The Porterhouse is a hotel and restaurant with a small cult following due to the fact that they have the best steaks in Oxford. Nestled in a tranquil residential street, a minute’s walk from Said Business School and the rail station, The Porterhouse offers a small and intimate dining experience away from the restaurants in the loud and overexposed Westgate and away from the restaurants in the repetitive and bland George St. With its extremely friendly staff and tranquil atmosphere, it is the perfect place for a first date, casual dinner, or to treat your old man this coming Father’s Day.
The Porterhouse is a place that knows what it is good at. The menu is simple, there are only a handful of options for each course and they make sure their steaks are the highlight. They have a variety of cuts available including a range of dry-aged steaks, each displayed on a chalkboard in each of the restaurant’s two dining rooms, both of which are diligently crossed out following each order. Unfortunately, there is only one vegetarian option, the Portobello grill, and only one pescatarian option, the tuna steak. My more health-conscious friends have told me that both are excellent choices; however it is something to bear in mind when deciding where to eat. It’s probably not the best place to take a vegan on a date, for instance. However, if you’re not put off by the limited menu, and appreciate the restaurant’s clarity in their focus, you’re in for a very enjoyable dining experience!
I first had the opportunity to visit The Porterhouse at the start of this year. It was a friend’s surprise birthday dinner and we had the private dining area, appropriately called the Smoke Room, to ourselves. We ordered a variety of sharing steaks from the chalkboard and waited eagerly for them to arrive. Needless to say, we were very pleased when they did. The wait was a little longer than I would have hoped for, but I suppose that is to be expected when you order the weight equivalent of a new born baby in red meat. Since then, I’ve gone back several times, and have never once been disappointed by my experience!
Most recently, I went twice in 5th Week. On the latter occasion, I was exhausted and had just spent three hours trying to get back to Oxford from London (all the trains out of Paddington were delayed!), and so decided to treat myself at what is by far my favourite restaurant in Oxford. I had the bone marrow as starter, followed by the dry-aged flat iron and finished off with their chocolate fondant and sticky toffee pudding; the man at the table across from me did laugh when half the dessert menu arrived at my table but he seemed to respect it. Their steaks are lovely; I don’t know how to explain it. Its steak is better than all the others I’ve had in Oxford, and you have to try it to understand. But what really makes me keep returning to The Porterhouse is the sticky toffee pudding.
As all my friends could tell you, the highlight of my week is when my college hall has apple crumble or sticky toffee pudding; on many occasions I have dropped everything to run to the dining hall before it closes as soon as my friends text me. It’s somewhat become a joke how much my mood depends on whether I get such texts or not – and when hall is not there to fulfil my cravings, I find myself at The Porterhouse. The sticky toffee pudding is just sublime: it’s the perfect level of sweetness and has a subtle and distinct nutty taste. It’s genuinely one of the best things I’ve had and if you’re not big on your steaks, go to The Porterhouse just for this alone.
At The Porterhouse, you can have steak for breakfast, served to you by lovely and helpful staff, accompanied with a glass of wine or cocktail from their very impressive range, finished off with their impeccable desserts. I cannot imagine a more perfect meal, at least, not in Oxford. It’s a hidden treasure and it’s the kind of place that fits the whole ‘if you know, you know’ notion. Well, now you know, so go.
The consensus among experts is that Brexit will impact food prices. Except that the extent and intricacies of this dilemma can, for now, only be speculated upon, uncertain as we still are about whether, Noel Edmunds-style, it will be deal or no deal. Some sectors will be affected more than others, in accordance with how much of certain foodstuffs we import from the EU. Allow me to serve up the latest findings and predictions on this rather unsavoury of issues, so you can decide for yourself whether to abandon studying to work instead on stockpiling Biscoff.
Like a lot of Brexit-related discussion, it would be easy to postpone worrying about food supplies until further down the line. It is simpler to assume it ‘won’t affect me’, but studies indicate to the contrary: many popular supermarket trolley items may take a hit. An LSE study predicts that “speciality cheese [will be] particularly prone to shortages.” Think halloumi, camembert, mozzarella. The same goes for popular cuts of meat, such as leg. And vegans, don’t think you get off lightly. Britishgrown tomatoes make up only 20% of the tomatoes we consume, roughly. Plenty of other fruit and vegetables paint a similar picture.
The degree to which we see price increases for these products will depend on what happens in the negotiations of trade tariffs and the conditions for border checks on EU imports, as well as exchange rates. Currently, the UK, isn’t subject to tariffs on imports, nor inspection of cargo imported from an EU member state. However, this will change post-Brexit, with marked chaos set to ensue if we leave without a deal. The UK Trade Policy Observatory based at the University of Sussex calculated that an average tariff of 44.6% on dairy could translate to a price rise of 8.1%. The fact that the pound has already fallen in value is suspected to have “contributed to a small rise in food prices” a study by the London School of Economics says. These two factors plus the effect of border checks – “one day of delay for a lorry will easily cost a business 600 to 1,000 euros” (£500- £850), according to a KPMG report – means feeding ourselves will, almost inevitably, cost more.
Certain retailers began stockpiling prior to the original exit date of 29th March, with WH Smith among them, focusing on chocolate. However, now that the date has been pushed back to 31st October, CEO Stephen Clarke says “we’ll have to unwind [the stockpiling] and build it again”, due to expiry dates on the products. Understandably, there is no merit in beginning to stockpile perishable food items now, with Brexit planned for Halloween. Stockpiling in the lead up to the March date has, therefore, backfired in some cases. Tesco chief executive Dave Lewis says the supermarket has now started focusing on items with a long shelf-life, in a move to be “proactive” should Brexit hit our food supply chain hard. But stockpiling gets even more complicated once you consider the annual pressure on warehousing at Christmas time. Co-op CEO Steve Murrells believes that “we’ll have to be smart about the way we substitute, using canned grocery items to possibly replace some fresh items,” so with space for tins of sweetcorn tight, a solution will have to be found.
Our domestic-grown and produced foodstuffs are, also, far from immune from the negative impacts of Brexit. British agriculture currently relies heavily on EU subsidies that allow farmers to make a living from their trade. Without these subsidies, the likes of dairy and vegetable production could become unsustainable, so even if man can currently live by British milk alone, this may not be the case post-Brexit.
In summary, you needn’t start stockpiling now. Tesco has thought ahead, so even if brie is off the menu, tinned peaches will save you from starvation. Be prepared to pay a premium for that antipasti tray, though. Or just up sticks and move to Italy.
But on a serious note, here’s hoping International Trade Secretary Liam Fox can secure some reasonable tariff deals and, more crucially, we aren’t left in a no-deal limbo.
Naomi Wolf’s new book, Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalisation of Love, charts the development of censorship around sexual deviancy and morality in the 19thcentury, through the lives of John Addington Symonds, writer and critic, and Walt Whitman. She spoke in conversation with Nigel Warburton (co-author of Reading Political Philosophy: Machiavelli to Mill) at Blackwell’s on Thursday the 23rdof May, as part of a wider promotional tour, and as part of Blackwell’s ‘Philosophy in the Bookshop’ series, set to include speakers such as Armand D’Angour and Jonathon Reé.
She began by explaining how moving it was to be giving a talk in Oxford, where the graduate thesisout of which Outrages came was researched and written. Oxford holds significance for one of the subjects of her book, too. J A Symonds studied at Balliol, where he fell in love with William Fear Dyer, a choirboy three years his junior. He was eventually elected to an open fellowship at Magdalen. He left Oxford for Switzerland following a breakdown prompted by an accusation of homosexuality, despite its eventual dismissal. Wolf charts the effect the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 had on Symonds and his writing, and on wider society. Most of Symonds’ work remained unpublished during his lifetime, locked in a metal box in his study for fear of arrest. Her study of censorship and decency laws becomes transatlantic with the inclusion of Walt Whitman, with whom Symonds enjoyed a close epistolary friendship, although they never met face-to-face. Symonds was an admirer of Whitman’s, frequently asking him to speak up on behalf of British writers from the position of increased freedom he enjoyed in America, until similar censorship laws were introduced in the States.
Wolf argues that the censorship laws of the 19thcentury were motivated by a need for social control, rather than an organic wave of moral panic over sexual deviancy – she points to the examples of the forced venereal disease examinations under the Contagious Diseases Act of 1864, which allowed authorities to arrest any woman suspected of prostitution and keep her in a ‘lock hospital’ until the end of her sentence. Wolf highlights the little-known fact that these examinations were often extended to men suspected of sodomy, with a whole branch of science devoted to examining men’s anuses to judge whether they engaged in gay sex. When discussing her research for this, Warburton brought up the controversy that emerged on BBC Radio 3, when historian Matthew Sweet pointed out that Wolf had wrongly interpreted the phrase ‘death recorded’ in the Old Bailey records as evidence of an execution following a conviction of sodomy, when the two men she cites were not sentenced. She responded by acknowledging the mistake, saying it would be corrected in the next print run, but cited other instances of men being executed for gay sex in the period, claiming that the fact that two of these men were not actually executed does not invalidate her thesis. Warburton directed those who wanted to follow the controversy to Twitter. (I have since followed her, and she has been tweeting about it. A lot.)
The floor was then opened to questions, and we were immediately assaulted by people asking Wolf to comment on trans issues. Wolf responded with an admission that she had been told not to wade into this discussion, as it is so different in the UK than in America, but that she was going to anyway. She said she believed people should be able to identify however they want, and use any bathroom they want to, which, although a noble sentiment, unfortunately opened the floor for people to jump in with increasingly aggressive ‘but what about THIS debate’ questions which Wolf was clearly unequipped to answer. The discussion was eventually shut down by Warburton, and we moved on to some fairly interesting questions – like one from a philosophy student asking how to make the curriculum more diverse, probably prompted by Wolf’s earlier comment that she had abandoned her original idea for a post-grad thesis in the 80s because she was told the Oxford dons didn’t think feminist criticism a valid method of study. There was then an opportunity to buy a copy of the book, and get it signed. She remarked to us that we should keep hold of the book, since the now-corrected mistakes in it would make it a collector’s copy. I look forward to reading it.
Ottessa Mosfegh’s novel, out in paperback since July last year, details the experience of an unnamed orphaned young woman living in New York at the start of the millennium who embarks upon a year of sleeping in a bid to fix her ennui. With the help of a questionable psychiatrist called Dr Tuttle who plies her with prescriptions to every sleeping pill under the sun, the narrator spends a whole year in a self-induced coma with only occasional trips to get coffee and visits from her bulimic best friend Reva as interruptions. The narrator is white, privileged, and in her words, like an ‘off-duty model’, with ample opportunities she rejects, brimming with insights on the world she sees.
Moshfegh places her novel in a pre-9/11 New York filled with super-ficiality and narcissism, best exemplified in the Chelsea art gallery where the protagonist worked before getting fired. It is a place of emptiness, filled with ‘avant- garde’ art designed more to excite shock than to present anything of value, a trend which the narrator mocks repeatedly. With a straight face, she baldly describes how the star artist Ping Xi inserts pigment pellets into his penis and then masturbates on a canvas to produce works which were ‘all nonsense, but people loved it’.
Locating the plot in this period is an excellent move – a time far enough from the present that technology and social media do not intervene in the central sleep mission, while still being recognisable. Chunky cell-phones, and VHS tapes of old Whoopi Goldberg movies crop up intermittently in the plot.
Rest and Relaxation is not the most restful or relaxing of reading experiences. The protagonist is caustic and darkly humorous, but I soon begin to find myself agreeing, and viewing the world through her misanthropy. But for all the cynicism which pervades the book, there are moments where I felt genuine sympathy.
There are instances of disconcerting sentimentality, as when she explains her reluctance to sell her dead par-ents’ house because there may be remnants of their skin cells and fingernails still inside. It is often the physicality and imagery which are the most moving: descriptions of Reva crying or binge-eating. Like Moshfegh’s previous work Eileen, there is a deliberate attempt to create a subversive image of a woman that might provoke disgust. She is no sleeping beauty – three-day spells of hibernation triggered by Infermiterol (a made-up drug) leave her covered in stains and ‘eye boogers.’
For a novel in which the heroine spends a lot of time comatose, it is enthralling. The voice is compelling and witty, drawing one into the experience.
Characters like the quack Dr Tuttle (found in Yellow Pages of course) and Reva, whose dialogue is straight out of a Noughties advice column, fill up the pages with vivid nonsense. Lines are delivered candidly and designed to leave you with a wry smile. The ending is epiphanic, and left me questioning all that had just happened in the past 300 pages without rendering them at all a waste of time.
Looking at this book, it’s difficult to know what one’s getting oneself into. ‘Convenience Store Woman’: the phrase has a kind of menial heroism to it. And reading the book is like realising that, in a climate of social pressure and conformity, some kind of purpose can be found at the checkout till of a convenience store, in a world of rice balls and cans of coffee, amongst the ringing greetings of ‘Irasshaimasé!’
Keiko Furukura, the heroine, has been a misfit since childhood. Now 36, and having worked at the Smile Mart convenience store for 18 years, she deals constantly with the probing questions of a nosy, judgemental society. ‘How come you’re only doing that sort of job?’ ‘How about if we find someone for you?’ ‘Why don’t you register on a marriage site?’ Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Keiko, deciding that ‘deep down’ she ‘wanted some kind of change’, establishes an arrangement with self-pitying, misogynist co-worker Shiraha (also on the margins of society) that will bring an end to their existence as ‘foreign objects’. But the desperation from which society continually suggests she should be suffering is exactly what Keiko so noticeably rejects throughout the novel. There is a kind of poignance to her innocence and honesty: ‘my very cells exist for the convenience store’.
It’s rare to find a relatively static narrative evoke such an intense atmosphere. And it’s strange to be persuaded that the atmosphere of a convenience store has a beauty that warrants the best part of an entire novel. But there’s a sort of tranquility and predictability about the store, a refusal to apologise for what it is, that contrasts strikingly with the constant self-pretence of the world outside. The impulse to construct one’s own narrative, for example, is a source of sustained interest for Murata throughout the novel. Keiko’s sister Mami is the main culprit. As Keiko notes with almost childlike simplicity, ‘she was getting carried away with making up a story for herself.’ Such moments are nicely preserved in Ginny Tapley Takemori’s translation.
The slightly unnatural quality of Murata’s dialogue complicates things slightly, though. Conversations often feel drawn out, characters are prone to over-explanation, Shiraha’s mansplaining becomes almost sickening. It sometimes feels as though Murata is spoon-feeding us. This infuses the world of the novel with a kind of pervasive unreality, a convenience-store-type perfection that we can’t quite believe. It’s an interesting and unsettling technique. In establishing a gulf between the reality of the world and the unreality of Keiko’s version of it, it gives rise to an ironic sense that Keiko is saving herself from the homogenising effect of society by resorting to an alien, robotic, and unnatural alternative.
But regardless of this tension, we realise that the wish to belong is basic to all mankind, but prompts widely differing behaviours. To one person, belonging means getting married, having kids, being promoted. To another, it’s living life by the manual, being useful, being ‘a cog in society’. And that’s a notion that I think most readers will find reassuring.
The University of Oxford has released its 2019 “Annual Admissions Statistical Report”, presenting minor improvements in accessibility in all categories and a significant increase in the total number of applications.
The 2018 intake saw an increase in the proportion of students admitted from state schools from 57.2% to 60.5%, as well as a 4.7% increase in the number of BME students admitted. The total number of applications also increased by 1577 from 19,938 in 2017 to 21,515 in 2018, including an 11.2% increase in the number of disabled applicants from 1080 to 1201.
In her introduction to the report, Vice Chancellor Louise Richardson wrote: “It was precisely because of our concern that the pace of change was too slow that this year we are increasing the size of our flagship summer programme UNIQ by 50% to 1375 school pupils.
“We also announced the creation of two new programmes, Opportunity Oxford and Foundation Oxford, which we believe will significantly accelerate the pace of change. When both programmes are up and running in four years’ time we expect that one in four of those admitted to Oxford will be from a deprived background.
“The entire University community, colleges and halls, departments and divisions, have united behind a commitment to effect a sea change in our admissions practices.”
In a statement to the press, the University said: “The new figures, for Oxford’s 2018 intake, show a solid foundation for the two major access initiatives announced by the University last month, which are due to accelerate the pace of change dramatically.
“The report is being published for the second year, as part of the University’s commitment to greater openness about its admissions process.”
The statement also claimed that: “Early figures for 2019 entry show still more progress. Offers to state school pupils are up again, to 64.5%.
“Offers to students from areas of low progression to higher education is up to 13.8%. However, the University is determined to move faster.”
Oxford SU’s VP for Access and Academic Affairs told Cherwell: “It is a major positive step that the University is continuing to release annual admissions data.
“The figures themselves show an incremental improvement – which is welcome, though still not at the pace we would like to see.
“Oxford SU has campaigned hard over the past 18 months to see tangible work be done to improve these figures and the future plans around the two major initiatives will go a long way to bring around a sea change.”
Region
Students from London and the South East made up 47.2% of all applications and accounted for 48.7% of students admitted to Oxford in the academic cycles of 2016-2018. Of the 1577 increase in applications in the last year, 49% was accounted for by increased applications from these regions.
The figure is significantly greater than undergraduates from the North East, who comprised 2.1% of students admitted over the period, with 159 students matriculating from the region, versus 2,005 from the South East.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland together accounted for 6.6% of admissions. The University’s breakdown of application and admission by region pairs together figures from the last two admissions cycles, showing an ongoing gap in numbers of admitted students between regions in the South of the UK and those in the North.
When compared to 2016-2017 statistics, successful admissions by London increased by 4.2%, but this positive growth was not shared by the South East. The region saw another 266 applications when compared to the previous cycle, but still registered -1.2% decline in successful candidates.
Most other regions noted only minor changes in their application and admissions rates. Among these, the South West saw 133 more applications but a drop of 25 in admissions and the West Midlands saw 19 more successful candidates accompanying 96 more applications.
Almost all regions around the UK measured a slight decrease in admissions, averaging -1% across the board, a statistic that comes in light of increased competition for places and a rising acceptance rate for international students.
School type
The number of students applying to Oxford from UK state schools has increased by 5.7% from the previous year, a rise of 442 students, whilst the number applying from independent schools rose by just 0.5%.
The period also saw a small increase of 3.3% in the number of students from UK state schools as a percentage of the total intake. The number of places taken by independent school students also fell from 1029 to 981, marking a decrease of 2.3% as a percentage of all students accepted.
Over 90% of students admitted to study at Mansfield attended UK state schools, compared to just 48.3% at Trinity, the worst-performing college. Over 60% of students were admitted from state schools at 12 of Oxford’s 29 colleges. Only Trinity offered fewer than 50% of its places to state educated students.
Classics continued to offer the fewest places to state school students at just 29.2%, and was the only subject to offer more than 60% of places to independent school students. Maths and Computer Science admitted the highest proportion of state school students at 76.8%, closely followed by Computer Science at 76.3%, Mathematics at 73.3%, and Law at 73.1%.
Between 2016 and 2018, 37% of state applications were to five of the most oversubscribed subjects, including Economics and Management, Medicine, PPE, Law, and Maths. By contrast 20% of independent school applicants were for the five least oversubscribed subjects: Classics, Music, Modern Languages, Chemistry, and English.
Background
The number of students from Acorn 4 and 5 backgrounds (the most disadvantaged in the UK) also increased this year, from 16.2% to 20.25%, an increase of 110. However, the number of students from POLAR 1 and 2 backgrounds decreased from 19.04% to 17.81%.
The POLAR system is a tool which measures how likely young people are to participate in higher education based on where they live. POLAR 1 and 2 are the most disadvantaged backgrounds listed.
At New College, the number of students admitted from Acorn 4 and 5 backgrounds fell by 4.6%, compared to a 3% increase at Mansfield. Only New and Queen’s saw a decrease in the number of students being admitted from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Ethnicity
The University’s report suggested a significant offer gap between UK applicants based on their ethnicities. In 2018, across the University 25.5% of white applicants received an offer, compared to 15% of Asian British applicants and 17.8% of applicants of all BME backgrounds. This offer gap appears to have changed little from 2017, when 17.9% of BME applicants received an offer compared to 25.9% of white applicants.
All colleges have each been found to admit a greater proportion of white applicants than BME applicants. Most notably, at St Hilda’s 43% of white applicants received an offer compared to 11% of black applicants and 25% of BME applicants as a whole. A similar gap was found at St Anne’s, where 40% of white applicants received an offer compared to 12% of black applicants and 19% of BME applicants as a whole. At St Anne’s and Teddy Hall, white applicants were at least twice as likely as BME applicants to receive an offer.
The number of BME students as a proportion of all admitted students has risen since 2014, from 13.6% to 18.3%. However, there is significant variation between colleges. At Magdalen, BME students make up just 10.8% of UK students admitted, compared to 21.8% at LMH.
At every college the offer rate was greater for white students than for Asian students. At Trinity, 28.2% of white applicants received an offer, while 11.1% of Asian applicants did. At St John’s, 17.6% of white applicants received an offer compared to 7.7% of Asian applicants.
There was also a significant gap in the conversion rate between offer-holders and admitted students for BME students compared to white students. At Magdalen, 72% of BME offer-holders were admitted between 2016 and 2018, while 90% of white offer-holders were admitted. However, at Mansfield, the conversion rate was very similar, with 86% of BME offer-holders admitted, compared to 83% of white offer-holders.
Gender
The proportion of UK-domiciled undergraduate students admitted to Oxford who identify as female has risen every year between 2014 and 2018. In 2014, 46.5% of admitted students identified as female, whereas last year the total had risen to 51.2%. For comparison, among Russell Group universities as a whole the most recent statistics in 2016 show that 55.4% of admitted students were female.
The University’s report also contained a breakdown of gender by subject, demonstrating a “wide variety” in male-to-female ratios among Oxford’s 25 main courses. The results covered UK-domiciled students over a three-year period between 2016 and 2018.
Experimental psychology, Biomedical sciences and English recorded the highest proportion of female UK students, with 79.3%, 74.7%, and 72.1% respectively. However, only 9.8% of UK students admitted to study Computer Science identified as female. Maths and Computer Science also saw a low intake of women, at 15.8%, with Physics at 18.3%, Engineering Science at 20.2%, Economics and Management at 27.5% and Maths at 28.5%.
Across the three-year 2016-2018 period, 19,301 UK men applied in total compared to 18,488 UK women. At the majority of colleges, more men applied than women, though this was not true at Lady Margaret Hall, which received 707 applications from women compared to just 486 from men. Similarly, Wadham College had 868 female applicants and only 684 male applicants.
The report also showed that the majority of colleges had a relatively even male-to-female ratio. However, this was not true of Balliol, where only 38.7% of students admitted were female, making it the college with the most unequal gender split of UK students. Female students also made up only 40.7% of total UK admissions for New College and 44.4% at Magdalen.
Lady Margaret Hall and St Hilda’s College had the highest proportion of women, with 57.9% and 57% of the total admissions respectively. Both of these colleges are former women’s colleges, as is St. Anne’s, in which 55.7% of total admissions were given to women. At Hertford, female students made up 55.8% of admissions.
Disability
According to the report, the number of admitted students who declare a disability has increased. In 2014, 6.0% of UK-domiciled students declared a disability, but this has risen to 9.2% of total admissions in 2018. Across the three-year period of 2016-2018, 623 admitted students declared disabilities, amounted to 8.0% of the total UK intake in this period.
This figure for Oxford’s 2018 intake is slightly lower than equivalent figures for other universities. The most recently published statistics in 2016 show that disabled students made up 11.9% of the total intake at all Russell Group universities.
The report also included a study into the categories of disabilities among applicants over the three-year period. Approximately 36% of these students declared themselves as having a learning difficulty, such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, and ADHD. A further 18.9% declared a disability that was categorised as a mental health problem.
The remaining 45.1% declared disabilities including autistic spectrum disorder, blind/ partial sight, deaf/partial hearing, longstanding illness, and wheelchair/mobility issues. Also included were “multiple disabilities” and “other disabilities”. No disability statistics for non-UK admissions were published in the report.
Nationality
In 2016-18 admissions to students from the US were up 23.5% on 2015-17 figures, whilst admissions to students from China were up 19.9%, and admissions to students from France were down 10.9%. Italy and France remain the most difficult places to apply to Oxford from, with an average acceptance rate of 7.1% and 7.6% respectively. The average acceptance rate for UK applicants has fallen 0.8% to 20.5%.
Reporting by Angus Brown, Amelia Horn, Sam Millward, Charlotte Moberly, and Ben van der Merwe.
The Tories are in decline, perhaps terminally. They are exhausted from months of May’s attempts to bully the Commons into passing her awful deal through brute repetitive force, and by simultaneously threatening MPs with both ‘no deal’ and ‘no Brexit,’ despite the two being mutually exclusive. They are close enough to schism as it is. And then came May’s final insult: her decision to cosy up to Jeremy Corbyn (the illegitimacy of whom the Tories have spent the last four years painstakingly illustrating) and a Customs Union.
Regardless of where you find yourself on the Brexit spectrum, the Customs Union ‘compromise’ really is the worst of all worlds. If the country is to succeed economically in any shape or form post-Brexit, we must be able to determine our own trade relations. Shaping our own global economic policy and trading with the entire world is a path to prosperity. Handing the power to define this over to our protectionist market competitors in Europe is a path to ruin, and would be even if the people to whom we were giving these powers had no reason to use them punitively. It doesn’t even solve the Irish border problem.
Most of the Conservative Party – the Party of free trade and enterprise – understand this, at the Parliamentary and the grassroots level: even in simpler times an imposition of a Customs Union would be enough to tear it apart. But the path May took to arrive at this terrible outcome makes it that little bit more toxic: via the party leadership that allows its members to call its own female Jewish MPs “‘shit-stirring c** buckets’ in the pay of Israel” without condemnation, let alone punishment.
The Customs Union proposal is symptomatic of May’s political outlook: she has never understood what makes most modern Conservatives tick – the spirit of the individual, true meritocracy, enterprise, liberty. Throughout her tenure, she has been tin-eared, illiberal and paternalistic to the point of authoritarianism.
Let’s take a stroll through some of May’s highlights from her time as Prime Minister and at the Home Office. Introducing totalitarian porn laws which will fail in their aim to prevent under-18s watching it but will encourage illegal activity and consumption of far darker, potentially illicit material by children? A smash hit, coming to a teenager near you this year. Using EU citizens as a bargaining chip and refusing to guarantee their right to remain despite calls (rightly) on all sides for her to do so? A real crowd-pleaser. The ‘citizens of nowhere’ soundbite? Printed on t-shirts. Sending ‘Go Home’ vans into neighbourhoods with high immigrant populations? An instant classic. Windrush. Announcing her intention to give the Government the power to remove or censor any undefined “online harms” or “unacceptable content” (which would include the press, by the backdoor) as a White Paper laid out last month, via the creation of what would essentially be a State censorship agency? Genuinely terrifying – and that’s without considering that a Corbyn government (and one that she legitimised) could be heir to these powers.
More than 200 of the current crop of Tory MPs support leaving without a deal over a Customs Union or further extension, as does a large majority of Tory voters and grassroots members. Had she been successful, a Government pivot to a Customs Union would have meant Tory schism, probably irrevocably.
This may be the heat death of the Conservative Party; if so, May has carefully nurtured its path to perfect entropic nothingness. When the leader of a party is not only presiding over its decline, but is personally fomenting its tortured deathbed throes, it is probably time that the party was rid of them. Even now that it is, it may be too late.
When Ann Widdecombe has defected, when even sitting Tory MPs did not vote Conservative at the European Elections, when Tory council candidates are losing faith because “belief in the party they joined is gone,” it might be a sign that the Tories are in trouble. The polls have them at single digits, trailing the Lib Dems and the Greens. No money is coming in. To natural Tory voters, handing the fate of party and country to a man of Corbyn’s character and politics is unfathomable, a point that the Tories themselves have spent the last four years painstakingly illustrating. That May even contemplated gift-wrapping the future of the Conservative Party and presenting it to him, as she then did, beggars belief. We have seen the terrible price the Party is paying for this at the local elections; watching the results for the Euros come in on Sunday night will be even worse.
Ultimately the talks did fail. Corbyn’s ‘balls to the Establishment’ instincts prevailed, and all this came come to nothing; the pressure to finally bow to one side of his party or the other on the matter of a second referendum was too much too bear and he chose neither – again. Yet even this mere flirtation with Corbyn and his dreaded Customs Union may still prove fatal. If Lord North is condemned as our worst Prime Minister just for losing the American colonies – which has really worked out pretty well for both them and us – I dread to think what history will make of Mrs. May (and her Cabinet) for destroying the Tory party’s claim to be the ‘natural party of government;’ for sacrificing our sense of national decency upon the edifice of prolonging her career; for handing power and legitimacy to a communist-supporting terrorist-sympathising anti-Semite; for the painful, slow-motion destruction of our international standing.
One day, historians may look back at these weeks and play Cluedo to ascribe blame for the murder of the Conservative Party. They will find it was Mrs. May, with the Labour Party, in the Customs Union.
It may not be too late. A new leader may yet save the Conservatives and the country by sorting out Brexit (it was never going to be easy but really Theresa…). Only time will tell. It was hard not to feel moved when we finally saw a glimpse of her humanity as she stood teary-eyed in front of No. 10. But thank heavens she’s gone.
Oxford has lost its place in the top two of the Guardian’s university league tables, and now sits behind Cambridge and St Andrews.
Oxford’s lower ranking is a result of its poor performance in affordability and graduate outcomes, where it ranked 24th nationwide. However, Oxford retained its traditionally strong performance in maths and medicine.
St Andrews beat Oxford by just 0.3% points in the Guardian’s rankings, at 97.6 to Cambridge’s 100. Oxford has the lowest student to staff ratio of the top three, but the highest expenditure per student.
Sally Mapstone, vice-chancellor and principal of St Andrews, said: “For a small Scottish university to be competing among the very best universities in the United Kingdom says much for the strengths of research-led teaching and student experience across the sector north of the border,” Mapstone said.
“This ranking bears contemplation simply because it describes a point in time on St Andrews’s journey, a signpost of the advances we have made in the measures by which the Guardian judges the quality of an institution – and where we might go from here.”
The fact that Oxford scored highest on student expenditures, tied with University of the Arts London, is likely to raise concerns about accessibility in the wake of yesterday’s release of the University’s 2019 access report.
Few crowds ever out-flock the bustling tourists of Christ Church’s Tom Quad, but on one sunny Saturday afternoon, the feat was achieved by a set of chess players, brought together by the Oxford University Chess Club (OUCC) for the annual Cuppers tournament. Seventeen teams, each of four players, entered from thirteen different colleges. The three-hour tournament resulted in a victory for Magdalen College’s first team.
Several teams threw down a serious challenge for the title. Magdalen I, looking to defend their title after last year’s victory, fielded former national English player Daniel Abbas and former national Singaporean player Ben Foo. Christ Church I proved stiff competition though with Isaac Sanders, a UK top-50 player, and Aloysius Lip, another England squad alumnus. Balliol and St Hilda’s were also threatening contenders, with highly rated captains Filip Mihov and Richard Zhu. The tournament featured five rounds of ‘blitz’ in which each player had only ten minutes to make all their moves, far faster than multi-hour ‘standard’ games. The result was many exciting and heated finishes.
Early round pairings were a slaughterhouse. Magdalen I took an emphatic 4-0 win against Lincoln; Balliol demolished Magdalen II; St Hilda’s showed no mercy against Christ Church III; and Christ Church I stole a confident 3-1 against Linacre. Magdalen I progressed with two more clean sweeps against St Hilda’s and Pembroke gaining an all-important lead. Christ Church I, Worcester, Lady Margaret Hall, and St Hilda’s chased narrowly behind, all drawing their Round Three matches.
The drama peaked in Round Four with the long-awaited clash between Christ Church I and Magdalen I. The Magdalen skipper on Board Three set the tone with a quick win, and it was followed soon by flawlessly commanding games by Magdalen Boards Two and Four to claim the match. Magdalen I were only denied a clean sweep in the face-off between the tournament’s two strongest players, Sanders and Abbas. Both clocks ticked down to two seconds apiece in a highly-tactical endgame, before Abbas snatched a last-gasp draw, sealing a 3.5-0.5 Magdalen win.
The final round cleared up the score table. LMH yearned for a last-minute steal for the title; Magdalen cruelly crushed their hopes in Round Five with a 3-1 putdown. They did, however, score a notable upset win of Luke Herlihy against Foo, and the team finished third, edging out St Peter’s I and Christ Church I on tiebreak. Pembroke took second place with an admirable four wins. The “best second team” title was awarded to St Peter’s II, slipping past a hard-battling Christ Church II. The overall champions were inevitably Magdalen I. The team’s performance was hugely impressive: they claimed a victory in all five rounds and conceded only a single loss and a draw on game points. Many congratulations to Daniel Abbas, Ben Foo, Alexander Hardwick, and Christopher Finn for an unassailable performance.
In the end, all agreed that the tournament was thrilling to play in for relative beginners and experienced competitors alike and ran seamlessly. The seamless organisation of the tournament by the Oxford University Chess Club night was certainly a credit to them, and if the hotly-contested competition this year has been anything to go by, who knows who will be fighting to take the title in Chess Cuppers 2020.
Oxford University Chess Club meets every Wednesday in Christ Church College at 7pm.
“Be not afeard; the
isle is full of noises, / Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt
not.” So announces Caliban in Act Three Scene Two of The Tempest, whose
words are particularly apt given the setting of RJ Productions’ rendition of
Shakespeare’s 1611 play: the gardens of Worcester College, verdant and
sprawling, doubtless help to transport spectators to the lush realm that is
Prospero’s island.
Staging a Shakespearean
play, particularly one so intricate and multi-layered as The Tempest, is
not an easy task: first, there are lines to learn (and lots of them); second,
there is the question of Shakespeare’s shifts between prose and blank verse,
not to mention scene changes and shifts within characters as the play
progresses. RJ Productions rise to the task admirably, with both cast and crew
working to deliver an entertaining and solid performance that emphasises The
Tempest’s elements of comedy.
To recap briefly the plot: Prospero, formerly Duke of Milan, has been exiled to an island, where he lives with his daughter, Miranda, his slave, Caliban, and his spritely assistant, Ariel. At his master’s command, Ariel orchestrates a storm that brings the Italian noblemen, some of whom conspired to oust Prospero and some of whom remained loyal to him, ashore. By the play’s end, Prospero has reunited Alonso with his son, announced to the group the imminent marriage of his daughter to Ferdinand, and freed Ariel and reluctantly acknowledged Caliban as his own. The last words are given over to Prospero, who some have read as a stand-in for the playwright himself, who asks the audience to “set [him] free”.
As such, the play
offers any number of possibilities to those staging it: to what extent will
love, revenge, power dynamics, family relations, the play’s more sinister
aspects or light-hearted moments be spotlighted? RJ Productions seem to have
opted to exploit the comic potential in Shakespeare’s verse, and theirs is an
approach that works. Caliban’s movement and speech provoke laughter among
spectators, and Gemma Daubeney gives a very good performance as a drunk, though
never absent-minded, Trinculo; indeed, as a pair, Daubeney and Gavin Fleming
(Caliban) suit each other. Miranda, played by Grace Albery, in awe of the
‘brave new world’ of men she discovers near the play’s end, is also a source of
comedy throughout.
And yet, comedy aside, this production also does well in registering the play’s more sinister moments. Take, for example, Act Two Scene One, where, with Alonso and his two advisers having fallen asleep, Antonio plants the seed of murder into Sebastian’s ear. The trio are awoken by Ariel just before the pair put their plan into action, and this scene is very well choreographed, making it quite clear to us who, in Prospero’s eyes, is in the wrong.
The opening scene of The
Tempest is always a difficult one. We are on-board the ship with the crew
as they attempt to stop the vessel from crashing or sinking or both, so it is
important to convey a certain panic and intensity. But, in this case, such
panic is conveyed at the expense of enunciation. Linked to this is the dialogue
in the opening scenes of the play, which is slightly rushed: this enunciation,
however, does improve better as the play moves on.
The acting is solid,
but the stand-out elements of this production prove to be the subtlest: the
fact that Ariel sits with the audience, watching on as the crew struggle to
keep control of their ship in the storm; Prospero’s broach, speaking to his
position as the all-seeing I/eye of the island; and, later, Prospero sitting
with the audience as Miranda and Ferdinand get to know each other better.
Granted, these gestures do not form the crux of the play, but they go a long
way in distinguishing this production from previous interpretations.
Entertaining and engaging, RJ Productions has delivered a well-constructed rendition of Shakespeare’s play, with live music and the setting of Worcester College Gardens complementing the dramatic action.
