would all be full of camera-wielding tourists), then one
must accept the other implications that go with it. While people may think that Oxford
students are more “normal” than the current stereotype allows, they may also think that as a
community we condone some of the other features of The Sun, for example misogyny and
sexist attitudes. I’m all for the world knowing we’re not snobs, but I don’t want to be
considered a chauvinist either.Finally, it’s argued that all papers have agendas and tell lies, from the Telegraph’s
accusations against George Galloway to the Mirror’s faked Iraq photos. The crucial
difference is that whereas both these papers picked targets that could defend themselves,
The Sun chooses to victimise minority groups who cannot stand up to the press, and who
are further marginalised by the stereotypes printed in its pages. The Sun categorically
should not be stocked in our JCrs. Firstly, the hegemony of the Murdoch press is a worrying
development in national and global media and is bad for freedom of expression, freedom
of ideas and freedom of information. Most JCrs already stock the Times, so there seems
little justification for further financing the growth of the Murdoch empire. To quote nick
Cohen, “the only thing that sells better than sex is hate”, and The Sun is an expert at this. In
1989, following the Hillsborough football disaster, The Sun ran an article stating that the
crush that killed 96 people was deliberately started by Liverpool FC fans, who then urinated
on people’s bodies and stole their belongings. an inquest later dismissed all these
accusations, but the fact remains that The Sun lied to make money. Indeed The Sun is well
versed in spreading hate: the infamous headline “Gotcha!” to announce the sinking of the
argentine ship Belgrano, which had been sailing away from British waters, is a stark
reminder of its callous and offensive nature. The Sun is not just “another newspaper”: it
spreads hate and bigotry specifically to make money. I for one do not support that. do we
want JCrs where members of our community are offended because some are too selfish to
pay for an offensive publication themselves, or JCrs where the protection from offence, even
of a minority, is considered more important than the desires of a few? I leave it to you.For: Andrew Mason, a second year reading Physics and Philosophy at BalliolI believe that press representation in JCrs is an excellent thing. newspapers are
generally not provided to us by libraries and that JCrs fill this informational
deficiency is a testament to the general engagement of our students with the outside
world. nobody should be excluded from this fundemental service. and yet, twice now,
substantial majorities at Balliol JCr meetings have blocked the provision of The Sun to that
proportion of its members who want to read it. We have just as much right as any other
member to find the newspaper we want in the JCr – telling us to go buy it ourselves
misses the point dangerously. Excluding anyone from core JCr services needs a good
reason. Moreover, omitting sections of the press creates informational gaps: if those
‘opposed’ in some way to The Sun read it occasionally they may appreciate its work for
social integration and breakdown of racial prejudice in the poorest, stupidest sections of
society. Balliol JCr is arbitrarily excluding a minority from service provision in a shameful
way.Consider this: a sizeable minority of a JCr affiliates to a certain political viewpoint that is
highly unpopular with their peers. Wanting to access the JCr newspaper service, they take a
motion to a meeting requesting that the JCr orders their political newspaper, and the
motion is defeated. Surely the reader agrees that a bad thing just happened, that this
minority ought to access this JCr service just as everyone else, regardless of political
affiliation. For is not the protection of such minorities precisely what constitutional
democracies like JCrs are designed to guarantee? At both Sun debates powerful cases
were made that spending JCr money on the newspaper would mean an endorsement of
what people perceive to be its values, including but not limited to murder, racism and
homophobia, gypsy-tipping, rape and pillage and general societal mischief-making. This is
fair enough, and admirable in its way. But it’s also completely misguided. If I buy every kind
of chocolate in a shop, one couldn’t say I endorse anything whatsoever (except
comprehensive chocolate buying!). If a JCr buys newspapers supporting every possible
viewpoint, how can it endorse one in particular? Moreover purchase of a newspaper entails
no endorsement at all. London Underground commuters bemoan late trains, dirty
platforms and endless upgrades on the Circle Line, and certainly don’t endorse their mode
of transport, yet tomorrow they will buy tickets as normal: it’s the only way to get to work. No
economic choice is being made. JCrs choose to provide newspapers that members want
to read, not to provide certain newspapers and not others. A clear case for political
newspapers, but The Sun is not quite the same. Whilst some object to The Sun on political
grounds, the majority object on grounds of distaste. and can we say that the potential
offence of a majority of a JCr is good reason to deny a minority access to a newspaper?Those who gladly read their own preferred newspapers but do not allow another minority to
read theirs are guilty of a critical failure of ‘doing unto others as they do unto you’.
nevertheless, JCrs are small communities, and application of such principles
is not always appropriate. If twenty of its members get really upset at the very sight of their
peers reading the newspaper they want to read, then no matter how ultimately petty we
consider their objection is, that still constitutes a serious welfare issue. But Oxford
colleges that do receive The Sun contain no population of the really upset, even exeter,
which until recently received two copies (now reduced to one to accommodate Private eye).
doubt not: if Balliol received The Sun already, those same people who blocked it at two GMs
would read with a sneer or a smile and without objection. and in the possible world where
St Hugh’s didn’t get The Sun, and a member of the JCr proposed to a meeting that they
should, then of course there is name-calling, JCr hysteria and shouts of derision. Making
things upset us is easy: changing that is not. I contend that society is always a better place
when we swallow our own upsets and let people do what they want. In the real world, taking
offence at others’ activities is called intolerance and the very last thing we do is let it restrict
the activities of others. I don’t care if you think I’m just a dirty bastard wanting to lookat tits. I
am a member of Balliol JCR – can I not have access to its services?ARCHIVE: 4th week MT 2005