It was uncommonly sultry and dark when I arrived at the Winchester water meadows. The scene was a near stereotype, and it reminded me of those decrepit – far too embellished – landscapes you see in many royal palaces. Dark canvases from wall to wall with a gaze rethought man by man to show a season wrapped in a bouquet, flourish and polish, sultry pastoral happiness down to the darkness of the very greens of the ancient cottage trees. You could imagine now where the grovelling artist would place those midnight blue pillars, romanesque ruins to an otherwise normal landscape. It was in this state of mind in which a variety of illusions came to me as I walked; down and down those far too trodden paths laden with leaves. They formed small pools of water from the far too recent rain.
Light cast out through the trees refracting around the long shadows of the grass, knifelike beams of pure light like dull office blinds. Bathed in light now the orange, yellow, red, fittered about in the air as it came to account within the beams of the orange light, like a bonfire on a lonely heath surrounded by the greenness of nature clinging onto remnants of summer. How they turn, and turn, and turn, softly as you look out in the early morning past the thatch eve runs, into the silence of the lost songs of spring which fill the air with the brisk sounds of leaves caught in amongst willowing wind. Every syllable speaks of spring’s sadness demesne, as it turns and turns and turns. Now the noise emerges from the red shadows, the red floor of the old forest comes alive as it forms: and turns, and moves, and forms, and sees, and shakes, and moves, and turns, and turns, and turns, sand dripping through the hourglass, the rotting fruit of a Dutch still life, fortune and her wheel, orange-tinged and yellow air in the soft dying of the morning mist which begins to lift. I continue to walk.
Finally the mist lifts and the blueness of the sky becomes visible. A moon on the horizon, water still, mirrorlike, and clear. Above a noise descends, drooping and getting louder. Gathering swallows twist and move, noise fills the air as they make their way through the trees, turning and forming as the light comes together. But the shadow of melancholy still lurks in the depth of this garden. I wonder what John Keats thought when he made this walk two hundred years ago. His season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Looking up I imagined how the scene would look from below, through the midnight blue tree trunks and the floor littered with a rosy hue, and how it turns, and turns, and turns, and turns. Immortalising that perfect decrepit landscape.
Fewer women than men named Greg are speaking at Oxford PPE Society events this term.
Their termcard, released a couple of weeks ago, included thirteen men and only one woman. To add insult to injury, the single woman’s name was spelt wrong, as “Bonnie Honnig” rather than “Honig”.
Image via PPE Society Facebook
The lack of female representation seems less surprising when the composition of PPE Soc’s committee is considered. Its committee page reveals that all executive office-holders were male in Trinity 2020: the president, president-elect, secretary, treasurer, head of events, head of sponsorship, and head of marketing. Its description page mentions the notable speakers it has previously invited: all four are male, however it is true that in Trinity 11 of 25 speakers were women.
Tutors and reading lists are overwhelmingly male, too. Last year, People for Womxn in Philosophy (PWIP) highlighted the fact that only 2 of 42 first-year General Philosophy readings were by women, and released an alternative reading list. An optional feminist philosophy course was only introduced in 2018. In Finals core lectures this term (Michaelmas 2020), 15 men are giving philosophy lectures, compared to only two women (one of whom is teaching the feminist philosophy course).
This was one reason Musiab Bhat, President of the Oxford PPE Society, offered for the lack of women on term-cards: “Many of the academics we invite,” he wrote in an email to Cherwell, “are from our reading lists, which tend to be weighted towards men.”
“I’ve only been taught by one woman throughout my whole degree,” Nino Tsouloukidse, a third-year PPE-ist, told Cherwell. “And the reason I was taught by a woman was because I do the feminism and philosophy special subject; I’m pretty sure some of us won’t have been taught by any women at all.”
There is a dearth of female mentors in the field: Millie Prince-Hodges, another PPE-ist, said: “Until I had a female tutor, academia seemed like it could never be for me. I’d never been able to picture myself as an academic, because there are so few role models presented to us.”
And female tutors can be more than role models – they can make other aspects of the course more inclusive. “I had one female tutor,” said Asisa Singh, a PPE-ist at Queen’s, “and you could really see the difference in the reading lists. We read lots of women, feminist critiques, non-white thinkers. I loved her classes.” Especially given the subjects within PPE, she said, women writers were important: “When you’re talking about justice, how can you ignore the most marginalised figures?”
Smaranda Moroșanu, at Oriel, had had one female tutor, who “fostered a very different environment in her tutorials. The usual tendency is for male students to be more verbose, which isn’t usually correlated to the quality of their arguments. The only tutor who flagged that was my female one.”
***
The absence of women – as speakers, tutors, and classmates – contributes to a male-dominated atmosphere. “I felt my self-esteem drop when I came here,” Prince-Hodges said.
Image by Beatrice Boileau
“In this environment – where you have no female role models, no female classmates, you don’t see women in the readings – your confidence in the work you produce is undermined.”
“Often I’ve said things and my [male] tutorial partners rephrased them, more loudly, and been praised,” she told Cherwell. All of the PPE-ists I talked to could recall specific tutorials where male tutorial partners had monopolised the tutorial without their (usually male) tutor intervening.
Tsouloukidse described a first-year politics tutorial, where she was criticised for not being assertive enough, and told that this was because she was a woman. “I know it was well-intended,” she said, but being told to write more like a man “just reinforced the idea that to do well in a male-dominated world you have to act like one.”
“In my opinion the degree does foster an environment where typically male characteristics are encouraged, like being assertive, loud, having political discussions for the sake of it rather than about content,” Tsouloukidse said.
***
Some colleges are trying to improve matters. Balliol’s intake of PPE-ists in 2019 had more women than men, and the college has begun hosting women-only days for prospective state-school applicants. Christ Church, too, holds ‘women in PPE’ events each year to encourage female applicants. Somerville’s third-year cohort has equal numbers of men and women, and the college has female tutors in politics and philosophy.
And some women are taking matters into their own hands: Moroșanu told me about a group of female PPE-ists at Oriel, the ‘PPEttes’. “I’d recommend that all women in PPE do something similar,” she said, describing how helpful she’d found it to share experiences and strategies.
“We recognise that there is a broad problem of female representation in Economics,” said the Economics Society when approached for comment; the PPE Society said similar, acknowledging that there was “still much work to be done.” Both societies stated that they had tried to invite more female speakers; the PPE Society pointed out that, although in Trinity they had had no women in their executive committee, they had “a number of women” (two) this term.
***
Despite these attempts, the societies’ termcards and committees remained immensely male-dominated. It’s particularly worrying that Oxford student societies are furthering the underrepresentation of women. As Singh tells me, “We put on events and societies because we don’t think we’re getting these things from our degree.”. But if there are so few women tutors, lecturers, authors, classmates, “where are people supposed to get [a woman’s perspective] from?”
Both the Economics and PPE Societies told Cherwell that it had been difficult to get female speakers; the PPE Society had “invited over 50 women,” while Economics Society had “invite[d] a number of female speakers but were unable to confirm any due to busy speaker schedules.” And both pointed out the lack of female representation within politics, philosophy, and economics, as a factor complicating the invitation of women.
But many PPE-ists I spoke to were sceptical of this excuse. “It’s not the case that you just can’t get women,” Singh said. “I’ve managed events, and that just doesn’t hold up. It’s not true that there are no women politicians or economists. Occasionally it might be harder, but the fact that [it isn’t a primary concern] says so much about the priorities of people running these societies.”
Moroșanu agreed: “It’s these societies’ responsibility to make more of an effort,” she said: “I was part of the Oxford Women in Business society for two years. We had no problems finding very qualified women in these areas to speak. If you’re committed, it can easily be done.”
Seeing successful female academics is good in terms of encouraging female students, as Prince-Hodges pointed out: including woman speakers also just adds interest. As Singh said, “it would make their termcard better. It’s about having different perspectives.”
“It matters – of course it matters,” said Prince-Hodges about the lack of women on termcards: “Gender does affect how you view the world.”
The PPE Society – aiming to ‘host the world’s leading figures’ – is symptomatic of a broader issue with the degree. When only men are deemed ‘leading figures’, invited to talk at prestigious societies, included on the core PPE readings, and teaching undergraduates, is it surprising that women are less likely to apply, to be accepted, and to excel?
Almost immediately, demonstrations began in more than 400 cities and towns, known collectively as the ‘women’s strike’, characterized by a red lightning bolt. Not just young liberally-minded women joined; many football fans, bus drivers, and citizens of PiS constituencies also participated in the demonstrations. A notable protest interrupted a church service with women dressed as Margaret Atwood’s dystopian surrogate handmaids. Warsaw independent media, Gazeta Wyborcza, found that 59% of their polled citizens disagree with the changes – on the 30th of October, Warsaw became the site of the largest protest since PiS came to power in 2015, and since the end of the socialist regime in 1989, attracting an estimated 100 000 people.
In a statement, Jarosław Kaczyński, Poland’s de-facto leader and head of PiS, claimed protesters were on a mission to “destroy” the country and called for the protection of the Catholic Church, conveniently disregarding the fact that demonstrations were also concentrated in front of PiS MP offices and his own home. The party failed to condemn counter-protests joined by far-right allies who violently clashed with peaceful demonstrators over the week; some even believed Kaczyński’s statement motivated them further.
The last time PiS proposed plans to restrict abortion in 2016, public outcry managed to table the discussion. Before the historic protest, President Andrzej Duda proposed for abortion to be allowed in the case of terminal foetal defects, but in other cases, like Down’s syndrome, to be outlawed. This is a shift from the ruling, but it satisfies neither women’s rights groups nor radical right-wing government officials. On Tuesday, the government indefinitely delayed the publishing of the court ruling and therefore transfer into legislation, in response to the protests, which gave hope to many. Yet the delay itself was deemed unconstitutional by legal experts; it is being held in limbo, easily reversible at any moment by a government with a questionable relationship to the constitution.
Four years and countless manipulations of state institutions later, do protesters stand a real chance of winning this round?
The ruling is part of the polarization of the nation by PiS, whose agenda centres around the Catholic Church and the protection of “Polish values”, pushing a populist cocktail of anti-EU, anti-immigration, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-abortion rhetoric. Marta Kotswas, a scholar of Polish populism at UCL noted “an alignment between the political authorities, the church and militant right-wing groups”. The suggested near-total ban on abortion cast women as what Kotswas calls “bargaining chip[s]”, in an authoritarian move unfit for a nation calling itself a European democracy.
PiS has been undermining the values and authority of the EU ever since the marginal and shocking victory of President Duda in 2015. Since then, the party has faced criticism for packing the Constitutional Tribunal with partisans and most notably directly appointing its president, Julia Przyłębska, star of the recent ruling, while side-stepping the constitutionally outlined election process. The Supreme Court has also suffered a loss of independence over Duda’s last term. After overtaking the judiciary, PiS repressed independent media by fining outlets covering anti-government protests, planning to tighten restrictions and push out foreign-owned media, and by hijacking the national news outlet as a propaganda mouthpiece. These processes have not gone unnoticed – in the notorious press freedom index created by Reporters without Borders (RSF), Poland ranks 62nd in the world in 2020, down from 18th in 2015 when PiS first came to power.
This summer, Poland held presidential elections where the liberal, pro-Europe, centre-right mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, narrowly missed a victory. Incumbent president Duda was re-elected with a hair-splitting 51% majority – one that top political scientists and commentators were unable to predict. Polarization is mounting in Poland and the governing party appears to be doing everything in their power to exacerbate it. The ruling on abortion is only the tip of the iceberg for a party whose elected representative claimed LGBT “ideology” was worse than communism and who failed to denounce a far-right white supremacist march in 2017 – the interior minister called the manifestation of this phenomenon “a beautiful sight”.
Having severed a separation of powers, and on the path to further restriction of independent media, Poland is at odds with the EU which hailed those two pillars as key conditions for membership. This also signals a final departure from the image of a promising, young, post-Soviet liberal democracy.
In October, Kaczyński announced that Poland would veto the EU’s coronavirus recovery package if Brussels made it conditional upon improvements over the rule of law, showing no sign of backing down on radical reforms. He compared the actions of the EU to those of the Soviet Union – an ironic comparison coming from a government whose agenda has recently jeopardized inalienable personal rights and especially considering that Poland is famed for being the first to peacefully remove authoritarian Soviet socialism.
The Eurobarometer found that of those surveyed in Poland in 2019, 54% tended to trust the EU as an institution, while only 35% tended to trust the Polish parliament and government. But the EU’s hands are tied. Any attempt to strip Poland’s vote or invoke sanctions will not pass without unanimity, which is guaranteed to be blocked by Hungary, led by authoritarian PiS ally, Viktor Orban. The EU’s authority is undercut by populist governments pushing radical agendas and for the time being, its strongest (if only?) weapon is condemnation. But for politicians whose campaigns fuel off hate speech and the smearing of opposition, this appears to be no issue.
The declining rule of law, crippling judiciary independence, and the gradual erosion of independent media freedom are indicative of a wider problem undermining democracy in Poland and in turn, the EU. 2020 is pivotal for the next five years and maybe for the upcoming decades if PiS continues its power-grab with the same unimpeded velocity. Popular protests may have scared the ruling party, but is that all they are able to do?
The University’s testing service has confirmed 146 cases of COVID-19 among students and staff for the week 31st October – 6th November, with a positivity rate of 34%. This marks a significant drop in the number of new cases, though the number of total tests conducted has fallen significantly this week.
There were more than 200 new cases across Oxfordshire this weekend, as reported by Public Health England. Oxfordshire County Council note that this is “under-reporting” because cases tested through the University of Oxford’s testing service are not “attributed to a specific geography on the national surveillance system”. The website says: “Public Health England and the University identified this issue and are working to ensure university data is provided in a way that can automatically be included in the national surveillance system.”
Following a three-week period in which case numbers increased almost linearly (with about 200 new cases among students and staff per week), this week marks the first drop in the number of new cases reported. However, the number of tests conducted per week has fallen by about 50% since the week starting on October 17th. The positivity rate of tests was at an all-time high this week, with 34% of cases returning a positive result.
Current University guidance is that students and staff should not get tested unless they have been asked to or they display symptoms of COVID-19. The University’s whitepaper states that “one of the challenges the University faces is staff and students with no COVID-19 symptoms asking for tests unnecessarily”. The University of Cambridge, whose collegiate system mirrors that of Oxford, have set up a testing pod in the city for symptomatic cases, but have recently announced they will test all asymptomatic students in colleges.
The University’s Status and Response website also states that the figures released do not include positive test results received outside of the University testing service. It notes further that “due to the time interval between a test being done and the result becoming available, it is expected that there will be a mismatch between actual results and those confirmed to us on any given day”.
Following the government announcement on Saturday night, the University updated its guidelines: “New National Restrictions will be introduced from this Thursday (5 November). The University is now considering the impact of these measures, and further information will be made available on these pages as soon as possible. You should also refer to the UK Government website for the latest advice.”
According to Public Health England, there have been 206 cases of COVID-19 in Oxford this week. Across Oxfordshire, there have been 814 cases this week. This is similar to 813 new cases in the previous week, raising the 7-day average to an all-time high of over 120 cases per day.
The University has implemented a four-stage emergency response, depending on how wide the spread of Covid-19 is. The current status is Stage 2, which allows the University to operate “in line with social distancing restrictions with as full a student cohort as possible on site”, with teaching and assessment taking place “with the optimum combination of in-person teaching and online learning”. A Stage 3 response would imply “no public access to the University or College buildings” and “gatherings for staff and students only permitted where essential for teaching and assessment to take place”.
Memoir is a genre traditionally dismissed as low-brow; unworthy of the literary critic’s scrutiny or book-lover’s devotion. I, too, approached memoir with trepidation, wary of anyone narcissistic enough to subject the reader to a dreary monologue of their own life events. Oh, how wrong I was.
As distinct from autobiography which spans an individual’s entire life, memoirs tend to home in on specific events in ordinary lives; offering meditations on human experiences in an almost fictitious way. What makes memoir so special is the very real insights it gives us into universal truths; as the author tries to make sense of the events of their life, we too discover things about ourselves. Each of this week’s recommendations provide a glimpse into different human experiences and show the powerful role that memoir can play as catharsis, from making peace with childhood demons to confronting prejudice. Memoir is an exploration of the complex layers of human memory: fallible, emotional and moulded by subsequent reflection. Like life itself, memoir is messy – but all the more enjoyable for it.
The Hare with Amber Eyes byEdmund de Waal
Cora, books editor
The Hare with Amber Eyes is a memoir unlike any other that I’ve read before. It is a memoir revealed through objects – 264 of them to be precise. When Edmund de Waal inherited his uncle’s collection of netsuke (pocket-sized wood and ivory carvings from Japan), he became determined to figure out how they had fallen into his hands. In the process, he unlocked the history of his prominent Jewish family all the way from 1871 to 2009.
The netsuke are the vehicle through which de Waal reveals both his gripping tale and his poetic meditations on relationships, storytelling and art. It is a book as intricately crafted as the netsuke themselves: as de Waal reminds us, “stories are a kind of thing too”. But the reader is always aware that each netsuke is one of many, and de Waal accordingly forges a narrative that feels at once personal and profoundly collective. Antisemitism is a constant presence in the text and we are often reminded of a broader history – of the experiences of Jews throughout Europe and the many stories running parallel to that of de Waal’s family. This historical and historic memoir is not one to miss. Make sure to read the illustrated edition for an even more powerful experience.
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Eve, books editor
“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.” Frank McCourt – ‘father of the misery memoir, child of the slums’[1] – recounts his upbringing in Limerick in this Pulitzer Prize winning memoir. McCourt’s account of his struggle to survive severe poverty is most certainly miserable: he navigates the deaths of three siblings; an alcoholic father that “drinks the dole”; and bouts of serious illness. But young McCourt’s childish observations of the world around him are also incredibly funny and moving, showing the extent to which our earliest interactions shape the person we are to become. This is particularly apparent in his conflicted attitude towards an “ever-present Catholic church”, and his increasingly mature understanding of the complexity of the adult figures in his life; no one more so than his own deeply flawed father, “like the Holy Trinity with three people in him”. Angela’s Ashes is a celebration of the tenacity of a young boy’s spirit and a powerful act of forgiveness, as McCourt makes peace with his childhood.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Cora, books editor
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you”: this line from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (the first volume in Angelou’s memoirs), gets to the crux of the what makes this genre so unique – the urgency and passion with which only the most personal of stories can be told.
In this instalment, we follow the author through her journey as a black child in the segregated America of the early twentieth century. It is a story that examines racism, misogyny and profound trauma from a personal and yet profoundly universal perspective. At the same time, it is a book filled with hope, liberation, and, above all, a sense of the power of language. Though the memoir is a work of prose, Angelou’s poetic voice shines through in this volume, as does the love of literature that sustained her as a child. Angelou’s future publisher, Robert Loomis, challenged her to “write an autobiography as literature”: this is a work that reads with all the hallmarks of the greatest works of fiction, yet with the added poignance that a true story inevitably evokes.
The Cut-Out Girl by Bart Van Es
Eve, books editor
Oxford English professor Bart Van Es shares the story of Lien, a young Jewish girl growing up in Holland during WWII, who was both hidden and subsequently adopted by the author’s own family. Van Es portrays the racial persecution Lien faced, the tragic fate of her family and the abuse she suffered with sensitivity; paying tribute to Lien and the countless individuals that risked their lives to shelter her. Van Es expertly weaves together Lien’s story, his family history, as well as his own journey retracing Lien’s steps through modern-day Holland. The result is a compelling reminder that the persecution of minority groups is not confined to a particular point in history.
The Cut-Out Girl provides simple yet illuminating observations about what it means to be a family and the way in which simple misunderstandings can create a vast space between us. The failure of the Van Es family to truly understand the extent of Lien’s suffering and her difficulty in comprehending not only her place in the family but her own survival, “I ought not to be here”, led ultimately to their falling out of contact. Van Es’ memoir is a powerful story of family reconciliation.
Priestdaddyby Patricia Lockwood
Cora, books editor
If you’re looking for laughs, I haven’t encountered a memoir – or many works of fiction, for that matter – funnier than Priestdaddy. It tells the hilarious tale of Lockwood’s life as one of the five children of a midwestern Catholic priest (don’t worry, he had the kids before he converted).
The book’s primary focus is on the wonderful idiosyncrasies of Lockwood’s family life, yet, unavoidably, it also addresses wider issues about faith and the culture of the Catholicism in particular, touching on topics like abortion and abuse within the Church. Most of the book is light-hearted – with her larger-than-life father Greg, funny and complex mother Karen, and each of her unique siblings painted to perfection through seemingly endless strings of observation and anecdotes – but Lockwood’s gift is in her ability to switch effortlessly from the jovial to the serious. Above all, as she recounts her life, she is asking the central question for “someone who was raised in a closed circle and then leaves it”: “what is the us, and what is the them, and how do you ever move from one to the other?”
Shame. That is the only worthy reaction of every Labour member and supporter to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s recent findings. The report into antisemitism in the party published last week makes for dismal reading, yet depressingly it does not tell us anything we didn’t already know about the party’s treatment of Jewish members and activists. Oxford knows all too well how insidious left-wing antisemitism is. Just four years ago, allegations of antisemitism within Oxford University Labour Club resulted in the Royall Report finding that OULC members engaged in antisemitism and that Jewish members did not feel comfortable attending meetings. OULC has done much to repair damaged relationships, but many sections of the wider party remain unreformed. Even so, the judgement by a body set up by the last Labour government that the party acted unlawfully underlines how bad things have become.
The shock and sadness with which this report has been met by many party members makes the reaction of Jeremy Corbyn all the more baffling. He could have simply accepted the report and expressed regret over what happened on his watch. If he had done so he might still be a Labour MP. Instead, while acknowledging the existence of antisemitism, Corbyn claimed that “the scale of the problem was dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents”. Crucially, he failed to accept the report in full.
Corbyn’s suspension from the party is therefore welcome proof that Keir Starmer’s much trumpeted zero-tolerance approach is more than just words. For too long Labour MPs and senior activists have got away with blaming the Tories, Israel or Blairites for something that was entirely our problem. Yet to suspend a former leader is no small feat. The last time the party expelled a former leader was in 1931 when Ramsey MacDonald formed the National Government against many’s wishes. Corbyn has not done anything quite as dramatic, and we shall have to wait and see whether the investigation that follows results in his permanent expulsion from the party.
There’s no doubt that Starmer is taking a risk in consenting to the suspension of a man with whom he sat in the shadow cabinet just seven months ago. Despite his downfall, the Islington Commissar still has powerful friends and committed supporters. Len McClusky, Corbyn’s close ally, still leads Unite, Labour’s biggest financial backer.Momentum, the offshoot of Corbyn’s 2016 leadership campaign, still organises nationally despite a damaging split. Most importantly, Corbyn remains popular with many rank and file party members.
Yet Starmer seems to have pulled it off. The moment of maximum risk to party unity has passed with barely a hiccup. This is not surprising given that the leadership has the support of the PLP, the National Executive, the General Secretary, and the membership. Given how powerful and vocal supporters of Corbyn were very recently, this underlines the success of the current leadership in rebalancing internal power structures.
The most prominent leaders of the former Corbynite camp have emphasised peace and unity. Both Momentum and another group of trade unions have expressed their regret and opposition to the decision in letters to the leadership. But the most widely reported statement from Len McClusky has been his appeal that supporters of Corbyn remain in the party. Many trade unions and former cheerleaders for the old regime have not even gone as far as to write to Starmer. Nadia Whittome, the new left wing MP for Nottingham East who recently resigned as a PPS, expressed solidarity with her departed comrade but said that he was wrong not to accept the EHRC report. The only group willing to do any more than this is the extreme fringe organisation calling itself ‘Labour Against the Witchhunt’, led by former members expelled for antisemitism during the Corbyn years. That their supporters are leaving is nothing but good news for the party and the leadership.
Part of the reason for this relative silence is, no doubt, that there are far more important things to be working on. Left wing backbenchers, many more of whom were elected at the 2019 general election, are quite rightly devoting their time to holding this shambolic government to account. When millions are out of work with little or no support from central government and the pandemic is spiralling out of control, there are more important concerns than Labour infighting.
However, the suspension highlights that Corbyn was never the only hope for socialist politics. In truth, the previous leadership failed to turn the energy of its campaign (which destroyed many right wing myths about the unpopularity of radical socialist politics) into any meaningful change. This failure put left wing politics back a step and helped enable this damaging Tory administration. Whether or not Jeremy Corbyn is himself an anti-Semite (and I tend to think he is not), his atrocious failure of leadership and judgement on this issue, as well as his friendly comments about foreign dictators and terrorists, lost the leaders of Corbyn’s movement what little political capital they had. If radical wealth redistribution and democratisation of the economy is to have any chance of becoming government policy, these commitments need to come without the deadweight of the previous regime. For the left to come to power, it needs to purge itself of those who accept or excuse left wing antisemitism.
This suspension, then, has proven to have few downsides and many advantages for the leader’s office. It is a signal to voters that Starmer is not beholden to the deeply unpopular former leadership, and is willing to be ruthless towards those in his own party who fail to live up to the values of Labour. If this is successful, the radical policies that polls suggest are popular, together with the personal popularity of the leader, could make Labour an electoral force not seen since the 2000s.
The Labour Party has always been riven with bitter infighting. It was only under Blair that the leadership managed to turn this to their advantage by using internal disputes to signal to the voters the leader’s commitments, however much we may disagree with the commitments. Corbyn’s suspension is evidence that in Starmer we have a leader who can pull off something similar and lead from the front to make the party electable and win a general election. The role of those on the left of Labour now is to rid any trace of antisemitism from their ranks, regain the trust of the Jewish community, and push the party to the left on the economy. This will liberate us to campaign with single-minded determination for a Labour government in 2024.
This past week, the Oxford City Council approved
Cornerstone’s plan to build a 5G mast on the corner of Old Road and Windmill
Road, near the Nuffield Orthopedic Centre in Headington.
Other 5G masts have been built, mostly across east Oxford, in recent months. The planning development reflects the drive among telecommunication companies such as O2, EE, and Cornerstone to establish a presence in the county as providers of the next generation of mobile internet connection.
According
to data from EE, the main usage of its 5G network has been video streaming and
social networking. EE’s increasing expansion of its 5G coverage comes in
anticipation of Apple’s rollout of the iPhone 12 with 5G compatibility.
5G
networks are capable of transferring data at speeds approximately ten to twenty
times faster than the fastest current offered by 4G mobile networks. This would
allow someone with a 5G compatible device to download a high definition film in
about a minute. The large amounts of data transfer that 5G enables could one
day help to power technologies such as fully autonomous cars or remote surgery
via robots.
More data is consumed every year and so the spectrum bands currently in place are becoming congested, which leads to breakdowns in service.
Brendan O’Reilly, O2’s chief technology officer, told the BBC: “It’s vital we continue to invest in new innovations and technologies to keep Britain mobile and connected.”
Oxford is one of 12 towns and cities where EE have recently rolled out 5G, alongside Blackpool and Aberdeen.
“Delivering the best movable experience for our customers has never been more important,” said Marc Allera, chief executive of BT’s consumer business which owns EE. “Our 5G rollout continues apace, with our engineers building and upgrading new sites every day to bring the latest mobile technology to even more people in the places they need it.
“We have 5G coverage in more places than anyone in the UK, and we remain focused on connecting many more areas this year and beyond.”
Analysis of the results from Phase II trials of the Oxford University COVID-19 vaccine has shown that it induces an immune response in older adults as well as younger volunteers, AstraZeneca has confirmed.
The development raises hope that elderly people, who are one of the groups at the highest risk of developing serious complication from COVID-19, could be able to return to a degree of pre-pandemic normality after receiving the vaccine.
The data, which is currently being peer-reviewed and will hopefully be published in a clinical journal, shows that volunteers over the age of 55 produced the same immune response to the vaccine as younger volunteers. The vaccine also caused a similar immune response in some participants over the age of 70.
The capacity of a vaccine to induce an immune response in a patient is known as its immunogenicity. As the body’s natural immune system gets weaker as a person gets older, some vaccines are less immunogenic in elderly patients and will not provide the same protection against a disease as it will for younger adults. The evidence that the Oxford vaccine is immunogenic in elderly volunteers is encouraging, because it indicates that one of the demographics who are most vulnerable to COVID-19 may be able to develop some protection.
The same data also showed that the vaccine had low reactogenicity in older adults, meaning that they developed few side-effects.
A spokesperson from AstraZeneca, the pharmaceutical company working with the Oxford Vaccine Group, told the Guardian: “It is encouraging to see immunogenicity responses were similar between older and younger adults and that reactogenicity was lower in older adults, where the COVID-19 disease severity is higher. The results further build for body of evidence for the safety and immunogenicity of AZD1222 [the vaccine].”
The global effort to develop an effective vaccine against COVID-19 currently includes 49 vaccines undergoing clinical trials on humans. The Oxford vaccine has been undergoing combined phase II/III trials involving 50,000 participants in Brazil, South Africa, India, the United Kingdom and the United States. AstraZeneca announced on November 1 that the vaccine would be undergoing “rolling review” in the United Kingdom, meaning that the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency would analyse data from the clinical trials in real time in order to speed up the approval process.
While AstraZeneca and Oxford University have been optimistic that the vaccine will be available for limited use within the coming months, some experts have cautioned that it may take longer and that people at lower immediate risk from COVID-19 may have to wait. Soumya Swaminathan, who has served as Chief Scientist at the World Health Organisation since 2016, has said that any vaccines which are available by 2021 would have “limited quantities” and that “most people agree, it’s [vaccination] starting with healthcare workers, and frontline workers…and then the elderly…a healthy young person might have to wait until 2022.”
The process of developing a vaccine can also be interrupted if any volunteers develop unwanted adverse reactions to the vaccine. Global trials of the Oxford vaccine were “voluntarily paused” on 6 September after a British volunteer developed transverse myelitis. Although the trials restarted in most countries soon afterwards, it took until the end of October for trials to resume in the United States. There were concerns that the vaccine may be delayed further after a Brazilian volunteer died in on 19 October, but an investigation found the volunteer had only received a placebo, and the death was unconnected to the vaccine.
Although the Oxford vaccine is expected to be one of the first to receive approval, Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine warned that “it is wise not to be too optimistic until those [later phase] trials have completed.”
Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire’s only UNESCO World Heritage site, is due to undergo a £600,000 restoration to its chapel.
The chapel, constructed in the early 18th century and designed by the architect Sir John Vanbrugh, has experienced water damage, a series of leaks harming the paint and plasterwork. The focal point of this chapel, which underwent further modifications in the Victorian era, is a monument designed by Sarah Churchill, 1st Duchess of Marlborough, depicting her late husband, famed military commander and statesman John Churchill. The monument portrays John as a Roman general along with his two sons, this tribute to the first family to reside in the Palace a striking example of English Baroque design.
Blenheim Palace’s website refers to “significant issues” with the chapel stemming from environmental causes. Speaking to the BBC, conservation manager Richard Bowden saw that the chapel’s ‘internal conditions’ were causing structural damage.
Concerns have been raised about the state of Britain’s historic buildings in recent weeks after the manor house which served as the set of BBC’s Poldark was found to be in disrepair. Coronavirus restrictions have placed an added burden on such sites, limiting their income from tourist visits.
