Saturday, May 17, 2025
Blog Page 388

Lateral flow tests accurate enough for community use, Oxford University and PHE announce

Daisy Aitchison
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Lateral flow tests accurate enough for community use, Oxford University and PHE announce

New rapid coronavirus tests are accurate and sensitive enough to be used in the community, Public Health England and Oxford University have announced. 

The lateral flow tests allow samples to be processed without laboratory equipment and on site, producing results in just thirty minutes. Importantly, the tests are able to detect asymptomatic carriers who could potentially be spreading the disease without realising. 

Pilots of the tests have been launched across England, including a city-wide programme in Liverpool. Since the rollout of mass testing, which includes the use of lateral flow tests, 700 cases where an individual was asymptomatic have been discovered. Currently swabbing must be done by trained professionals at a designated testing site. However, given that the tests are easier to use and analyse than traditional methods, scientists are now investigating whether it is possible to introduce self-testing. 

The research was conducted by Public Health England’s Porton Down laboratory alongside the University of Oxford. Initially forty tests were developed, nine of which were judged to advance to a full evaluation. Six of these tests have now successfully reached the third part of a four-stage assessment, with the most advanced, Innova, being used in the Liverpool trial. 

Data so far shows that just 0.32% of tests give false positives. This was lowered further to 0.06% when conducted in a laboratory setting. Overall, the tests were successful in identifying over 75% of positive cases of coronavirus. Crucially, several of the tests have proved effective in catching those with high viral loads, who are the most infectious carriers of the disease. Swifter identification of such individuals should prevent the spread of the disease in the population. 

Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, said the trials showed the part lateral flow tests could play in defeating coronavirus. 

“The data in this validation report demonstrates that these inexpensive, easy to use tests can play a major role in the fight against COVID-19. They identify those who are likely to spread the disease and when used systematically in mass testing could reduce transmissions up to 90%. They will be detecting disease in large numbers of people who have never previously received a test.”

However, other leading scientists have questioned whether the tests are accurate enough to be useful. Professor Sebastian Johnson of Imperial College London said: “This single test will not be good enough to say you are almost certainly negative, as its sensitivity is not good enough, especially in the hands of the general public.” 

Professor Jon Deeks, an expert in coronavirus testing, agrees: “It is basic epidemiology that tests which miss cases like Innova are not fit for use to rule out disease – such as is needed to decide whether students are safe to travel home at the end of the year.”

“I am really concerned that people are not given information to understand what the results mean. A negative test indicates your risk is reduced to between one quarter and one half of the average, but it does not rule out Covid. It would be tragic if people are misled into thinking that they are safe to visit their elderly relatives or take other risks”. 

Image credit: Vesna Harni / Pixabay

Lady Hale to give Romanes lecture

Naman Gupta
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Lady Hale to give Romanes lecture

Rt Hon the Baroness Hale of Richmond DBE will be delivering this year’s Romanes lecture, entitled “Law in a time of crisis”, online on 25th November at 1pm. She will also be answering questions from students.

The Romanes Lecture is a renowned public address, usually given annually at the Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre. Founded by George Romanes, the series has continued annually since 1892. Oxford University’s Vice-Chancellor invites high profile figures from the arts, science or literature. Previous notable speakers have included Gordon Brown (2009), and Hillary Clinton (2018).

Lady Hale was until January this year, the President of the UK Supreme Court, the UK’s highest court. She has been a pioneer for women in the law profession. In 1994, Hale became the first woman to be a Law Commissioner. In 1999, she was the second woman to be promoted to the Court of Appeals. In 2004, Hale was pronounced the first (and only) woman Law Lord, and with the creation of the Supreme Court in 2009, she became the first female Supreme Court Justice. Finally, in 2017, she became the first female President of the UK Supreme Court.

While a Law Commissioner, she promoted legal reform. Hale drove the creation of the Children Act 1989, which requires that government and other public bodies prioritise the welfare of children in their decision making.

One Oxford law student spoke in anticipation of Hale’s lecture: “As a woman studying law, Lady Hale is a massive inspiration to me. To be able to hear her reflections on her experiences as President of the Supreme Court and her legal career is an invaluable opportunity and I’m sure will shape the kind of woman and lawyer I want to become.”

Students can sign up for the lecture here.

Image credit: Prosthetic Head / Wikimedia Commons

Rome Alone Too

Alex Fleming-Brown
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Rome Alone Too

The main problem with travelling alone? You are travelling alone. I blame books and gap year students for its allure. Hemmingway’s expats all seem to have interrail passes and every gap year student I have ever met has given me a different version of the same ‘found myself’ speech. (No Piers, you are not Jack Kerouac…you worked a ski season in Verbier.) In all honesty, the prospect of finding myself terrifies me (I wasn’t even aware I was lost) and was something I hoped to avoid at all costs. But, spurred on by a huge financial incentive to avoid Ryanair’s peak travel price gouging, I decided to extend my holiday in Italy for a few days by traveling to Rome alone. 

I tell myself that in peacetime I would have slummed it in a hostel, but since Rome is still reeling from its first wave of coronavirus, sharing a dormitory with 8 sweaty Australian backpackers was not worth the minimal authenticity kudos bonus. This is how I ended up in the euphemistically named ‘Hotel Sweet Home’. I cannot help but feel that its sweetness and homeliness was overstated. There was a veritable carpet of short dark curly hair on the bathroom floor (despite the fact I am strawberry blond). Additionally, my window was perfectly positioned to provide the 45 apartments opposite with a direct view into my bedroom and shower. But hey, it was  €22 a night, and I quite like an audience anyway. 

I dumped my bags and ran away from ‘Sweet Home’ and its unfashionable ‘Roma Termini’ neighbourhood as fast as possible. About half an hour in, I found my first problem with solo travel: starvation. If you look hard enough there’s going to be a problem with every restaurant in central Rome: there will be too many tripadvisor-ed troglodytic tourists, or the menu will be too expensive, or the maitre d’ looks like he would rather serve his right testicle as ‘il secundo’ than give you a table. If you aren’t travelling with other people, there’s no one to help make decisions about where to eat, or moan so that you make your mind up faster. The only restaurants which do not have these problems are the ones which both locals and tourists avoid, presumably because the carbonara comes with a complementary side of dysentery. Four hours later, having crossed the Tiber into Traverstevere, I eventually succumbed to the siren songs of a waitress when I almost passed out in the Piazza Trilussa. I was forcefully scooped up and frogmarched to the only table which was not shaded from the burning Roman midday sun. 

The following 45 minutes were some of the most uncomfortable in my life. At some point in this sweaty, shaky, paranoid ordeal, I discovered the second problem with solo travel: Not only are you alone, but everyone can see you are alone. I could almost hear what the other diners were saying:

“Oi Gaetano. What sort of chronic social leper goes to restaurants and eats outside by themself”

“Ay Marco, The gall! Any self-respecting outcast would stay home alone to weep into their pot noodles and binge on daytime TV .”

“Si si Gaetano, But not this prick. He actually travels to our country and broadcasts his loneliness to good honest citizens like us. It borders on masochistic exhibitionism.”

“He’s also English…cunt.”

In a desperate bid to rebrand my loneliness as intentional, I ordered a ‘mezzo’ of the house red, chainsmoked intensely (€5 for a packet of Marlboro Golds…) and stared at my book. These efforts, I hoped, recast me as the reclusive, nonconformist maverick which I so clearly am. The thing that upset me most was the extraordinary amount of attention I received from the waitress. In any other circumstance I would have relished barely coherent small talk and pregnant glances with the fair ‘Sofia’ (currently studying law at Sapienza University of Rome) but as a solo-traveller, I dreaded it. With oppressive regularity she came over to enquire about my welfare. It bordered on harassment. It was as if I had inadvertently won a 3-for-1 bundle of a tour guide, a handmaiden and a therapist. I refused to be pitied. I scowled harder at my book, smoked more cigarettes and finished my pizza and half litre of wine within thirty minutes.

As the dough induced food coma set in, I felt sure I needed a proper sit down. Somewhere shady with non-judgemental company. It was a Sunday and I couldn’t find any AA meetings so settled for the next best thing: Roman Catholic Mass. I wandered into the Basilica Santa Maria and slumped into one of the seats (carefully spaced at 1m intervals). The service began and despite my strong protestant credentials and utter ignorance of Italian (or was the service in Latin?) I finally felt relaxed. The choir sang beautifully and I enjoyed scanning the eclectic crowd of bonafide worshippers whilst melting into my chair. This reverie was short lived. A suffocating fog of incense soon enveloped the parishioners who were expected to stand up for most of the service. After the mass passed the hour mark, I felt close to collapsing again. What I needed was a stiff drink. Right on cue, ‘fratelli something-or-other’ chanted the echaristic prayer and began to circulate the bread which I seized upon. When he poured a hearty glass of wine, blessed it and downed it at the altar, I was overcome by the prospect of spirits (holy and inebriating) and felt weak at the knees. To my immense disappointment and rage, the generosity that the Catholics showed with the bread was not extended to alcoholic refreshments…apparently to comply with covid-19 regulations. Face masks and zoom yoga I can deal with, but this almost broke me. I only refrained from launching a crusade for booze backed by the canonical importance of the wine to the eucharistic feast because I had only understood a quarter of the service. 

Knackered, full of pizza and the (literal) body of Christ, I emerged back out into the piazzas which were starting to buzz with young people. I spotted a bar in Piazza S. Calisto which was reassuringly cheap and ordered my first ‘Peroni grande’ for  €2.50. The terrace seats were full of other students drinking with their friends so I thought that I might be able to strike up a conversation with someone. This didn’t work for a few reasons. First, when I say the seats were full, I mean that my only option was to perch uncomfortably on a strange smelling stone ledge across the piazza. This also placed me at the fringes of a pack vest clad, Italian patriarchs who did not look like they were about to take in an English tourist for any reason, other than as a hostage. The second impediment to my cultural assimilation was, as already mentioned, I speak no italian. I’m no Gregory Peck, nor was meant to be. Suavely sidling over to someone and buying them a Negroni was out of the question. Instead, all interactions had to be conducted at nursery level English or at the balls-achingly slow pace of google translate. After two hours of further reading, drinking and chain-smoking, the words of my pretentiously dense philosophy tome were starting to swim…but salvation was at hand.

I don’t think that angels have classically been portrayed with black leather flares, raven tresses and a nipple piercing but the following 72 hours made me sure that they should be. I met Nica when she made the 20 metre walk across the Piazza with her friends and asked to borrow my lighter. Faced with another four hours of drunkenly nodding off into my book, I literally leapt at the opportunity to interact with other humans. We got talking. We got drunk. She took me to dinner. She taught me how to swear in Italian. We got more drunk in a flat. We saw each other for the following four nights.

Maybe I was lucky and happened to be reading the right book in the right piazza at the right time. But I don’t think it could have happened if I hadn’t been alone. Give solo travelling a stab. You’ll meet some great people so long as you can survive the first 24 hours of starvation, loneliness and crippling social anxiety.

Eat, Sleep, Create, Repeat: An Artistic Odyssey

Maebh Howell
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Eat, Sleep, Create, Repeat: An Artistic Odyssey

Homer’s Odyssey opens with an evocation to the Muse, with varying translators rendering this opening line as “Tell me, Muse” (Lattimore, 1965) or “Sing to me of the man, Muse” (Fagles, 1996).  My favourite of the (relatively) modern translations into English, however, is that done by Fitzgerald in 1961, in which he translates the line as “Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story”.  Fitzgerald’s translation here captures beautifully the idea of the poet as a human vessel for the divine voice of poetry, depicting the story as not one sung or told to the narrator by the Muse, but created in collaboration with the Muse, a symbiotic relationship forged in creativity.  

Yet, this translation also captures many of the problems I’ve had with my own creative process.  With these opening lines in mind, I expect the words I write to come to me in a frenzy of godlike inspiration, the way I would imagine myself as a writer when I was a child, hunched over a desk, prose ceaselessly streaming out of the pen onto the smooth surface of the first page of a new notebook with ease.

But the creative process is never an easy one.  The blank page, once in my mind a symbol of opportunity, is now an object of fear for me.  It’s something that, in its emptiness, indicates a failure on my part, showing my lack of creativity and productivity, in all its papery nothingness.  Word counts become a frustration, glaring up at me from the bottom left corner of my laptop screen whilst a little voice in the back of my head tells me that whatever I am writing will be rubbish anyway.  

As an emotional writer of poetry, I’ll only ever put pen to paper in fits of extreme feeling, using it as an outlet when I feel that I cannot turn to anyone.  It seems to be the closest I’ll get to the divine inspiration, with the Muse replaced by anger or loneliness.  But these emotional bursts of creativity never last long.

I expect the words I write to come to me in a frenzy of godlike inspiration, prose ceaselessly streaming out of the pen onto the smooth surface of the first page of a new notebook with ease. But it’s never that easy

Instead, in the midst of writer’s block, whether I’m writing an essay or poetry or an article like this one, I have to force out words.  Wring them from the heavy mass of a resistant mind.  During lockdown, when I was writing to try and occupy the reams of time I had in isolation, a friend sent me an article about writing, and how there never is an “ideal” condition in which to write.  Jacquelynn Lyon in this 2019 article captures perfectly the problem I find with the idea of a Muse – that writing is “not something special, it’s just something I always do.”  Lyon posits that writing (or creating art in any form) can never be done under “ideal” conditions and that instead, one should “treat it like a neutral job you show up to.”  This point is interesting in the transactional quality to creating art that it suggests.  

If art becomes a “job” like any other, is the freedom of art as an outlet lost?  How can we reconcile our creativity (which by nature can be unquantifiable) with a culture which prioritises intense productivity and quantifiable results achieved under intense pressure?  How do we treat art once it becomes a commodity, something to be bought and sold, something that has to be made to pay rent? 

 I believe that the creation of anything is intrinsically beautiful, whether it’s a poem written on a scrap of paper or the next Odyssey.

In my mind, the constant pressure of productivity can manifest in multiple ways.  Sometimes, I am motivated by deadlines (you’ll often find me in the library speed typing an essay at 1 am, convinced that I am writing the next seminal work of English literature criticism), other times, the constant pressure to juggle productivity in every different facet of my life (balancing academic productivity with having something to show for my free time as well) has led to intense burnout.  The pressure to create art also seems to manifest itself like this.  I’m currently editing some poetry, and in doing so have had to create “art” (I’m hesitant to give my writing so grand a title) under a deadline.  

It’s something I rarely do, allotting time in my day in which I must sit down to write and not leaving it up to whatever emotional state I may be veering in and out of.  It has taught me that I can, if I try hard enough, write something however uninspired I am feeling.  And I think that’s the most important thing, for me, in the creation of art; that you are able to create something from nothing, whether or not it is “good” in your mind or not.  I believe that the creation of anything is intrinsically beautiful, whether it’s a poem written on a scrap of paper or the next Odyssey.

Creating, then, is a complicated thing.  It never comes as easily as you want it to, nor are you able to (for the most part) appreciate anything you’ve made, becoming too caught up in self-doubt.  I’d argue that sometimes, as Lyon suggests, treating art in a “neutral” manner, and removing it from the concepts of productivity or value which dominate the rest of the world, can be a valuable experiment in real creative expression.

Preview: V-Card

Abigail Howe
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Preview: V-Card

In a term where we’ve been starved of student drama, anything new is met with significant fanfare. While it’s tempting to be cynical, this play lives up to its own hype. In V-Card, written by Alison Hall, Hazel is every inch the typical student – until her friends find out she’s never had sex. They set out to ‘help’ and chaos ensues.

Hall’s writing is sharp and amusing, capturing everything from electric flirtation to cringy small talk to overenthusiastic but seemingly well-meaning housemates; the script is never afraid to get awkward or ridiculous. There is always a risk that student playwrights will slip into angst or slapstick, not doing justice to their subject matter. However, rather than catering to extremes, Hall instead cleverly and humorously addresses a variety of attitudes to virginity and sexuality. While this nuance is evident in V-Card’s writing, the show also serves as a fundraiser for GALOP, the UK’s only specifically LGBTQ+ anti-sexual violence charity.

Ellie Fullwood is brilliantly expressionistic and believably innocent as Hazel while Lorcan Cudlip Cook’s God – yes, God (Jesus also appears in the show) – is authoritative and ridiculous in equal measure. Glyn Owen, as Freddie, is perfectly boorish and surprisingly realistic, carrying off salmon-coloured trousers and a penchant for sadism. The cast all interact with assured ease, a difficult feat when working virtually.

The show was originally intended to be performed in a traditional format. However, the small matter of a pandemic quickly altered that. Hall told Cherwell that, while the news was initially “quite disappointing…ultimately, making it into a radio play was a blessing”. With the other pre-lockdown option being socially distanced heavy petting, a radio play seems more authentic, particularly considering the production’s liberal attitude to sound effects; I, for one, am curious to hear Smurf Bukkake’s song ‘I’ll Think of England When We Fuck’ and then to immediately repress all memories of it, unlike the play, which looks to be one to remember.

V-Card is piercingly shrewd, confidently witty and has adapted excellently to its current circumstances. Hazel may or may not lose her virginity, but you’d better not lose your ticket.

Image credit: Phillip Olney.

Brooms Up! A Guide to Oxford Quidditch

Louise Earnshaw
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Brooms Up! A Guide to Oxford Quidditch

I know what you’re thinking- isn’t Quidditch the fictional sport where wizards fly around on broomsticks trying to catch magical balls? 

Yes, and no. Although Quidditch has its roots in Harry Potter, it is so much more than that. Although not recognised by Sports England (meaning Quidditch players are not eligible for a blue), Quidditch is one of the fastest growing sports, with over 800 players throughout the UK. Encompassing elements of handball, dodgeball, and rugby, Quidditch is also unique in being one of the only full-contact, mixed gender team sports in the world. 

Established by students at Middlebury College (USA) in 2005, Quidditch is now played in over 40 countries worldwide. As a fast-paced, competitive, mixed gender sport, Quidditch has gained popularity, with teams competing annually in local, regional, national and international tournaments. 

So, how does it work? Each team consists of 7 players, divided between 4 positions. There are 3 chasers, 1 keeper, 2 beaters and a seeker, like in Harry Potter, each of which have different roles whilst on pitch. To tell the positions apart, players wear headbands of varying colours, and each colour designates their position in the game. Chasers wear white, beaters wear black, keepers wear green, and seekers wear yellow. As well as a diverse range of positions, up to 5 balls of different types are on pitch at all times. All of this activity on pitch makes the game even more exciting. 

Like the wizarding sport, “Muggle Quidditch” is played using broomsticks, but, unfortunately, they don’t fly! Made of roughly 1m of PVC piping, our broomsticks act as a handicap, much in the same way as not using your hands in football. Running with a broom is a little tricky at first, but is something you quickly get used to!

At each end of the pitch, there are three hoops, of different sizes, which act as goals. The hoops are guarded by the keeper (who wears a green headband), while chasers try to score in the opposite hoops. Chasers and keepers can score by throwing, carrying and/or driving the Quaffle- a volleyball- through the hoops. Each hoop is worth 10 points. 

Beaters attempt to hit the opposing team’s players with bludgers. These are slightly deflated dodgeballs which are used to knock opposing players out of the game. If a player is hit with a bludger, they are “beat” and must dismount their broom and tap back in at their own hoops before they can re-join the game. 

With three bludgers and four beaters in total on pitch at any one time, competition is fierce, and teams often attempt to steal the opposing teams bludgers to gain bludger control. Beating is therefore one of the most tactical and strategic elements of the game. On both offense and defence, beaters use the bludgers to clear paths for a team’s chasers to score, and help keepers protect their own hoops. 

Finally, there are the seekers. One of the most common questions we get asked when training is how the snitch works. Whilst the snitch does not fly, it is much smaller than the other balls as it is in the Harry Potter world. A referee known as the snitch runner attaches a sock with a tennis ball to the back of their shorts, which the seekers then have to catch to end the game. Snitches are only released 18 minutes into the game, and attempt to evade capture by the seekers. Snitches can run, dodge, and grapple with the seekers to ensure that they are not caught. Once a seeker catches the snitch, the match is over. Another key difference, however, is that the snitch is only worth 30 points, not 150 like in the Harry Potter version.

To first time viewers, the game can seem chaotic with 5 balls and 14 players on the pitch at any one time, but the complex strategy involved is what a lot of players enjoy about the game. Each game is always different – with the sheer number of tactical possibilities making it all the more exciting. 

Of course, due to Covid-19, we have had to adapt the game slightly. In line with government guidance, teams must comply with social distancing restrictions, train in groups of six, with no contact permitted between players. Equipment is not shared between groups, and kit is cleaned before and after training. We also have plenty of masks and hand sanitizer at the ready to ensure player safety. All teams in the UK are also required to submit a Risk Assessment to Quidditch UK, the national Quidditch organisation, in order to resume training.

Most importantly, Quidditch is inclusive and diverse, and welcomes all players regardless of their background. Quidditch is for everyone, irrespective of age, experience, ability or gender- including those from an LGBTQ+ background and who identify within the trans or non-binary community. 

Quidditch is one of the most progressive sports for gender equality. Positions are open to anyone, regardless of their gender identity, allowing all individuals to play as the gender they identify as within an open and accepting community. 

One of the major rules is the gender rule: no more than 4 players from one team who identify as the same gender can be on pitch at a single time. This means that all players are valued based on their skills, not their genders. You will frequently see smaller players tackle players much larger than themselves- not something often seen in traditional single-sex sports! 

While many of our members come from other sporting backgrounds, including rugby, hockey and gymnastics, Quidditch can be enjoyed by anyone, regardless of ability. Whether you’re a top athlete, or a complete beginner, there is always a place for you on the pitch! Don’t worry about getting confused with rules or making a mistake, everyone on the team is friendly and happy to help- and with the six month break I think I dropped more balls than I caught last practice!

As a relatively new sport, quidditch is constantly evolving. The rules are updated on a regular basis, with new ideas, different gameplay styles and greater protection for players. With opportunities to help develop the sport on a team, national or international level, quidditch continually allows you to push yourself, no matter what level you’re at.

Here in Oxford, Oxford Universities Quidditch Club, welcomes students from both the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University. Originally established in 2011, Oxford boasts one of the oldest quidditch clubs in the world. Having dominated the early years of UK quidditch, Oxford has recently experienced a resurgence in success, with the Radcliffe Chimeras (the club’s first team) being crowned Development Cup champions in March 2020. While we may have to wait a while until the next tournament, the team is looking forward to continuing its success, hopefully reclaiming the title of national champions.

We are also lucky to train alongside the local community team, the Oxford Mammoths. Consisting of experienced players, the Mammoths help us to develop as a team and coach us during tournaments, as well as occasionally running joint socials together.

OUQC train regularly, on Wednesdays and Sundays at 2-4pm in University Parks. We also have regular socials, currently a mixture of online and face to face, where you can meet our players. Quidditch is a great way to get involved with sport at a university level, regardless of your previous sporting background or experience! “Quidditch is ridiculous in every single way, but quite frankly who cares? It’s the most fun you’ll ever have,” says Nadine Matough, President of OUQC.

So if you fancy giving quidditch a go, come along to one of our training sessions or follow the Oxford Universities Quidditch Club Facebook page.

Making Football Fun: Lessons from Carlos Kaiser

Bailey Kavanagh
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Making Football Fun: Lessons from Carlos Kaiser

I’d like to start with the story of Carlos Raposo. Please bear with me if you’ve heard it before. Raposo, or ‘Kaiser’, as he was better known, was one of Brazil’s most famous footballers for over 20 years and perhaps the most spectacular conman in the sport’s history. Despite his standing as a footballing superstar, and his status as a close friend of actual Brazilian footballing legends Bebeto and Renato Gaúcho, he never appeared in a single competitive fixture.

Kaiser basically couldn’t play football, and built a career spanning three decades off of a completely manufactured reputation. In his own words, he “wanted to be a footballer, but did not want to play football”. The con, at its simplest, involved befriending huge numbers of journalists, scouts and players during his extravagant partying, and then asking them to vouch for him whenever he needed a transfer.

Naturally, he needed transfers often – if he’d ever actually kicked a ball, he would have been exposed as a fraud and unceremoniously kicked out of football for good. At every new club, after arriving to much fanfare, he would claim to be injured, out of match fitness, or not yet sharp enough to train with the ball. If the club pushed him too hard, he would hire a dentist to claim that a focal infection would keep him on the sidelines. When his employers invariably got fed up, Kaiser would just have his friends in the media write a new series of fictional stories about him to get him re-hired, and the partying would continue.

The lengths that the so-called “King of Rio” would go to to not play football only escalated as his renown grew. He paid youth team players to injure him and supposedly bribed a doctor that one club hired to cure him of his made up ailments. In 1986, after a move to Europe, his new club Gazélec Ajaccio arranged a training session in front of fans to celebrate his arrival. Instead of playing badly and ruining his image as one of Brazil’s most exciting exports, Kaiser spent the entire session kicking the ball into the stands and kissing the badge.

At Bangu, he was actually put on the bench. This was a disaster waiting to happen. At 2-0 down, Kaiser was sent to warm up. After 10 years, he was going to be made to play, and his life as a playboy footballer would be over. His relationships with the footballing elite of Rio would collapse, he’d lose access to the exclusive clubs he so loved, and the near constant drug-fuelled womanising would end. This could not be allowed. He started a riot. Acting upon the unseen ‘provocations’ of opposition fans, he jumped the fence, started fighting, and was shown a red card before he could come on. His contract was extended for six months and his salary doubled as a thank you for defending the club’s honour.

His entire career is shrouded in mystery. Kaiser would tell you that he spent eight years in France, becoming a club legend at Ajaccio. Wikipedia tentatively claim that he “allegedly” played there for two years. The Ajaccio chairman does not remember him ever showing up. The entire story feels like a period piece, set on the wonderful backdrop of Brazilian football culture of the 70s and 80s. Showmanship, pomp and spectacle stood above sporting talent as the keys to impressing the gatekeepers of Rio’s socialite class. It wasn’t so much about being a good footballer, it was about being a cool footballer, and Kaiser was the coolest of them all.

I can’t be alone in thinking that it’s a shame that the tale of ‘the greatest footballer to never play football’ has to be consigned to the history books – it’s just too much fun for that. And yet, it is so obviously clear that it couldn’t happen today. The internet would have hung Kaiser out to dry of course, but the issue to me seems to be more about how we as fans interact with our sports teams. We’re watching too closely. If anyone had taken the time to actually check, to hunt down his stats, to know everything about his career path, playing style and footballing philosophy, he wouldn’t have stood a chance. Kaiser was able to exist not because he was pre-internet, but because the footballing world didn’t sweat the small stuff as much.

Think about what would happen today if Kaiser signed for your club. First would come the weeks of brilliantly click-baitey news articles. Someone would put a compilation of all his greatest moments to dubstep and post it to Youtube Someone else would make a montage of all his worst moments, and use it as evidence to argue that the club should fire the scouting department. There would be dozens of Twitter threads about whether he should be deployed in a 4-4-2 or a 4-3-3. Before anyone is actually photographed holding the shirt, hundreds of thousands of small conversations happen, about every single element of the deal, each one to be rendered irrelevant the second a ball is kicked.

I was watching the end of this summer’s transfer window closely, probably too closely. I’m an Arsenal supporter, and was anxious to see if long-promised midfield reinforcements were actually going to show up. Late on deadline day, a friend sent me a link tracking a private plane that had left Madrid about an hour earlier. He argued that this Athletico Madrid’s Thomas Partey was on the plane, and that this was the final piece of evidence that we needed before we could rest easy. (The friend was wrong, the plane took a telling right-hand turn over Paris).

I’m not trying to argue that anyone should care less, or even that they should spend less time thinking about football, but I am claiming that we might be thinking about the wrong stuff. It’s great that fans get excited about new signings, tracking planes might just be unhelpful. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with caring about the details, but I do wonder if anyone’s enjoyment of football is in any way enhanced by knowing the name of your club’s goalkeeping coach.

More and more, we convince ourselves that all the stuff around the game is just as interesting and worth caring about as the actual football. We know more than ever about the exact inner-workings of our clubs and their power-dynamics. We speculate about sell-on and buy-back clauses in player contracts. We worry about the effect on the wage structure of a big new signing. We pretend to all be statisticians, business consultants, and fitness experts to show how much we care. It seems to me that following a sport, and caring about as much as we do about the detail is like to sitting way too close to the television. You can see every pixel, sure, but they’re individually meaningless, and the movie would just be prettier if you moved back a bit and enjoyed watching them link up.

I think that this problem extends beyond how we watch football, and into how the game is played. I was excited for the introduction of VAR, but understand now why there is so much disdain for every decision it makes. There is nothing pretty about a marginal offside call. Absolutely no-one is watching football to figure out whether your hair counts as a part of your body that can play a striker on-side. We spend an absurd amount of time talking about the intricacies of the hand-ball rule, and debating where arms begin and shoulders end, whether arm-pits are a part of the body, or just the gap between your arm and your shoulder. The hand-ball rule ideally, would be the simplest rule in football! Its basic purpose is to separate football from rugby. It’s there to stop people picking the ball up, or volleyball-spiking it into the goal. Anyone who plays casual football understands that, and can tell intuitively when a foul is being committed. There is a natural sense of what is and isn’t a hand-ball, that seemed to largely work until now. On the pitch, somehow, football needs to relax.

This season, I’m going to try to care about football just as much as before, but sweat the small stuff less. Hopefully, I’ll forget the name of the Arsenal CEO, and worry less about the club’s finances. I’ll try to watch games, to enjoy the sport, the pageantry and the showmanship before checking twitter to find out who is playing well. I’d like to think that if football as a whole left scouting to the scouts, and accounting to the accountants, and we all just switched off a little, another story as brilliant as Carlos Kaiser’s would come along. If there ever comes to be another fake footballer, I hope that none of us will be paying enough attention to notice him.

Interview: New University Mental Health Taskforce launched

Joe Hyland Deeson and Abigail Howe
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Interview: New University Mental Health Taskforce launched

Oxford University has launched a Mental Health Task Force to consider the “immediate needs” of students during the pandemic after observing an increase in demand for welfare services over the long vacation. The Task Force will work through until the end of January and bring together those from the NHS, the University’s Counselling and Disability Services, as well as representatives from colleges and students. Cherwell spoke to Gillian Hamnett, the Director of Student Welfare and Support Services across the University, and Sir Tim Hitchens, President of Wolfson College, who are leading the Mental Health Task Force.

While the Mental Health Task Force has only been publicised recently, it has been planned since the long vacation. Tim Hitchens stated: “Over the summer it became clear that we had not only a significantly increased number of mental health challenges but also that we would have a record number of students at the university this term… In September, we felt that we ought to have a task force which for a limited period focussed on making sure that the university took policy decisions and focussed on moving resources”. He continued: “What we’re doing is bringing people together and offering recommendations to those organisations that do make the decisions”. 

Gillian Hamnett expanded on this, clarifying the link between this Task Force and the University’s previous actions regarding mental health: “The Mental Health Task Force complements the longer term strategic work of the Student Wellbeing and Mental Health strategy which was launched last year but that takes a much longer view”. 

The Student Wellbeing and Mental Health strategy was launched in October 2019 and plans to build on the £2.7 million spent on welfare services in 2018-19 and “embed wellbeing into all aspects of students’ university life, from learning and life skills to community, inclusion and support.” Hamnett also highlighted the overlap between those with involvement in the Mental Health Task Force and those who are making longer term decisions: “The idea is that the Task Force can benefit from their expertise and feedback to longer term strategy, even though its remit is quite short.”

One of the first steps taken by the Mental Health Task Force has been to provide £150,000 to reinforce the University’s Counselling Service over this term and £50,000 over the Christmas period. Hitchens described the tangible impact of this support: “The average waiting time for the service is about 8.9 days and we got to the period a few weeks ago where it was nearly 4 weeks… with more resources in the counseling service the waiting time for access which has been lengthening is steadying off and will shorten: that will be an immediate response”. 

Hitchens also highlighted the Counselling Service’s website as a preventative resource, which has information ranging from articles about “how to survive alone in a room” to podcasts about the “challenges of COVID”. The University has also subscribed to Togetherall. Hamnett said that the service, originally known as Big White Wall “offers quite a lot of self-reflection and self-help resources, but is there to help you see if you have tipped over into needing a more focussed intervention, but also the advice on the challenges of living how we’re living right now”.

Right now, many students are concerned for their mental health over the winter vacation, especially those who are staying in Oxford.  One of the Mental Health Task Force’s aims is to plan “for the mental health needs of students over the vacations”. Hamnett explained that “for students staying over the vacation we’re hoping to produce some specific information on what you can do to support yourself in a way that perhaps hasn’t always been clear in the past”. An additional sum of money will also ensure that the Counselling Service can provide greater provision over the vacation.

Another of the Mental Health Task Force’s aims is advising “on the mental health impact and use of University policies including the Fitness to Study programme during the pandemic”. This does include disciplinary policies for those who are found to have breached any rules prompted by COVID-19. 

However, Hamnett stressed that this aim was not a move towards a universal University policy: “The Task Force can’t set colleges’ discipline policies but it can advise on specific issues where we think there might be mental health implications and say here are some things that we can take into account. We can’t get a particular college to change their policy or their approach. We need to be realistic about what we can influence and what we can’t.”

Speaking about the Fitness to Study framework, which determines “whether a student is fit to study or to return to study after a period of leave for medical, psychological, or emotional problems” and has been controversial for student suspensions, Hitchens said: “I know [it] has attracted a certain stigma that it is somehow something to do with discipline rather than health and wellbeing” but that he wished for the Fitness to Study process to “be more widely understood as not part of the disciplinary process but as a way in which we can support those students which, for a variety of reasons which could include mental health challenges, are not fit to study and support them through to the stage where they are”.

Both Hamnett and Hitchens highlighted the importance of welfare within colleges, with Hitchens noting the “enormous amount of expertise developed by the Peer Supporters and welfare officers in colleges who are often trained and supported by people from the Counselling Service”. However, they are also seeking to provide support for these students. Hitchens continued: “I would hope  that if you are someone in a college with responsibility for the mental health of your students, if you felt a little unsupported there should be an added layer of professional support to some of those people”.

All Souls College change Codrington Library name, but keep statue of slaveholder

Amelia Wood
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All Souls College change Codrington Library name, but keep statue of slaveholder

All Souls College’s Governing Body has announced that they will no longer call their college library ‘the Codrington Library’, acknowledging that plantations worked by enslaved people were the source of revenue for Codrington’s donation. A new name for the library has not been specified.

However, the governing body stopped short of deciding to remove the statue of Codrington which stands in the centre of the library.

The college said instead that they would seek to “investigate further forms of memorialisation and contextualisation within the library, which will draw attention to the presence of enslaved people on the Codrington plantations, and will express the College’s abhorrence of slavery.”

In a statement published online, All Souls acknowledged that “Codrington’s wealth derived largely from his family’s activities in the West Indies, where they owned plantations worked by enslaved people of African descent.” 

The college noted their efforts over the past three years to address the Codrington legacy. The college said they had donated £100,000 to Codrington College, Barbados, and they permanently set aside £6 million of the College’s endowment to fully fund three graduate studentships at Oxford for students from the Caribbean. 

On the statute, they have installed “a large memorial plaque at the entrance to the library, ‘In memory of those who worked in slavery on the Codrington plantations in the West Indies’.”

Christopher Codrington (1668-1710) was a Barbadian-born English slaveholder, soldier, and colonial governor in the West Indies. Educated at Christ Church Oxford, he was later elected to All Souls college as a probationer fellow in 1690. In 1698, he succeeded his father as commander-in-chief and captain-general of the Leeward Islands, an island group in the northeast Caribbean Sea. He also inherited his father’s estates, plantations, and enslaved people on the islands. 

A complaint was made against his rule by the inhabitants of Antigua which was later dismissed by the House of Commons. In 1703, after he failed to capture Guadeloupe as part of a war with France and Spain, he left the governorship and spent the rest of his life on his plantations in Barbados. His body is buried in the All Souls Chapel. 

In his will he left £10,000 and £6,000 worth of books to All Souls College, which they used to establish the library. His will also left two plantations in Barbados to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, with instructions to continue slaveholding. 

Common Ground Oxford, a student-led movement founded to examine Oxford University’s colonial past, published the following statement, calling for further action: “We welcome All Souls College’s recent statement on Codrington’s legacy at the College, and we are writing today with hopes for further discussion and change… 

“However, the decision to retain Henry Cheere’s statue of slave-owner Christopher Codrington in All Souls’ Library came as a great disappointment to us. This decision exhibits All Souls’ inability to stand in solidarity with Black and POC communities, who have campaigned to make Oxford reckon with its past for decades. The choice to preserve the statue cannot be reconciled with the College’s stated commitments to ‘investigate further forms of memorialisation and contextualisation’ with regards to Codrington’s legacy…

“Codrington’s legacy is his wealth, accumulated from systematic sexual exploitation, trafficking and mass murder…This has caused generational trauma not just for their descendants, but for all people of African & Caribbean descent to this day…

“Physically, this statue cannot be made neutral: it is positioned such that onlookers stand at his stone feet, its pose is one of heroism and prestige. No plaque could sanitise the harm of continuing to elevate this slave-owner. No plaque could do justice to the thousands of enslaved people whose forced labour generated the wealth on which All Souls Library stands.”

Read Common Ground Oxford’s full statement here. Read All Souls College’s statement here.

Great Thunberg’s Spitting Image Sketch and the Problem with Political Satire

Thomas McKeown
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Great Thunberg’s Spitting Image Sketch and the Problem with Political Satire

Between 1984 and 1996, the BAFTA and Emmy-winning satire show Spitting Image spoke truth to power on British television. If you were one of the 15 million people who tuned into ITV on Sunday primetime, you’d find caricature puppet versions of smarmy politicians, shameless celebrities and vapid sports stars being hysterically impersonated and ridiculed. The show revolved around and revelled in its political incorrectness, and now 24 years later – at what many are calling a more necessary time than ever – it’s back.

Just three episodes of the first season have been released so far, but by all accounts it’s just as irreverent and fearless as it was all those years ago. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at their YouTube channel. “Spitting Image: Vicious, Grotesque, Brilliant”, boasts the title of one promotional trailer viewed almost half a million times in three days. And that’s not to mention the reception of the audience: “Finally a blow of fresh air. Your politically incorrect humour is very much needed nowadays,” sighs one commenter with a Union Jack as their display picture. You can see where they’re coming from: if ever there was a year where some satire would serve as a well-received distraction, 2020’s the one – and don’t you worry, for Trump, Brexit, Boris and COVID are all firmly in Spitting Image’s crosshairs.

But among the satirical subjects targeted in the reboot of the show, one name particularly stands out to me: Greta Thunberg. A 17-year-old with Asperger’s whose sole misdemeanour was to dare to take the ruling class of Europe to task regarding their lack of sufficient policy to prevent an environmental crisis. The decision to make Thunberg a recurring character seems short-sighted at best, and outright hateful at worst. If they had to include a mock puppet of her, they could’ve at least made it funny. In the pilot episode, the severe-looking caricature of Greta appears just once, presenting the weather forecast and declaring that the weather will be “HOT”. Haha! Get it? She’s the weirdo climate change girl! The second episode features a longer sketch wherein Greta goes to a West Ham match with a stereotypical cockney bloke and ends up becoming so incensed over the football that she insists on protesting and coming back every week to fix the injustices she sees on the pitch. Here it is, if you’re interested:

https://twitter.com/mchammer66/status/1315008443250552837

Sure, I don’t think it’s particularly funny, but of course, humour is subjective. People might laugh at certain parts, and that’s completely fine – we don’t all have the same taste. What, to me, is the more concerning aspect of all of this is the ‘If It’s Getting The Snowflakes Offended Then It Must Be Good’ brigade coming out in their droves to champion scenes like these, and the reboot of Spitting Image on the whole, as a necessary and effective satire show in 2020. The problem is twofold: firstly, that the show offers critique of people like Greta who don’t really deserve ridicule; and secondly, that all of the critique is completely toothless. Compared to the cutting-edge and culture-shaping Spitting Image of the 80s and 90s, this reboot seems to have taken out its dentures and started sipping the political and environmental crises through a straw.

Even if you happen to think scenes depicting Greta going to the football or Boris having sex with coronavirus itself (yes, seriously) make for great television, the satire still doesn’t break through and offer any effective and long-lasting criticism of the increasingly worrying developments around the world. Satirical novelist Jonathan Coe has reflected on the purpose of humour, saying: “laughter is a kind of last resort – if you’re up against a problem that’s completely (unsolvable), a situation for which there is no human solution and never will be, then OK – let’s laugh about it”. And in genres of comedy which don’t have any other stated purpose, like slapstick or sitcoms, that’s brilliant. When Laurel and Hardy can’t push a piano up the stairs, we’re laughing at them struggling because they’re reflecting a failure of the human condition, showing their exaggerated inability to fight against the forces of physics. But when the subject is political problems, and the genre is satire shows which at least purportedly attempt to make us think about those problems, the effect seems to get lost somewhat. Unlike in slapstick, you can’t only go for the joke or only present the absurdity of what’s on screen if you want to actually make people see Trump, Boris or indeed Greta Thunberg as people worthy of critique. Plenty of folks love the ‘black comedy’ and political incorrectness of the reboot of Spitting Image, but what am I meant to actually be thinking when I’m watching the Prime Minister seducing a strain of a deadly virus in bed? When the weirdly widely faced Greta puppet laments that “the referee has stolen my childhood with his erratic decision making,” what’s actually being said about her effectiveness as a leader in the fight against climate change? Britbox director Reemah Sakaan has responded to criticism of Thunberg’s inclusion, saying that: It’s a very straightforward joke and is nothing to do with her as an individual,” but that’s exactly the problem: if the jokes are straightforward and there isn’t any criticism of individuals being offered, then it seems fairly clear to me that the modern reboot of Spitting Image is no satire at all.

A lot of people like to say that the new wave of political correctness has marked the death of inappropriate humour. I think quite the opposite. Satire in the 21st century has the potential to be both amazingly funny and a priceless tool in holding celebrities accountable and speaking truth to power, but the true intention of the comedy needs to be crystal clear, equal parts court jester and town crier. In the past fifteen years, the overwhelming majority of popular satire has been weak enough to warrant a pat on the head and even an endorsement from the ruling class, rendering it utterly redundant. Of course, it can still be funny. 2008 US Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin is almost as famous for being perfectly and hilariously impersonated by Tina Fay on Saturday Night Live as she is for her political career. But when Fay chose to discuss the mechanics and humour of her own impression rather than the intention of the satire on popular US talk shows, and when Saturday Night Live chose to air an episode with a collaboration(!) between Tina Fey and the real politician she was impersonating just weeks before the 2008 Presidential election, the utter pointlessness of the show’s attempt at satire became evident. Viewers weren’t switching off their screens more aware of Sarah Palin’s tendency to avoid questions, nor her views on same-sex marriage or Second Amendment rights. If anything, SNL’s depiction of Palin only served to make her more likeable.

Spitting Image’s return has the potential to bring back effective political satire at a time when it’s most needed and after, but their choice of characters and ad hominem-oriented sketches have missed the mark. If they can stop being so busy concerning themselves with trying so hard to be funny and deliberately and clumsily overstepping the boundaries, they might just end up creating satire with a real purpose.

Illustration by Amir Pichhadze.
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