Sunday, April 27, 2025
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A View Into Both Worlds: Being Mixed-Race in Oxford

Ruth Scharff-Hansen
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A View Into Both Worlds: Being Mixed-Race in Oxford

CW: Racism, mentions of violence

The first time I ever visited Oxford, I went with my mom. Two tourists far away from home, we spent the afternoon taking blurry pictures by the RadCam, staring at the Harry Potter tree at New College, and wandering around Westgate. At one point in the afternoon, we popped into a bakery to buy a quick snack (dreaming about the future is hungry work!) and as per usual, we struck up a polite conversation with the lady selling the croissants. 

“Wow!” said the blonde lady, blinking at my mom in amazement. “Your English is so good!”

I visibly cringed. There stood my mom, a proud Asian woman, who spoke better English than any other person I knew. There stood my mom, a philosophy major with an affinity for literature, who could talk circles around the rest of my family. There stood my mom, who practised my debate speeches with me and encouraged me to read law at the very same university we were touring. And yet, based on the colour of her skin, the darkness of her hair, the evidence of her race, she was presumed to be different. 

Growing up with a Singaporean-Chinese mom and a Swiss-Danish dad, I’ve been mistaken for every nationality under the sun. For eighteen years in Hong Kong, I was pinned as the foreigner and the “white girl”. However, as soon as I moved across the world, the way people perceived my race shifted to the other end of the spectrum. This reflection could very easily turn into a miscellany of identity crises; I grew up speaking the wrong languages, bungling cultural traditions, and floating between two different worlds, in which I wholly belonged to neither. But whilst I’m sure that would be a relatable read for all the mixed kids who stumble across this article, it’s not the point I’m trying to make, for now. If there is anything that my confusing duality has allowed me, it’s perspective. And that is what I feel the need to share, as the distressing hostility towards the Asian community grows by the day. 

There has always been a difference in how people treat me, based on which parent I’m with. Even though my dad did not grow up speaking English, no one has ever congratulated him on his linguistic competence. And as minor as this example of good faith may seem, it’s part of a broader issue that I am ashamed to have witnessed. With my dad, the bus stops for us when we’re a little late. Strangers smile and wave. No one has ever stretched their eyes and screamed “ni hao” at me when I’m with my dad. My dad has never been called racial slurs and thrown out of a London cab at 6am on his way to work. 

Before Covid, the world looked at Asians differently. And growing up in Hong Kong, I was fortunate to be raised in an environment where people are proud of their Asian heritage and the strength it carries. The discriminatory culture that I am attempting to describe, though, has always permeated my double-life. It’s weird to be mixed-race in an extremely racial world. And since vicious dialogue spread about the “Chinese virus”, I have felt, quite honestly, scared. Family friends, preceding my move to Oxford, recommended that I dye my hair a lighter colour. News articles about attacks on Asians implied that I should avoid China-town. Throughout my time in Oxford, people have blindly made jokes about the food I eat, my various foreign mannerisms, and other misplaced snubs at the expense of the Asian community. Maybe they thought I’d find them 50% funny. 

Maybe they didn’t care to realise they were not. 

I have held my tongue about discrimination against Asians since arriving, not only because I love Oxford, but because, to a certain extent, I have never felt like the best advocate for this cause. But the urgency of this rising hatred means that we cannot stay silent any longer. In March, six Asian women were murdered in Georgia. And this abhorrent behaviour is not confined to America. At the beginning of the pandemic, a 23-year-old Singaporean student was attacked on Oxford Street. In late February, a lecturer at the University of Southampton was savagely beaten in a racist attack. An advocacy group, ‘End the Virus of Racism’, has reported a 300% increase in Covid-related hate crimes towards Asians in the UK since the pandemic started. Yet I still hear rumours of students at Oxford casually throwing around the word “ch*nk”, and headlines in major newspapers, following the lead of former President Donald Trump, continue to paint the pandemic as a peculiarly Asian problem. In the absence of a supportive stance in the media, you and I need to be the voices for this movement. So here is mine. 

Part of me has always known that my divided heritage was not only split by culture, but separated by a gulf of privilege. On the face of things, though, discrimination against Asians has always been masked by excuses. Excuses about how stereotyping isn’t harmful if it isn’t explicitly offensive (cue the jokes about Asians being good at maths); excuses about how Asian cities have major financial power and hence cannot be subjected to racism; excuses along the lines of the “model minority myth”. The latest excuse, wrapped in fear and cloaked in hate, has been to vilify Asians for Covid-19. We should be done making excuses. 

This is supposed to be the best university in the world. I think it’s high time we focus less on our “really good English”, and more on the power our words can carry. Spread kindness, educate yourselves, and address problematic behaviour when you see it.

On behalf of all Asians, we are tired of being treated like the virus. 

Image Credit: Creative Commons – “Oxford Postcard” by anataman is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Review: ‘Klara and the Sun’ by Kazuo Ishiguro

Hari Bravery
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Review: ‘Klara and the Sun’ by Kazuo Ishiguro

For as long as artificial intelligence has existed in the public consciousness, it has been interwoven with an anxiety over its misuse.  That such a sentiment perseveres is clear. From entrepreneur-cum-provocateur Elon Musk’s claims that AI will supersede human intelligence ‘in less than five years’, to Defence Secretary Ben Wallace’s announcement that the British armies’ troop capacity will be slashed in favour of funding automated drones and cyberwarfare, the narrative that technological advancement in robotics is synonymous with violence and human redundancy has become commonplace.  Yet, Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel Klara and the Sun throws a spanner in the proverbial machine of this narrative, presenting a world in which artificial intelligence has been used with largely positive effects. The AIs of Ishiguro’s novel pose no existential threat to humanity, and aside from a cleaner’s brief moment of perplexity over whether to treat one like a guest or ‘like a vacuum cleaner,’ they are treated just as humans are.

The eponymous Klara is an AF, an ‘Artificial Friend’ constructed for the purpose of alleviating teenage loneliness in a time when children take their lessons from ‘screen professors’ on ‘oblongs’; landing in our current lockdown state, this hits rather close to home. We follow her from her days awaiting sale in a metropolitan store to her assimilation into the family of Josie, a young girl with a serious — possibly fatal — illness, for which her mother bears an odd sense of responsibility. The world Ishiguro crafts in Klara and the Sun has a comfortable ambiguity, one that evokes a future facing the same issues as our own present. Pollution that blacks out the sky, increased mechanisation and a pandemic of loneliness; if the novel can be considered dystopian, it is due to its presentation of a hyperbolic present.

In Klara, Ishiguro crafts a memorable first-person narrative voice, simultaneously robotic and infantile, scrupulous yet naïve. Ishiguro never allows Klara to fall into the uncanny valley, refusing to refer to her – or any other of the AFs’ – physical appearances, instead merely stating that she has short, dark hair and appears somewhat ‘French’. This is not to say that Klara’s robotic status is forgotten; frequently throughout the novel Klara’s visual processing is overwhelmed, as her ocular field breaks down into a cubist fracturing of the landscape, with elements becoming either hyper-focussed (such as the minute expression of a woman’s eye) whilst others clip in and out of each other, the world reduced to a series of blank ‘cones’. Such narrative quirks work a treat, drawing attention to the juxtaposition of Klara’s spiritual self with her mechanical body. 

This juxtaposition of the natural and the engineered is furthered in Klara’s worship of ‘the Sun’. Originally stemming from the fact that AFs are solar powered, Klara’s relationship with the sun becomes spiritual as the novel progresses, leading to her beginning to pray for the sun to heal Josie’s malady. For me, it is this juxtaposition that is the novel’s most striking feature, something that Ishiguro appears to be well aware of, making it the titular focus. This paganistic worship of the sun, nearly to the level of deification, by a purely mechanical vessel is certainly a striking image, one that Ishiguro revels in depicting. In that Klara is programmed for self-sacrifice for the benefit of humans, the self-abnegation of religious worship seems like a logical step. The plethora of descriptions of light within the novel border on fetishism on Klara’s part; they are sumptuous and rich, reifying through language the depth of Klara’s devotion for a star that she never truly understands. At one point Klara’s mechanical vision mingles with her discovery of natural beauty as she recalls how: ‘The red glow inside the barn was still dense, but now had an almost gentle aspect – so much so that the various segments into which my surroundings were partitioned appeared to be drifting amidst the Sun’s last rays.’

Klara’s discovery and gradual decoding of human love is depicted with beautiful simplicity by Ishiguro, and the treatment of the consciousness of artificial intelligence throughout is excellent.  Yet, Ishiguro’s treatment of genetic editing is slightly less compelling. In order to combat the ‘savage meritocracy’ (to quote from Ishiguro’s 2017 Nobel Prize Lecture) of the world, the parents in the novel have resorted to genetically editing their children to grant them specific worldly advantages, a process termed ‘lifting’. Such a process creates a demarcated caste system within the world of Klara and the Sun, with those who remain ‘unlifted’ becoming an acknowledged underclass, barred from both education and employment. The continued awareness of this system is made clear in Klara’s constant references to clothes, furniture and any physical belonging as ‘high-status’, as opposed to describing any physical quality. Such a binary class system enforced by technological advancements will be familiar to readers of Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. The experience of the ‘unlifted’ underclass is depicted in the character of Rick, Josie’s friend and love interest within the novel, who seeks to scale this genetic barrier by making a special case to Atlas Brookings, a college known to be particularly generous to ‘unlifted’ youths. As the novel progresses, it becomes apparent that gene editing is not only a social, but also a physical evil: both Josie’s illness and the previous death of her sister Sal are a result of this process of ‘lifting’, demonstrating it to be little more than a mortal lottery. However, this subject is rendered merely a backdrop against which questions of AI sentience are presented and explored far more extensively. When combined with Klara’s childish perspective, the presentation of gene editing within the novel is left overly vague (it is not clear whether such a process is pre or postpartum, for example), lacking the requisite specificity to become wholly compelling. Perhaps the gene editing sub-plot could have been allowed a bit more time to stew – it is certainly interesting enough to warrant a novel by itself.

Whilst Klara and the Sun is undoubtedly a strong work – Ishiguro has led us to expect nothing less – it is not the Nobel Prize recipient’s best. It lacks the emotional intensity of The Buried Giant, the meticulous narrative drive of Never Let Me Go and the masterful commingling of both that is The Remains of the Day. One shouldn’t approach Klara and the Sun expecting the minute sci-fi world building of Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov or Ian M. Banks. And yet this is not to turn people off Ishiguro’s novel. It is a fascinating study of whether a machine can fully become human, and whether there truly is a such a thing as a soul, one that ‘our modern tools can’t excavate, copy, [or] transfer’. After all, what can be more human than Klara’s closing remark that ‘I have my memories to go through and place in the right order’?  Even the fact that a Nobel Laureate is writing a novel that is through-and-through sci-fi is a massive victory for the legitimisation of science fiction scholarship. If there are moments in which the novel’s narrative minimalism can leave it feeling slightly hollow, these are outshone by the familiar lucidity of Ishiguro’s prose and the conceptual strength of Klara as a narrator. Klara and the Sun is a novel of elegance and poise, and with Sony 3000 recently acquiring the novel’s film rights, it doesn’t seem as though Klara’s bond with the Sun will be sundered any time soon. 

Image Credit: Frankie Fouganthin /CC by.SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Both Oxford crews lose to Cambridge in The Gemini Boat Race 2021

Maurício Alencar
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Both Oxford crews lose to Cambridge in The Gemini Boat Race 2021

OUBC and OUWBC failed to beat Cambridge in The Gemini Boat Race this Easter Sunday, the 166th of its kind for men and the 75th for women. With the race moved from London and done “behind closed doors”, Cambridge were on home territories on the River Great Ouse in Ely. Oxford gave the Tabs strong competition in both races, with the women’s and men’s crew sharing the same fate in only losing by a single boat length. 

Cambridge women’s started on the railway side for better wind protection, which gave them a slight advantage before the race got underway. Once the race had begun, they built an early lead, but Oxford hit back and were level with Cambridge 3 minutes and a half in. They managed to build a strong rhythm and also maintained a safe distance from Cambridge, but the Tabs raised their stroke rate 8 minutes in and pushed away from Oxford towards the finish line. In the later race, the men’s crew for Cambridge also pulled ahead of Oxford early on but had loud calls from the umpire to give space for the Oxford crew. Jesse Oberst, the cox for Oxford at age 38, steered Oxford’s boat with less of the stream over the course of the race, while Cambridge’s crew maintained their pace down the river. 

For the first time in its history, both the women’s and men’s event were umpired by women. The men’s event was umpired by Sarah Winckless MBE, an Olympic bronze medallist, and the women’s by Judith Packer, an umpire with 20 years experience and alumnus of St Peter’s College, Oxford. All crews wore a white ribbon in support of victims of sexual assault, following reports in the national press this week of allegations made by a member of OUWBC.

Last year’s race was unfortunately cancelled due to the outbreak of the pandemic, and 2019 saw the Tabs beat Oxford in both races as well. The last time the crews raced in Ely saw OUBC win by 3 quarters boat length in 1944 after the stroke from Cambridge men’s crew collapsed. The straighter and shorter course at 4.9km in Ely, as opposed to the 6.8km race on the Tideway in London, benefitted the crew with the superior muscle-power and greater know-how on the course and its nuances. 

Oxford’s training has perhaps been hampered by stricter conditions than Cambridge: the University prevented a quick return to training in December after the second lockdown and Oxford’s crews only moved to Ely on the 31st March, whereas Cambridge have been training on home waters for some time longer. The women’s crew were at a particular disadvantage as Julia Lindsay, who rowed at 7 for Oxford, only trained with her crewmates for 4 weeks due to isolation. 

The Oxford men’s crew will hope to win The Boat Race for the 81st time next year, and the women’s crew will look for their 31st win in hopefully more normal conditions. 

Oxford’s crews:

Men’sCollegeWomen’sCollege
coxJesse OberstPembrokecoxCosti LevyExeter
8- strokeAugustin WambersieSt Catherine’s8- strokeKatherine MaitlandSt Hughs
7Joshua Bowesman-JonesKeble7Julia LindsaySt Cross
6Jean-Philippe DufourLincoln6Georgina GrantHarris Manchester
5Tobias SchröderMagdalen5Martha BirtlesMansfield
4Felix DrinkallLady Margaret Hall4Amelia StandingSt Anne’s
3Martin BaraksoKellogg3Megan StokerSt Peter’s
2Alex BebbSt Peter’s2Anja ZehfussGreen Templeton
1- bowJames ForwardPembroke1- bowKatie AndersonBrasenose

Cambridge’s crews:

Men’sCollegeWomen’sCollege
coxCharlie MarcusTrinitycoxDylan WhittakerKing’s
8- strokeDrew TaylorClare8- strokeSarah TisdallLucy Cavendish
7Callum SullivanPeterhouse7Bronya SykesGonville & Caius
6Ollie ParishPeterhouse6Sophie PaineGirton
5Garth HoldenSt Edmund’s5Anouschka FenleyLucy Cavendish
4Quinten RichardsonFitzwilliam4Caoimhe DempseyNewnham
3Seb BenzecryJesus3Abba ParkerEmmanuel
2Ben DyerGonville & Caius2Sarah PortsmouthNewnham
1- bowTheo WeinbergerSt John’s1- bowAdriana Perez RotondoNewnham

Artwork by Zoe Rhoades

New day support venue for the homeless and vulnerably-housed opening in Oxford

Anvee Bhutani
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New day support venue for the homeless and vulnerably-housed opening in Oxford

The Oxford Winter Night Shelter will be working with St Clement’s Parish Property to set up a new day support centre to offer respite, hospitality and encouragement to those who are homeless and vulnerably housed.

The new day centre, known as the “Living Room”, will provide support in a small and friendly environment to its guests, specially targeting those who may feel more able to engage in this setting. The Living Room is to be based in the St Clement’s area in a property owned by St Clement’s Parish Property, with its purpose being providing relief to those in need within the local community. The next few months will be spent in refurbishing the venue and finalising the operations and it is hoped that the Living Room will be able to open its doors during the summer 2021.

Through discussions with partner agencies, the Oxford Winter Night Shelter has established that there is a real need to provide support and companionship to members of the community, as the feelings of isolation and loneliness have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Living Room will operate with high staff to guest ratios in order that the guests can be given the attention that they need to ensure a positive experience. The Oxford Winter Night Shelter will work closely with agencies to obtain referrals to the centre and to provide joint support.

The Oxford Winter Night Shelter was set up three years ago to provide overnight accommodation to the homeless and rough sleepers of Oxford during the winter months. Due to restrictions imposed by the Coronavirus pandemic it has not been able to operate the shelters this winter and rough sleepers are instead being given temporary accommodation under the “Everyone In” initiative. However, when it is possible to do so, the Oxford Winter Night Shelter intends to reopen its doors, whilst continuing the Living Room operation. The Oxford Winter Night Shelter operates through the support of its volunteers, donors and churches across central Oxford and wider afield.

Mary Gurr, Founder and Chair of the Oxford Winter Night Shelter and Chaplain to the Homeless said: “I am delighted the OWNS is able to work in partnership with St Clements and with our partner organisations. It is hoped this new initiative will address issues of loneliness and isolation and provide sanctuary and practical help to some of the most vulnerable and needy people in our community.”

Reverend Rachel Gibson, Chair of St Clements Parish Property further added: “St Clement’s Parish Property Trustees have been delighted to work with OWNS and its other partner churches and organisations since it began. We’re really pleased that we’re now also able to help in setting up the new day centre, which we hope will provide a warm welcome, companionship and support to its guests.”

Image Credit: Motacilla / CC BY-SA 3.0

The Conservatives’ attack on the ECHR: A Long Time Coming

Ciara Garcha
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The Conservatives’ attack on the ECHR: A Long Time Coming

In 1951, the Parliament of the United Kingdom became the first nation to ratify the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The Council of Europe had drafted the document in Strasbourg in 1949, and two years later the UK became the first European country to formally commit itself to the embryonic concept of human rights.

A leaked recording, however of the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, stating that the UK will not limit itself to striking trade deals with countries that have the ECHR as a minimum standard of human rights has exposed the strain under which the UK’s commitment to the principle European framework for human rights is. Proposals for the UK to withdraw from the ECHR and replace it with a ‘British Bill of Rights’, composed by the government alone, have arisen. But, in a more unstable and uncertain world than ever, it is clear that the UK must remain committed to the ECHR. 

In the recording, leaked to the Huff Post UK and published on 16th March, Raab can be heard advocating for Britain to trade “liberally around the world”. He goes on to add that if Britain should “restrict its (trade deals) to countries with ECHR-level standards of human rights”; the country would not be able to make “many trade deals with the growth markets of the future”. These comments followed a report by The Times that Britain was looking into doing a trade deal with China, to replace trade between the EU and China, worth $709 billion in 2020. Concerns were raised about the UK entering into a new economic partnership with China, given the latter’s poor human rights record, including claims of appalling human rights abuses against the Uighur Muslims and severe limits on the freedom of expression. Shadow Foreign Secretary, Lisa Nandy, declared the comments to be proof that the government was “entirely devoid of a moral compass and riddled with inconsistencies” and Amnesty International UK commented that Raab’s remarks would “send a chill down the spine of embattled human rights activists across the globe”.

Yet, only a matter of days later on 22 March, the UK imposed sanctions on four Chinese officials over the “appalling violations” of human rights against the Uighur people. Rather than talking up a trade deal with China, Raab described the mistreatment of Uighur Muslims as “one of the worst human rights crises of our time” and declared that the world “cannot simply look the other way”. China responded by placing retaliatory sanctions on a selection of British officials – including five Conservative MPs – whom Boris Johnson described, in a tweet condemning the sanctions, as “performing a vital role shining a light on the gross human rights violations being perpetrated against Uyghur Muslims”. 

Within the space of a few days, the government seemed both to undermine the importance of human rights, expressing disinterest in adhering to ECHR standards, and then staunchly defend them, following a tide of other European and western leaders to speak out against the genocide of the Uighur people. The Conservatives’ relationship with human rights seems more difficult to unpick and understand than ever.

In a British context, human rights have emerged in the years since World War Two as a European project. Though first drawn up by the United Nations into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) in 1948, the Council of Europe was assembled in 1949 to draw up a comparable European framework. Created by the Treaty of London and eventually centred in Strasbourg, the Council initially brought ten European states together to work for democracy, human rights and the rule of law. It was separate from the European Coal and Steel Community (founded in 1951) that would later morph into the European Union, and has continued to maintain its own distinct agenda and membership up to the present. 

The principles of the UNDHR agreed in 1948 were translated into a European context with the drafting of the ECHR the following year. The prohibition of torture, the right to liberty and freedom of expression were all included in the new charter. But these were not merely words; these human rights would be enforceable by the European Court of Human Rights. Established in Strasbourg, 1959, Article 19 of the Convention charged the court with ensuring “the observance of the engagements” undertaken by signatories of the ECHR. This distinct legal mechanism has continued to function in ensuring that signatories “secure to everyone within their jurisdiction, the rights and freedoms” set out in the Convention, though the 1998 Human Rights Act made it possible to bring a case involving the ECHR to a UK court, rather than Strasbourg. 

Even whilst it is separate from the EU, the ECHR and the European Court of Human Rights have both fallen victim to the rising tide of anti-European sentiment that culminated in the UK’s vote to leave the EU in 2016 and its eventual exit in January 2020. The ECHR and the very concept of Human Rights have become casualties of Brexit. It was David Cameron who first floated the idea of scrapping the ECHR and replacing it with a ‘British Bill of Rights’ back in 2015 in the same manifesto that contained his pledge to hold a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU by 2017.

Whilst a ‘British Bill of Rights’ may bolster the importance of human rights within domestic politics, Cameron’s proposals represented an attempt to tap into the Eurosceptic sentiments swelling amongst many in his party and the population. Though a supporter of EU membership and the leader of the ‘Remain’ campaign, perhaps Cameron believed that a symbolic liberation from a different European legal structure would be enough to subdue the angry shouts for Britain to “take back control” by leaving the EU. In any case, ECHR and EU were merged in the creation of a powerful European adversary whom Europhobes could rail against in the bitter and hateful debates leading up to and following the 2016 Referendum.

On the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta in 2015, Cameron vowed to “restore the reputation” of human rights in Britain, as “the place where those ideas were first set out”. Celebrations in Runnymede Surrey, the location of the signing of the iconic English document in 1215, became a platform for Cameron to articulate his desire to repeal the 1998 Human Rights Act and introduce British-specific legislation. The occasion and the terribly distorted legacy of the Magna Carta that Cameron appealed to helped underline the British Bill of Rights as a nationalist project that would protect and reassert a mythical British (or English) legacy of liberty.

Cameron went on to tell The Sun that the Strasbourg court had given human rights a “bad name” and that he would fix the “complete mess” of human rights laws. Comments like this have served to divorce the UK from the ECHR, the very framework it helped to create and of which it was was at the forefront. Attacks on the ECHR were a crude way for the Cameron-led Remain campaign to score points: a measured form of anti-Europeanism, attacking various non-EU European institutions as a sign of their nationalist commitment, to help minimise and divert hatred from the EU to other European ventures. 

Yet, even as the ‘Remain’ campaign failed and the UK voted to leave the EU, the nationalist, anti-European narrative around the ECHR that the Cameron government had carefully cultivated and fed into would go on to take on a life of its own. Anti-European sentiment has not abated since the 2016 vote to leave the EU. The difficulties that successive governments have had over the past five years in extracting the UK from the EU has meant that Euroscepticism has become a powerful force in politics. Cameron exposed the vulnerability of the Human Rights Act and the ECHR in British politics, priming the topic of human rights to be seized on and weaponised by others.

Boris Johnson’s government has leapt on this opportunity, since winning a sizable majority in 2019, by ordering a review of the Human Rights Act and its use in UK courts in December 2020. Director of Amnesty International UK, Kate Allen, expressed fear at the review, arguing: “Tearing up the Human Rights Act would be a giant leap backwards. It would be the single biggest reduction in rights in the history of the UK”.  

In both standing against human rights perpetrated by China and dismissing ECHR standards, the government has put out a highly confusing message on human rights. However, the key variant in their attitude does seem to be the involvement and presence of Europe. Raab’s comments that the UK will not be bound by the standards of human rights set out in the ECHR in a post-Brexit era, seem to be a continuation of the nationalist rhetoric constructed around the EU that has since infused discussion over the ECHR and human rights. However, in coming out against China, the UK seems to be indicating that it still foresees a commitment to human rights in its future; albeit a commitment on its own terms and to a concept that it defines. The proposal of the creation of a ‘British Bill of Rights’, its contents dictated by the government, has once again arisen.

Recent events have shown us the folly of letting the government, and government alone, define the concept of human rights. The Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Bill show this anti-ECHR anti-human rights agenda in action. The bill would criminalise protests that create “disorder” and “serious disruption”, as well as placing severe limitations on the ‘noise levels’ and locations at which demonstrations can be held. Despite the Conservative’s assertions to the contrary, it is in direct violation of Articles 10, protecting freedom of expression, and 11, the right to freedom of association, of the 1998 Human Rights Act.

Grace Bradley, the director of civil liberties group, Liberty, warned: “parts of this Bill will facilitate discrimination and undermine protest, which is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy”. Bradley went on to add that the Bill risks “stifling dissent and making it harder for us to hold the powerful to account”. If the Conservative government, with a sizable parliamentary majority, was given free rein to determine what classified as human rights and what would make up a ‘British Bill of Rights’, it is not hard to believe that similar attacks on our existing rights and freedoms would be made.

Other issues on which the UK government has previously clashed with the European Court of Human Rights would likely be ironed out in any potential ‘British Bill of Rights’. Brexit-style attempts to “take back control” of human rights can be observed in the response to the issue of prisoner rights, an area where the UK takes a fundamentally different view to its European counterparts. The issue flared up in the 2005 European Court of Human Rights case, Hirst vs. United Kingdom, in which the UK was found to have violated the ECHR in denying convicted prisoners, serving a custodial sentence, the right to vote.

The ruling and suggestion that the UK should re-examine the state of prisoner rights was met with fierce resistance with many sections of parliament, marking the beginning of a lengthy and drawn-out confrontation with the European Court of Human Rights and Council of Europe. Significantly, the debate around the ruling largely ranged beyond the actual question at hand: whether prisoners should be enfranchised, and widened to represent, and instead became a question of sovereignty and where power lay.

A motion, passed by parliament in 2011, argued that the UK should flout the court’s judgment on the issue of prisoner enfranchisement. The text of the motion highlighted that such legislative decisions “should be a matter for democratically-elected law makers”, in keeping with the concept of parliamentary sovereignty that dictates parliament should be all-powerful and should not be subordinated to any other body. 

Dominic Raab, then serving as a backbench MP and one of the proposers of the motion, urged for the UK to send a “very clear message back” to the court, that parliament and only parliament would “decide whether prisoners get the right to vote”. Though he assured his parliamentary colleagues that the UK would not be “kicked out of the Council of Europe” for passing a dissenting motion, Raab was clearly employing the rhetoric of taking back control and bolstering parliamentary sovereignty that was synonymous with the debates around the EU referendum. His remarks that “this House will decide… and this House makes the laws of the land” (despite the fact that the UK parliament had used its sovereignty to ratify the Convention in 1951 and to pass the 1998 Human Rights Act) could be applied to numerous conversations held around the UK’s membership of the EU. From fishing to free trade, the sentiment of Parliament and parliament alone being able to “decide” and make “the laws of the land” ring true with much of what was and has been discussed.

Though the idea of a ‘British Bill of Rights’ was never fully fleshed out in the discourse around the 2015 election and 2016 referendum, the very concept of the UK being able to independently define what was and was not acceptable seems to have been, in itself, alluring. Even the epithet ‘British’ marks the Bill, and the rights protected in it out, as a nationalistic attempt at the ‘British exceptionalism’ that often placed the country at odds with the EU. Such a Bill would ‘return’ full symbolic sovereignty to parliament (some have questioned whether it was ever really lost, given that the UK incorporated the ECHR into law in 1998) and clauses that the UK has historically taken issue with would be modified, for example Article 3 of Protocol 1 of the ECHR, requiring “free elections” and “free expression of the freedom of the people” would be qualified. Scrapping the ECHR and starting afresh with a ‘British Bill of Rights’ would embolden the government with both symbolic and literal power.

The strength of the ECHR and the Council of Europe is rooted in the institution’s history and framework. After centuries of European warfare and the devastation of World War Two, which saw some of the worst human rights abuses in modern history, European nations came together in an attempt to forge a better future. In creating an alliance such as the Council of Europe, this better future was staked on continued cooperation between nation-states, binding them into a common organisation to combat the divisive and hateful forces that had led to war and suffering.

And though issue has been taken with the European Court of Human Rights impinging on parliament, the very effectiveness of the ECHR lies in having an institution in place to enforce the high ideas and eloquent words that made up the Convention. The creation of the Court was a continuation of the post-war desire for mutual cooperation and bonds, ensuring that protection of these liberties was a constant. 

In his ‘Message to Europeans’ drawn up at The Hague in May 1948, Swiss politician, Denis de Rougemont appealed to a brighter shared European future. “Europe is threatened, Europe is divided and the greatest danger comes from her divisions”. He went on to articulate the desire for “a Charter of Human Rights…(and) a Court of Justice with adequate sanctions for the implementation of this Charter” in order to create a “united Europe”. If the UK were to create a ‘British Bill of Rights’ and withdraw from the ECHR, the Europe that de Rougemont appealed to, united by a respect for fundamental human rights, would be lost.

Image Credits: Creative Commons – “Dominic Raab attends a remote G7 meeting during Covid-19” by UK Prime Minister is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

No neutrality in another tongue: translation and the ethos of cultural power

Irene Zhang
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No neutrality in another tongue: translation and the ethos of cultural power

Nowadays, most people think of translation as an impartial, disinterested profession of fluent polyglots. Its history shows otherwise. In 1915, the renowned American poet Ezra Pound published Cathay, a short collection of literary translations. Except for one Old English translation, the rest were all taken from Classical Chinese: most were works of Li Bai (‘Rihaku’), the beloved High Tang romantic recited across the Sinosphere to this day. Pound was lauded for this highly unusual work: William Carlos Williams said that “[if] these were original verses, then Pound was the greatest poet of the day.”

Strikingly, Pound did not know any Chinese. He ‘discovered’ Asian poetry through befriending the widow of Ernest Fenollosa, an American Orientalist who left behind a large volume of manuscripts after two decades living in East Asia. In them were draft translations Fenollosa made of Chinese poems (despite limited command of the language). Pound based Cathay almost entirely on Fenollosa’s notes – so moved was he by Li Bai’s verses that he called them “unquestionable poems”.

Li Bai’s mythical greatness aside, are the translations unquestionable as well? Twice filtered through translators with little to no linguistic prowess, Cathay reads like a game of telephone at times. ‘Song of the Bowmen of Shu’, a piece from the Confucian Book of Songs, is misattributed to Qu Yuan (‘Kutsugen’) of the Warring States period. Some words mean different things altogether, while many other lines diverge significantly from Li Bai’s grammatical logic and nuance. However, perhaps fidelity is irrelevant to literary merit. Scholars with much richer knowledge of Chinese and English poetry have argued that despite factual errors, Cathay is great because Pound artfully captured Li Bai’s expressive poetics through a Modernist vocabulary.

Literary translation, however, is not simply an artistic act. Literature, built upon languages charged with specific cultural significance, inherits an inescapable legacy of transnational power structures, imperial encounters, and racialisation. To put away Pound’s fascism is to misread Pound; similarly, to read translations from ‘Oriental’ languages to English, in our neocolonial or postcolonial reality, necessitates understanding of voice and power. As a stand-alone work Cathay certainly has merit, yet Pound’s translation holds disproportionate influence over the English-speaking world’s knowledge of Classical Chinese literature. In a roundabout way, William Carlos Williams was right: translation work uplifted Pound’s own literary reputation and furthered his artistic ambition, probably at the expense of Li Bai. Cathay spotlights the translator rather than the poet; the white Western canon empowers itself by ostensibly taking foreign inspiration, always hungry for the aesthetics of Otherness.

Creative inspiration has no borders, but translation cannot claim neutrality. It can celebrate, admire, critique, and re-evaluate literary works, but if it fashions itself as disinterested representation of the original, the translator shirks cultural and political responsibility. In the same way, publishers make decisions about distributing power when they select translators. Amanda Gorman, the young African American poet who stole the show at Joe Biden’s inauguration, wasn’t offered the choice of a Black translator when her Dutch publisher approached her about translating The Hill We Climb, passing over many capable writers and translators from the Netherlands’ Black community. We can only speculate whether she would have chosen differently had that been an option, but this very choice reveals meaningful nuances in artistic purpose. In her poem Gorman uses ‘we’ to refer to all Americans regardless of race, but her language is steeped in the Black tradition of American letters. From rhyme and pronunciation in spoken word, itself intimately connected to African American Vernacular English, to her scriptural references rooted in liberation theology and the Black church, racialised language freely inhabits the poem’s cultural space. Whiteness, as threat or companion, is acknowledged but never dominant, and it is through the intricacies of language that Gorman reclaims cultural power.

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, the white Dutch author originally selected to translate Gorman, might have been another Pound to Gorman’s Li Bai: last year, they admitted to having “very bad English”. As the youngest writer ever to win the International Booker Prize, Rijneveld’s literary accomplishments almost certainly swayed the publisher’s decision; like Pound, the translator’s career is lifted higher by translation’s inherent transfer of power. Unsurprisingly, white supremacy is at work in the languages and translation field. A translator of colour, particularly if they share cultural heritage with the original work’s author, would almost certainly not be employed if they confessed to any linguistic limitations at all. Diasporic descendants learning their ancestral languages never receive the same amount of credit as their white counterparts. As the sole translator, Rijneveld would have been able to weld an undeserved amount of power over Gorman’s work, in effect inverting Gorman’s original tenor.

Perhaps I’m being unkind. Amanda Gorman is more than equipped to make her own decisions, and Rijneveld appears to have understood the anger. However, those of us raised in racialised literary traditions have more than enough reason to be suspicious of white cultural interpreters, both within and outside the academy. Rijneveld said in their response poem that “the point is to be able to put yourself / in another’s shoes”, but I would argue that white egos already saturate literary culture: imaginary empathy, in erasing real distance and the role of power, is pretend justice.

Artwork by Zoe Rhoades

Discordant disenchantment: Hyperpop as the pandemic’s soundtrack

Dylan Kaposi
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Discordant disenchantment: Hyperpop as the pandemic’s soundtrack

In 2013 when A.G. Cook founded the record label PC Music, he was on the precipice of popularising an entirely new sound. Musically, this synthetic, bright, and compelling genre has come to embody everything typical of youth culture during the pandemic. Hyperpop has drawn on the sounds of traditional pop music and amplified them drawing mostly on synthetically produced sounds. Though of course A.G. Cook was no clairvoyant, his ability (alongside pioneering artists such as the late SOPHIE) to cultivate a sound so appropriate for the current day is remarkable.

It is hard to define the Hyperpop scene. Existing largely in an ethereal and digital sphere, many critics wrongly view the microgenre as a parody. Hyperpop seemed to have reached the mainstream in 2019 when Spotify honoured its cultural significance by creating a curated Hyperpop playlist. In doing so, the microgenre began to receive more attention.

Despite the genre’s global pull, it remains particularly difficult to characterise the musical space that Hyperpop occupies. Such visual maximalism echoes the music that Hyperpop artists are creating. Its aesthetic, much like its sound, adopts garish, bright, and captivating forms. Charli XCX’s recent music video for her song ‘Claws’ epitomises the genre’s visual output. Sat before a green screen, the low-budget visuals have no relation to Charli’s mesmerising lyrics. You would be forgiven for viewing the song as satire.

Hyperpop is as much an aesthetic as it is a sound. Album covers are often busy, colourful, and meaningless: Bladee’s album 333, released in July 2020, epitomises this. Claire Barrow created the cover art, depicting a fanciful world of creatures ranging from talking frogs to anthropomorphised Broccoli trees. Mechatok’s Defective Holiday OST, the sound-track to Kim Laughton’s video game, provides a hypnotic backing to an equally hypnotic virtual experience. Developed as a piece of art, the game leads the player aimlessly through several eery, life-like scenes. For Laughton, the best way to experience the world was to place it within a digital sphere. Laughton also released the game in May 2020, amidst the height of the first wave of the Coronavirus pandemic. This timing speaks volumes to the meteoric rise of the genre: prior to the Coronavirus pandemic a minority of people existed predominantly online. However, as lockdowns were imposed across the globe, most of us turned to the internet to maintain some semblance of sanity. Within these conditions Hyperpop was able to thrive.

What does the distinct aesthetic of Hyperpop tell us about the cultural space that the genre occupies? The seemingly arcane clutter of Hyperpop’s musical and visual creations reflect a similarly muddled fanbase. The music appeals to a young, international audience and is uniquely ungendered. Reddit’s Hyperpop forum, created in March 2016, now has 3,299 members. It has grown at an increasingly fast rate in recent months. To contextualise that, Reddit’s ‘Hiphopheads’ forum has 2 million members. The forum reflects the diverse fanbase that the genre has been able to accrue. The posts range from memes to fans sharing their amplified versions of pop or hip-hop, to original low-budget productions. Those on the forum are acutely aware of Hyperpop’s digital footprint.

Hyperpop is too young for us to begin to consider its legacy. But we can consider its contribution to date. Though often misunderstood, the microgenre has matured into the perfect musical accompaniment to mood of the Coronavirus crisis. If anyone comes to produce a film about the pandemic, they would do well to call upon A.G. Cook, or perhaps even Mechatok, and ask them to produce the soundtrack.

3 HYPERPOP SOUNDS TO GET A TASTE OF THE MICROGENRE:

1.’Claws’ – Charli XCX
2. ‘Ponyboy’ – SOPHIE
3. ‘stupid horse’ – 100 gecs

Original image: hinnk via Wikimedia Commons (artwork remixed from original)

Happy 2021 Census day

W A Whitten
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Happy 2021 Census day

A few weeks ago, Sunday 21st March to be precise, was Census day.

Though it has been and gone, the Census remains important after this date. The government Census website states, “your answers to the Census questions will help organisations make decisions on planning and funding public services in your area, including transport, education, and healthcare”; in short, the Census is something which allows for things to be done. The Mental Health Foundation uses Census data to produce a heat map of places and people most likely to suffer from mental health issues. This is a good example of how the Census allows those who can help to be in the best position to do so. Each individual Census is essentially a hyped-up survey, nothing more, though that doesn’t mean it isn’t important both functionally and culturally. Indeed, it allows for education, transport, and the emergency services to function better.

A little history. The Roman Census was used to measure a change in the demographics of Rome and allowed for a somewhat meritocratic society. Now I do not suggest that we use our Census in the same way to decide a rigid legal class structure — but this measuring of change over time is still immensely useful. It can show the epochs and points of stagnation of our history as a nation. 1841 saw the first proper Census and since then the UK has changed a lot. I mean, never mind the 1800s, even since the last census in 2011 a lot has changed. Austerity, Brexit and Covid are just a few of the happenings of the last decade; if the impacts of these things are to be measured then the census can offer this. Think of each Census as a point of data on an ever-growing Graph; the more accurate the data and the more standard the points of data, then the more accurate the conclusion which are drawn.

Now those of you who are worried about how your personal information will be used, you can find this all out on the government website linked above. I will not go into all of it here but, just to give you a brief outline of people who are specifically barred from accessing the information, there are: firstly, those who manage taxes and benefits; secondly, anybody who wants to find you or sell you anything; and thirdly, anyone enforcing the coronavirus restrictions or from NHS test and trace. So, that should settle some of the fears you may have over the collection of data and I hope this will help to put your mind at ease when filling in your Census.

The Census is also important for marginalised groups. If you fill in the Census with all this information then you have a voice, you have representation. This is of huge importance culturally because it means that the country is aware of who the country is made up of. Yes, marches, events, and festivals allow for each and all different groups to be seen and are a great sign of our diverse cultures. But they have a weakness in that they can never show the true strength of those groups and their identities because that criticism of the silent majority is always there. The Census does not have that problem. The more people who answer the various questions with the various answers, the clearer and more accurate the picture of our nation would be.

This is so important because no matter who you are, how you identify, what you believe, or who you love, the census will represent you as you are and as you choose to be. Like voting, it is a duty to participate in, but more so, it is just interesting to see the culture of our nation reflected in all of this.

So, all that is left to say is:

Happy 2021 Census day!

Image Credit: Pete via Flickr

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bahrain Grand Prix: a taster for “one hell of a season”

Josh Taylor
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Bahrain Grand Prix: a taster for “one hell of a season”

After the almost religious repetition of platitudes like “pre-season testing isn’t indicative of race-pace” or “teams never reveal their hand until qualifying”, the Bahrain Grand Prix, the first of Formula One’s busy 2021 schedule, finally provided some answers. And what answers they were.

Years of unequalled dominance by Mercedes seemed to be hanging in the balance after a shaky run in pre-season testing. Literally, shaky. Hamilton and Bottas both failed to keep the rears of their cars under control following the new regulations introduced this year by the FiA, aimed at reducing downforce. Red Bull, ever the stoic pessimists, downplayed their advantage in the media running up to last Sunday; behind the scenes, they must have been licking their lips at the opportunity that had presented itself. This is the first time in the hybrid era that any team other than Mercedes look like real contenders for the Constructors Championship.

If the Bahrain Grand Prix is indicative of the races to follow, we are in for a hell of a season.

Max Verstappen qualifying in pole position by a hefty four-tenths of a second, with some floor damage, was the first real, trustworthy indicator that Mercedes’ tyrannical dominance might be wavering. Hamilton and Bottas had to settle for starting in second and third. An exciting podium race was promised by this subversive qualifying result, and I don’t know any F1 fan who wasn’t happy to see the pre-season pace of Red Bull convert itself into actual, true, Mercedes-weren’t-just-sandbagging pace last weekend.

The Grand Prix itself was, undoubtedly, one of the most exciting we have had in the past few years. Couple this with the fact that the exciting parts of it were often occurring at the front of the pack, rather than in the midfield teams (as was the case last season) and it’s no wonder that feverish whispers are stirring up and down the F1 paddock. 2021 may just be the year the hybrid era has been waiting for.

Various strategic shenanigans, undercuts, tyre-wear dramas, and contentious track limits decisions all played their part in the race for first between Verstappen and Hamilton. The last 6 laps of the race were particularly tense. Verstappen, within Hamilton’s DRS range, regularly came within touching distance of an overtake. He did, at one point, manage to edge ahead, but had to go beyond track limits at turn 4 to do so. The FiA ordered him to give the position back, and a twitch of the steering in a later corner meant he fell out of touch with Hamilton for just a brief moment, but a brief moment long enough to grant Mercedes the race win. Bottas, in the meantime, was, boringly and unsurprisingly, miles off Hamilton’s pace. P3 was always where he would finish.

The track limits decision from the FiA is a contentious one and certainly needs clarification before future races. Turn 4 is easier and faster for the drivers if they run wide, and so many of them did exactly that in pre-season testing and free practice. For qualifying purposes, the FiA ruled that drivers could not run wide: any lap time where the driver went too deep in turn 4 would be deleted. Simple and clear.

The race rules, however, are far murkier: drivers can run wide in turn 4 as long as it does not give them a ‘significant advantage’. Obviously, in the case of Verstappen, an overtake completed by running wide is a significant advantage, and you are never allowed to overtake by leaving track limits. The murkiness of this ruling though, comes from the fact that Hamilton ran wide on 29 of the 56 laps. Why would you do this unless it gave you a significant advantage? Presumably, this gave Hamilton a few tenths over the course of the race, a few tenths that ultimately decided whether it was Red Bull or Mercedes on top of the podium. A judge would blush at the wiggle-room one can find in the term ‘significant advantage’ and so the FiA will need to clarify this for future races or risk descending into farce.

In other parts of the field, teams and drivers seemed to either exceed or fall short of expectations; no team had the weekend go fully to plan. McLaren had a solid start to a season where they will look to defend their constructors’ third of last year, with the additions of a Mercedes engine and unique diffuser (I don’t know what it does either, don’t ask, I just know that it’s important) combining to make an incredibly competitive car that, on the right day, might even be up there for podiums and wins. Ferrari surprised everyone with the decency of their pace. Indeed, Sainz had some of the best racing of the day: his three-way battle with Vettel and Alonso was redolent of the wheel-to-wheel drama that occurs in lower formulas where downforce isn’t as important, and the cars are much niftier. Conversely, Aston Martin, the team around which there was the most hype in the off-season (in part due to that erotic green colour scheme which is truly gorgeous) had an atrocious weekend. Vettel finished god knows where after rear-ending Ocon (Alpine) because he was attempting a one-stop strategy (the only team to attempt this) and Lance Stroll finished P10, only picking up 1 point for a team which last year had several podiums.

Without question, though, the race for first was RedBull’s to lose, and they managed to lose it. They weren’t helped by Perez’s difficulties (though he did have a stormer to come from dead last to 5th by the end of the race), but after two years of the second driver not being up to pace, one would have thought they could manage alright with only one car in the mix. There are no excuses: they had the faster car but squandered their own chances. Strategic errors, underestimating the Mercedes pit-strategy (and so choosing not to cover it by pitting early), and driver error, failing to close the gap to Hamilton quickly enough and that twitch of the steering which will no doubt haunt Verstappen’s for weeks to come, are what lost the race.  It was experience and grit that won it for Mercedes. It was the driver, not the car.

For some, this will be a disappointment, a bad omen of the season to come, an indicator that things, contrary to what we all wanted to believe after testing, might be similar to how they have been in the past. That is a little too pessimistic for my taste, not least because Bahrain has historically been a Mercedes stronghold. Looking forward to Imola in a few weeks’ time, the characteristics of the race will be of a decidedly different, more Red Bull shaped, nature.

Even if that weren’t the case, and Imola too were a Mercedes circuit, when was the last time we could say, in dry conditions, that a driver, and not the car or good fortune, won the race? When was the last time Mercedes were out-qualified by nearly half a second, by a damaged car? If this is a taste of the season to come, I cannot think of a more exciting year in recent memory to be a Formula One fan. Red Bull, who have constantly teetered on the edge of being true contenders, finally seem to have uncovered whatever issues were holding them back, while Mercedes have been suitably hindered by the FiA, to make this year truly competitive.

What a time to be alive. It is a shame we have to wait three weeks for the next race.

Image credit: Keisuke Kariya via Flikr

International break: a help or hindrance for Premier League teams and their players?

Caitlin Murray
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International break: a help or hindrance for Premier League teams and their players?

This season’s Premier League fixture list has been jam-packed to say the least. Monday 22nd March 2021 was just the 10th day of the year so far that not one Premier League team played a game. For the millions of avid football fans around the world, like myself, the 2020-2021 season has been an all-you-can-eat buffet of sporting entertainment, with English teams competing in the Premier League, FA Cup, Carabao Cup, Champions League and Europa League. Yet, while this international break has offered football fans an opportunity to take a pause from football and reconnect with the real world, the same cannot be said for the majority of players in England’s Premier League. With FIFA World Cup 2022 qualifiers and international friendlies aplenty, these international stars have been whisked back to their respective home-nations, expected to continue performing without any significant time to rest and recover.

The necessity of international fixtures must be questioned, especially given the current climate within which they are being played. This view has been echoed by a number of Premier League managers, including Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp, with the former warning that this international break could lead to an increase in Covid-19 cases. More than this, a number of managers, such as the newly appointed Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel and Aston Villa’s Dean Smith went as far as to block their players from travelling to ‘red zone’ countries for international duty. The ‘blocking’ of players from travelling to these countries by Premier League managers was so influential that CONMEBOL decided to postpone World Cup qualifiers due to be played this month in South America. 

Given the number of games being played this season in quick succession, international fixtures only add to players’ fatigue. The first Premier League fixture following the break is a 12:30 kick off on Saturday 3rd April which grants some players as little as two days to recover and be ready to return their attention to domestic matches. Given that we are quickly approaching the crunch point of the season, many Premier League teams will rightfully see this international break as a disruption to momentum and will be hoping they can avoid the common post-international break ‘hangover’ that affects even the teams with the largest squads to select from.

However, the issue of fixture congestion is not unique to the Premier League, with fans of the Championship outfit Norwich fans hoping their on-loan star Oliver Skipp will be available for their upcoming fixtures as they continue their push for promotion. The midfielder is currently at the UEFA European Under-21 Championship with England and is expected to play on Wednesday 31st March in an all-important group stage clash with Croatia U-21, less than two days before Norwich’s game against Preston. 

For other teams, this international break could not have come at a better time and will likely be welcomed by managers and players alike. Such is the case for Newcastle who have a number of key players out injured at present, including Allan Saint-Maximin and their top scorer this season, Callum Wilson. With a tough list of fixtures awaiting them in the coming weeks and months, not to mention a battle to stay in the Premier League, Steve Bruce will surely see this break as an opportunity to get his star players two weeks closer to a return. 

This break offers some international team managers an opportunity to witness their players in action before finalising their squads for the upcoming UEFA Euro 2020 championship scheduled for this summer. Equally, many players will be hoping to impress their managers as they target a place in their managers squad for this summer’s tournament. Therefore, while for some players this international break and its associated fixtures may be more of a chore and burden than anything else, for some European players the break is an opportunity to raise their profile by representing their country on an international stage.

Only time will tell whether this international break was successful, or indeed a wise decision at all. What is for sure is that Premier League managers will be keeping a keen eye on these international fixtures, desperate to ensure that their stars return fit and Covid-free ready to complete this long and arduous 2020-2021 season.

Image credit: jarmoluk via Pixabay

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