Wednesday 16th July 2025
Blog Page 597

Bishop of Oxford joins call for action on climate change

Rachel Cordery
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Bishop of Oxford joins call for action on climate change

The Bishop of Oxford, Rt Revd Stephen Croft, joined thousands in Westminster on Wednesday to demand action on climate change.

‘Time Is Now’ saw 12,000 people gather to put pressure on politicians to act on the need for unprecedented action to tackle climate change.

Organisers from the Climate Coalition and Greener UK reported that people from 99 per cent of the UK’s constituencies signed up for the march.

In his latest blog, the Rt Revd Croft called for action to prevent “apocalyptic” damage, saying: “The time is now to arrest the emission of greenhouse gases which are causing such lasting damage to the Earth.”

 “Life on Earth is about to change in apocalyptic ways during the remainder of this century if we continue to do next to nothing.”

“Setting the care for the earth again at the front and centre of our politics and our lives must be the priority if there is a fair and rich future for life on earth,” he added.

The Westminster protest comes after months of mounting demonstrations, including several in Oxford.

The demands are not going unnoticed: last month, the House of Commons approved a motion to declare an environmental emergency, while this week, the House of Lords debated a target to decrease greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050.

Despite these advancements, activists continue to call for an Environment Bill to clean up polluted air and tackle plastic pollution. Greener UK published a draft of the bill in December.

The Environmental Bill would also include legally binding targets and an independent watchdog to enforce environmental laws.

Extinction Rebellion holds parody of University Encaenia ceremony

Rachel Cordery
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Extinction Rebellion holds parody of University Encaenia ceremony

Last week, on a day reserved for the prestigious Encaenia ceremony, Extinction Rebellion took to the streets of Oxford to raise awareness of climate change.

Demonstrators took part in a parody of the event, entitled ‘Insania’, walking from Radcliffe Square to Broad Street.

Before the walk began, activists crowded Catte Street, along which the academics walked to the ceremony, chanting “shame, shame, shame on you.”

Encaenia is the ceremony at which the University of Oxford awards honorary degrees to distinguished men and women and celebrates its benefactors.

At the ceremony, eight people were awarded honorary degrees, including Professor Sir Simon Wessely, of the Royal Society of Medicine, and Yo-Yo Ma, a world-renowned cellist.

The activists’ own procession mimicked the award ceremony, by featuring awards for David Attenborough and climate change activist Greta Thunberg.

Extinction Rebellion spokeswoman, Hazel Dawe, said: “The Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford has told students that ‘Divestment will not have any tangible impact against climate change; it’s better to focus on research and green campus initiatives. This is muddled thinking and ignores the fact that the university’s international reputation requires it to show leadership and divest from fossil fuels.”

Oxford University has been contacted for comment.

Rate my tinny!

Ellen Sharman
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Rate my tinny!

Someone once said Oscar Wilde would regularly exclaim in his time as an Oxford student that “no sunny day is complete without engaging in the great British pastime known as ‘tinnys in the park’”.

Knocking back one of these canned beverages in the sun is as British as the Spice Girls, royal scandals, and Tory drug-taking. When done right, a can consumed joyously among friends can prove as entertaining as just about any other British summer activity.

You may have already sipped your inaugural canned lager of the summer, but why not try something a little more adventurous for your next tin-based excursion?

“What about my red stripes at Notting hill?!” I hear middle-class millennials clamour in fear. Do not fret! I am not suggesting we relinquish our steadily warming 2% beers for good, but only that we treat ourselves to something a little more decadent on the next scorcher.

Pre-mixed cocktails in tins offer the punter a flavourful and cost-effective way to drink themselves towards merriness, oblivion, or perhaps, like me, third-degree burns. Practicality wise, if you are looking to get tipsy quick, the tinned cocktail offers a sensible and bladder friendly alternative to smashing six cans in under 30 mins.

One issue of drinking tinned beverages in the sun is their temperature, but much like Sean Paul, these cocktails have it right. As revitalising as a cold beer in hand on a hot day can be, by the time you arrive at the sixth, you are well into the danger zone of sun-boiled larger. A six pack in the sun swiftly becomes undrinkable, the remnants banished to the fridge for another day. With pre-mixed tins, the pairing of a higher alcohol percentage with the drinkability of squash sees these nifty little cans get you drunk at a deceptive rate whilst preventing your beverage brewing from a margarita into a Molotov cocktail.

These pre-mixed cocktails have been on supermarket shelves for a number of years, but their growing popularity has seen an increasing number of high street supermarkets attempt to cash in with their own-brand versions of classic cocktails and well-loved mixed drinks.

In October of last year, M&S food halls across the UK presented eager punters with their own selection of cans, best experienced on the London overground (serving suggestion). Sainsbury’s also have really pushed the trend, even promoting a brand of ‘nitrogen infused’ drinks to try and create a bar standard experience in a can.

Yes, a cannabis lassi may sound more exotic than a cocktail stored in aluminium, but who wants to be like Jeremy Hunt? Be more Dianne Abbott and go forth into the world tinned cocktail in hand!

Pimm’s

Though not strictly a cocktail, Pimm’s sell their own pre-mixed cans to save you lugging a weighty jug of fruit and cucumber (is cucumber really a fruit though?) to your public green space of choice. Without prior experience of a fresh glass of homemade Pimm’s, one might be satisfied with this purchase. To the more experienced Pimm’s consumers, this substitution very much lacks the flair and flavour of a cup overflowing with fruit and fresh mint. I personally was disappointed with this drink, feeling cheated of the best thing about the summer classic; alcohol steeped strawberries.

Price: £1.80

Volume: 5.4%

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Sainsbury’s

The offerings from this supermarket’s own brand range are decidedly less sophisticated than its competitors. The choices of spirits are limited to Vodka, Gin, and Rum, and the mixers get no more exciting than rose lemonade. These cans are essentially glorified college bar pre-drinks in cans – cheap and cheerful, but not very sophisticated. If you are just looking to get day drunk ASAP (which is fair enough), then the star rating would probably go up considerably given the cost and percentage.

Price: £1 – £1.25 (the 25p extra goes towards adding a hint of rose or rhubarb to your basic gin)

Volume: 5%

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Tesco

Tesco’s themselves are yet to launch an own brand pre-mixed range, but if you are still desperate to rack up your club card points at all costs, they do sell a range of other brands’ concoctions on their shelves. I personally found this to be a cost-effective way of sampling numerous brands and flavours. Unlike any other supermarket, the current 3 for 4 deal means you can pick and mix between popular brands like Absolute, Gordons, and Sipsmith, or try more varied and innovative cocktail flavours by ‘All Shook Up’ including espresso martini’s or violet flavoured cosmos. Though I like the ability to choose from a very wide range of flavours and brands, I withhold my fifth star as I would have expected a giant chain like this to have created their own branded versions by now.

Price: 3 for 4 on all tins (cheapest free)

Volume: Varies per brand from 4.5% to 7.2%

Rating: ★★★★☆

M&S

As well as giving you the opportunity to live your middle-class Labour fantasy on the tube home, M&S offer a genuinely enticing range of drinks. The flavours are refined and classic (much like the brand’s reputation) and allow you to transport your favourites from the plush seats of a cocktail lounge to the verdant planes of port meadow. I gave M&S’ range a full 5 stars for the experience of shopping in the store is as soothing as the drinks are delicious. They have managed to create an own-brand range which is both varied in flavour and cost effective, given that the average alcohol volume per can is 8%.

Price: £2 each or 4 for £6

Volume: 8%

Rating: ★★★★★

The Rise of Podcast Journalism

Adam Dalrymple
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The Rise of Podcast Journalism

It is no secret that journalism is experiencing a crisis in the digital age of media. As circulation numbers plummet alongside advertising revenues, national newspapers are haemorrhaging money, while many smaller outlets have bled dry. Between 2005 and 2018, 245 regional and local newspapers shut-up shop in the UK alone. Digital advertising now outstrips traditional forms of advertising so optimists in the media industry might suggest by moving content online, journalism could survive in the 21st Century. Yet news corporations have not enjoyed the opportunities presented by the rise of the Internet. Facebook and Google have established an uncompromising hegemony on the digital advertising market, accounting for 60% of its revenue this year.

In the wake of this profound dislocation, media companies have scrambled to adapt to their new reality to avoid going extinct. Online news sites have resorted to click bait stories. Newspapers have retreated behind paywalls, with the FT leading the way in 2002, and the Times and the Telegraph following its lead in 2010 and 2012 respectively. The Guardian still allows free online access to their journalism but has resorted to begging for donations at the bottom of every article. Internationally, some newspapers have survived by acquiring billionaire philanthropic patrons, like the Washington Post with Jeff Bezos.

Journalists and editors are innovating, adopting new forms of media and new business strategies to keep their industry afloat. Amidst this turmoil, one promising type of “new media” has experienced an incredible rise in recent years to provide some hope: the daily news podcast.

When podcasts first appeared, they were known as audioblogs. They represented a democratic alternative to radio, a space where anyone with a microphone could make their voice heard. Through the 2000s podcasts became more polished and professional but still struggled to make a significant mainstream impact. That all changed in 2014 when a radio show called The American Life produced a true-crime podcast spinoff called Serial. It quickly became a sensation as 5 million people tuned in to its 12 episodes. It proved the potential of the podcast in a time when smartphones allowed people to consume them at any time and in any place. They became recognised as a high quality and in-demand alternative to radio one could personalize to their tastes.

The popularity of the podcast has soared in the five years since Serial. In the UK weekly listeners have doubled. Podcast networks have been created, such as Earwolf and Gimlet Media, who curate a range of shows for a dedicated core of fans. Earwolf now attracts 400,000 listeners across 50 shows and Gimlet was this year sold to Spotify for $230 million. Recognising the opportunity to boost their personal brand, celebrities have flocked to the medium. Today one can listen to podcasts hosted by Ricky Gervais and Russell Brand, Gwyneth Paltrow and Amy Schumer. Audioblogs may have originated from modest beginnings, but podcasts are now a force to be reckoned with.

Yet despite this success, podcasts have found it difficult to monetise their popularity. After quickly gaining popularity, true-crime series like Serial, S-Town or Sleuth have found it difficult to attract advertisers before their seasons came to an end. Serial relied on audience donations to create a second series. Yet the medium seemed perfect for advertisers as most podcast listeners are in the 18-34 age bracket that advertisers find notoriously difficult to access. Research shows 85% of people listen to the end of podcasts and at 90 seconds on average, podcast adverts are longer than those on TV or radio.

Thus in 2017, journalism was looking for new forms of media to expand into and podcasts were looking for a reliable revenue stream. Like some strange corporate rom-com, they found exactly what they were looking for in each other, and the daily news podcast was born.

The trailblazer for this new form of journalism was undoubtedly The Daily podcast from the New York Times. Hosted by Michael Barbaro, The Daily is a 20-minute deep-dive into a single news story, produced five days a week. Episodes are put together through interviews between Barbaro and other New York Times reporters, who outline and comment on their articles. The podcast concludes with a “Here’s what else you need to know today” section that summarises the day’s headlines.

The team at The Daily boldly claim, “This is what the news should sound like,” and it is hard to disagree with them. Rather than start with the headline, Barbaro and his crew wind back beginning of every news story, revealing the true origins of every conflict, the basis for every constitutional clash. Immaculate sound design give the podcast momentum and intensity, while astutely chosen sound bites weaved through the interviews transport the listener right into the action with a real sense of immediacy.

The Daily debuted in February 2017 and caught the zeitgeist early on, becoming extraordinarily successful in a matter of months. Before a year was up it had been streaming 100 million times, and a deal with national radio was sealed. Today, 2 million listeners tune in every morning.

I spoke to Ellen Barry, the Chief International Correspondent for the New York Times based in London, about what it was like to watch the success of the Daily from inside the newspaper. “I just don’t think any of us had any idea what a phenomenon it was going to be,” she said. “We’re in a period where the newspaper is trying all kinds of experiments … and this one just took off beyond anyone’s expectations.”

I wondered whether it was annoying to be hauled away from your desk to be interviewed for The Daily, but she laughs as says, “I don’t think there’s a single journalist in The New York Times who wouldn’t be thrilled.” She tells me that Michael Barbaro has become somewhat of a celebrity in the Times’ office, “he’s a matinee idol.”

The Daily draws back the curtain on the process of journalism, as you hear journalists putting together their stories and grappling with the evidence in front of them. In an episode about the New York Times’ investigation into Donald Trump’s wealth, journalist Sue Craig retells the riveting story of how she went to her mailbox one day in 2016 to find 3 pages of Donald Trump’s previously unreleased tax returns anonymously posted to her from Trump Tower. Her colleague Russ Buettner, when asked what he felt in that moment, says “it was just like holy shit.” Sue and Russ then outline how they collected 50,000 pages of Trump Family’s financial records, as you hear audio of them taking Barbaro around their investigation room, shuffling around the documents that made up this groundbreaking report. Every episode has an air of All The President’s Men to it, and every Times journalist who is interviewed inherits the role of Woodward and Bernstein.

Ellen Barry is thrilled that journalists can now tell the story of how they put together their articles. “The segment [in the Daily] obviously gives you more insight into the personalities and the screw ups and the ambiguity behind the process. I just think it added so many dimensions to the print piece.”

“This is all what would end up, traditionally, on the cutting room floor, right? Like people saying “fuck you, I don’t want to talk to you,” or people sort of going back and forth on their version of events… but it just turns out that everything we were cutting out tells you so much more about the story.”

Beyond its production value, the success of The Daily can be explained by the resources at their disposal. Barbaro’s team can tap into The New York Times’ unrivalled news network consisting of 31 international bureaus and 200 journalists. Moreover, The Daily’s emergence has coincided with a moment when the news is receiving unparalleled attention. As Barbaro put it himself, “We launched in the opening days of a polarizing new presidency that seemed to produce earthquake-sized news every day.”

Although the New York Times does not disclose how much money The Daily brings in, it is clear that they have cracked to problem of monetising the podcast. With the regularity of their schedule, advertisers know roughly how many listeners there will be on any given episode. There isn’t a scramble to find advertisers halfway through a season and there isn’t a specific order that people must listen to the episodes in. A leaked sales proposal shows that a sponsorship slot on the show costs $290,000.

Beyond direct revenue, The Daily boosts the brand of the New York Times, and attracts new young subscribers to the paper, on which its funding is now based. The New York Times have a record 4.5 million paid subscribers right now due to what people at the paper call the “Trump Bump”, as they have received 200,000 new subscribers every quarter since the presidential election. Staff at the New York Times recognise that it could equally be called the “Barbaro Bump.”

Ellen Barry said, “Audiences are key to the survival of the industry, it used to rely on advertising and the advertising base is melting away. Audiences are the only possible way to continue this kind of investigative journalism of accountability and believe me it is an absolute obsession to connect quality reporting of this kind with people who otherwise might not be newspaper readers. The Daily is doing that better than any other alternate form we have.”

Other media outlets have followed in the wake of The Daily’s success. Since its debut, the number of daily podcasts has tripled as, in the words of Felix Salmon of WIRED, “publishers are racing to own the money-printing machine that is the daily news podcast.” The Times, The Telegraph, The FT, The Economist, Sky News and The Spectator have all invested in the podcast business recently. The podcasts closest to the formula of The Daily in terms of production and format is probably The Guardian’s Today in Focus and Vox’s Today Explained. The news podcast could possibly prove the saviour for local papers too. Google has recently invested half a million pounds into a project called Laudable, which aims to create audio content for regional media companies as a means of keeping them financially sustainable. This could just be the tipping-point for the industry, as some analysts believe the audio market could be worth $656 million by 2020, with a large portion of that coming from podcasts.

Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s look at the numbers. How significant was the couple hundred thousand that The Daily brought the New York Times in the context of the 1.7 billion the newspaper earned altogether in 2017, even if you account for the subscriptions the podcast accounts for on top of that? Even if the podcast market’s explosive growth continues, can it really make up for the losses sustained by the decline in newspapers sold?

Ultimately, the rise of podcast journalism is valuable mainly as a statement of intent. It shows that media companies will continue to innovate maintain a viable financial future in this new digital age. The New York Times has been at the forefront of other exciting innovations. Ellen Barry said that at times it has felt like the newspaper’s leadership was “throwing spaghetti at the wall” to see what stuck. Yet she gives them credit for creating flagship new products. “They recognised very early on that printing an account of what happened yesterday could not be our only product… to their credit they were willing to break with established forms.”

 Alongside The Daily, in recent years the newspaper has debuted a parenting website as well as a cooking website that gives subscribers access to 19,000 recipes. The New York Times is also ingratiating itself with Hollywood. A documentary series on FX called The Weekly was announced in May 2019, which will follow reporters every week as they investigate news stories across the world. The New York Times aren’t the first media organization to turn to TV; VICE have a daily news show on HBO and both Buzzfeed and Vox agreed deals with Netflix.

Another vast source of revenue for newspapers in the 21st Century is in the events business. The leader in this instance is probably The Atlantic magazine, which runs 125 events a year accounting for a incredible 20% of their annual revenue. GQ organizes a comedy gig at the Hammersmith Apollo to coincide with their comedy issue, while Vogue India puts on the Vogue Wedding Show. Media companies have the contacts and spaces pull in big revenue in the events business, especially considering how much people are willing to pay to meet top journalists. The FT put on a conference in New York last week titled “Trust, Technology and Transformation in an Age of Upheaval” with speakers including the editor of the Washington Post, the editor of Vanity Fair and CNN news presenter Don Lemon. Tickets for this one-day event cost $900, making the Oxford Union membership finally seem like value for money. The New York Times has proved with The Daily that newspapers can flourish in the digital age, even they need to look beyond their print circulation to do so. Podcasts bring quality journalism to new audiences, and illuminate the mechanics of investigative journalism for existing customers. The success of the daily news podcast, and other new forms of media that newspapers are diversifying into, proves that advent of the Internet does not have to represent the death knell of journalism. Technological change causes dislocation, but it also forces valu

If Ever I Stray

Simone Fraser
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If Ever I Stray

On 4th May 2018, Frank Turner released his seventh studio album, titled Be More Kind.Strongly political, the record features songs like the sarcastically named anti-racism anthem ‘Make America Great Again’ and cynical ballad ‘21stCentury Survival Blues’. Yet this wasn’t what caused some fans to take offence at the album – it was the fact that it was considered too close to the kind of pop that Turner has taken care to stand apart from over recent years.

Taking a quick glance at his Wikipedia page, it’s easy to see that his music has changed dramatically over the years. Beginning in post-hardcore punk band Million Dead, after their 2005 split Turner switched suddenly to a solo blend of folk and punk, predominantly on acoustic guitar, releasing classic albums Sleep Is for the Week (2007), Love Ire and Song (2008) and Poetry of The Deed (2009). These albums show clear evolution, but set up a style of music and lyrics that Turner is increasingly becoming haunted by. Admittedly, the three albums are beautiful. They range from bitter to hopeful, desperate to furious, and sarcastic to just plain sad. Anthems like Long Live The Queen, written about his friend Lex who passed away from cancer stand as a triumphant and desperate celebration of life, emulating the combination of melancholy but furious hope that Turner’s fans adore. To some, this is the kind of music that raised Turner to success, and this devotion to pure and unpolished emotion is what they love about him.

Turner’s next album, England Keep My Bones (2011) similarly echoed these ideas, albeit in a slightly more polished way. However, it was with Tape Deck Heart (2013) that Turner began to shift his style. Whereas the earlier albums leaned heavily on raw emotion and acoustic sounds, with some recorded literally in the living rooms of his friends, Turner’s current sound is much more polished and produced, with Be More King being labelled “indie rock/indie folk”, and opposed to the “folk punk/folk rock” of his earlier days. Instead of playing dive bars and pub shows, Turner has now sold out Wembley, and although he remains committed to playing smaller venues. Yet has this shift meant that he was lost the heart of his music? This calls into question whether it’s right for musicians to move away from the genre that they originally began in, and whether it’s right for their supporters to accuse them of selling out if they begin to shift towards more accepted styles like pop or indie rock. 

The main accusation levelled against Turner is that in moving to a more produced sound, he has lost the raw emotion that originally made people fall in love with his sound. Turner is open about his autobiographic style of song writing, and over the years, we have seen him break his own heart through music, and slowly mend it. We, as humans, are constantly going through emotional turmoil, and having this sort of honesty about everything from his troubled relationship with his father, alcoholism, and breakdown of long-term relationships from the perspective of the person who is leaving have comforted people of all ages, including me, when we’ve faced similar difficulties.

Possibly the real reason why people are angry with Turner’s music then isn’t that he has sold out and somehow lost his devotion to the genre of music that he won our hearts with. Maybe the real reason for people’s anger is that Turner isn’t writing sad, desperate music anymore, because he’s finally happy. Instead of going through a string of toxic relationships, Turner is now happily engaged, and his music reflects a maturity and contentment in life that he simply didn’t have before. Songs like Little Changeshave been described as vapid because of their catchy, pop-like chorus, but in reality, they tackle important issues like his experience of CBT and relationships, but with an undying layer of emotional stability that his music didn’t have before. 

Ultimately, Frank Turner owes us nothing. Even so, he continues to draw tattoos for those who ask, supports charities like Safe Gigs for Women, and tour constantly – he recently played his 2265thgig. Frank hasn’t stopped being devoted to honest music, but he has grown personally and musically, and in over a decade of releasing music, this has caused some significant changes. So ultimately, what a musician creates is their own choice. It is possible to remain devoted to making honest and poignant music without remaining static in your sound – and after all, if you don’t like it, no-one’s making you listen. 

Christ Church JCR position uncontested after hustings ‘challenge’ controversy

Cherwell News
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Christ Church JCR position uncontested after hustings ‘challenge’ controversy

Christ Church’s election to choose a new Student Union Representative went uncontested after one candidate dropped out, following controversy around a hustings challenge.

After the candidate withdrew, Christ Church’s JCR President Joseph Grehan-Bradley said in a JCR Committee meeting: “I think the primary reason they dropped out was the Oxfess”, in reference to a post criticising the candidate’s decision to reject a hustings challenge.

The challenge, which required the candidates to eat 1kg of any food of their choosing, was branded “very disagreeable” by Senior Censor Brian Young in a Censor’s meeting. Young added: “I have an issue with challenges to do with eating, as eating disorders are on the rise.”

Sebastian Laclau, JCR VP, said: “OUSU Rep Will Urukalo…was happy to change the challenge, but then it emerged this candidate was not keen to do any challenge, and so they pulled out of the running.”

Christ Church’s administration also took issue with a recent Sport’s Rep challenge which involved candidates downing 4 VKs.

Geraldine Johnson, Christ Church’s Junior Censor, commented that this “cannot be a challenge anymore”. Ms Johnson sent an email to Christ Church’s JCR, informing them that any further challenges would require prior approval by the college’s administration.

This follows her comments, made in the same meeting as Mr Young’s, that hustings challenges “in most cases involve men imposing challenges on women, expecting them to go along with them for the fun”.

She added that this issue of challenges was “a more serious case than the P Club”, a reference to reports last week that Senior Censor Brian Young was running an exclusive dining society called the ‘Pythic (P) Club’.

Hustings for the SU rep role went ahead with the only candidate, Nico Stone, who elected to eat a whole roast chicken.

The withdrawn candidate declined to comment.

Robot’s art goes on display in St John’s exhibition

Angus Brown
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Robot’s art goes on display in St John’s exhibition

Art created by a humanoid robot named “Ai-Da” after 19th century mathematician Ada Lovelace will go on display at St John’s from the 12th June.

The robot uses a robotic arm and pencil to draw what it sees with a camera in the eye.

According to the BBC, the art from the robot’s first exhibition has already sold for more than £1 million.

The robot Ai-Da was designed by gallerist Aidan Mellier, who wanted to create a human-like robot capable of producing original art in order to showcase the potential of artificial intelligence.

It absorbs visual information and interprets it using technologies developed at the University of Oxford.

The Telegraph described her paintings as looking “like the kind of kaleidoscopic synthetic-cubist paintings produced by artists in Paris in the Twenties, though they’re more complex in structure and more muted in colour.”

Despite being billed as art produced solely by Ai-Da, some of the robot’s works were painted over by a human artist, Susie Emery, and at least seven collaborators are listed beneath each work.

In a video produced for the BBC, the robot said “I would like young people to realise that there is more to art than simply drawing. The context, the meaning, what you want to say.”

The robot further said that: “It is wonderful to see people engaging, thinking and discussing this work.”

The machine’s creator describes it as a “bespoke robot” which is “able to actually explore those questions, and engage audiences in the whole issue of ethics, and where AI is taking us.

“We need to be able to ask ourselves, what are we actually developing in the future?”

Although The Telegraph gave the exhibition just two stars, they also wrote that “the art of our time – as represented by, say, the Turner Prize – already feels artificial and “unreal” in so many elaborate ways, that creating a robot to produce art that looks “real” feels an almost perversely quaint thing to do.”

The exhibition, which opened on Wednesday, is being held at the Barn Gallery at St John’s College.

UNION SCANDAL: Lee disqualified, McGinley elected in recount

Angus Brown
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UNION SCANDAL: Lee disqualified, McGinley elected in recount


Celeste McGinley has been elected as the Union’s Secretary following the disqualification of RISE candidate Lee Chin Wee for electoral malpractice.

After votes for Lee were disqualified, McGinley was elected with 415 first preferences to Hugh Bellamy’s 342.

In an electoral tribunal which began on Friday and ended on Saturday morning, Lee was found guilty of electoral malpractice relating to the forging of nomination papers which members of the RISE slate had claimed were evidence of election tampering during the campaign.

In a separate tribunal, RISE candidate for Librarian Ayman D’Souza was also found guilty of electoral malpractice and disqualified. The malpractice charges related to a Facebook post in which D’Souza publicly alleged his nomination forms had been forged. D’Souza had stood in the election for Treasurer, which was won by fellow RISE member Beatrice Barr, after his nomination form was submitted incorrectly.

Lee reportedly submitted a written statement to the Tribunal in which he plead guilty, and in addition to his disqualification also faces a six-term election ban. D’Souza similarly faces an election ban until Trinity 2020.

The same tribunal found that President-Elect Brendan McGrath “had no case to answer” on an allegation brought against him.

Following the disqualification of Lee and D’Souza, sources within the Union told Cherwell that there had been discussions of an attempt to impeach RISE Presidential candidate Sara Dube and Treasurer candidate Beatrice Barr, both of whom were elected last Friday.

Lee Chin Wee, RISE slate leader Sara Dube, Brendan McGrath, the Union’s Returning Officer, and the Oxford Union have been contacted for comment. Ayman D’Souza declined to comment.  

This article was amended on the 24th June to clarify that Lee Chin Wee submitted a written admission of guilt prior to the Tribunal. It was also amended to specify that Brendan McGrath was found to have no case to answer by the tribunal, contrary to a previous assertion that allegations against him were dismissed due to lack of evidence.

‘Was it written by aliens, or is it about vampires?’: A Q&A with Daniel Wakelin

Jacob Ridley
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‘Was it written by aliens, or is it about vampires?’: A Q&A with Daniel Wakelin

The theme for CulCher this week is ‘sensuality’, and with that in mind, we at Books have chosen to look into the material text – the palpable, tactile wing of the reading experience, provided by the book as a physical object. Daniel Wakelin knows a thing or two about that. He is the Jeremy Griffiths Professor of Medieval English Palaeography at St Hilda’s College, and Executive Secretary of the Early English Text Society. His publications include Humanism, Reading, and English Literature, 1430-1530 [OUP, 2007]; Scribal Correction and Literary Craft [CUP, 2014]; and Designing English [Bodleian, 2018].

What recent works of fiction would you recommend to our readers?

The last novel I read was Jordy Rosenberg’s Confessions of the Fox [Atlantic, 2018], a fictional memoir of an eighteenth-century transgender thief.

What about non-fiction?

I’ve just finished Arthur Lochmann’s La Vie Solide [Payot, 2019], a lovely account of why you’ll learn more about philosophy by working as a roofer than by studying PPE…

Favourite medieval manuscript?

Only one?! Ok, if pushed: the ‘Ellesmere Chaucer’, one of the earliest copies of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – exquisitely made and illustrated. When I was allowed to consult it, after days of haggling, the unflappable librarian wheeled it in (it takes a trolley) and said: “You can now get started on your research. But first let’s sit and look at the pictures.” She was still enchanted by it after decades caring for it.

Oh go on then, have another one.

OK, it’s less famous but weirder and more wonderful, and like much that’s weird and wonderful it’s in Oxford. It’s a multifolding almanac of astrology, farming advice and a church calendar, illustrated with strange symbols and pictures, and constructed like no other book I’ve handled. I like to show this book – if it is a book – in classes in the Bodleian, because people gasp.

In literature, when did ‘the medieval’ end?

In FHS at 1550! But in lived experience, it depends which country and genre you’re considering. Let me annoy my colleagues and suggest the early 1600s.

One of your specialist areas is palaeography; what does that involve, and what are its implications for literary study? 

Palaeography involves learning to read ancient handwriting, in order to study the texts preserved in manuscript. But it also involves understanding handwriting – its date, place, style, materials, processes – as itself evidence for human creativity and agency – the histories of art, craftsmanship, professional training, ideology, political power, bureaucracy, national identity, religion, gender.

Are there any English manuscripts which remain illegible to you? Or can everything now be read and understood?

I hope none in English! But there is one huge puzzle: the barmy Voynich manuscript [Beinecke MS 408], written in some sort of cipher that nobody can decode. Google it and fall down an interweb rabbit hole to a looking-glass world of crytographers, cranks and conspiracy-theorists. Is it in Hebrew, proto-Romance or a language that strangely escaped record anywhere else? Was it written by aliens, or is it about vampires? Is it a forgery?

Favourite marginal annotation? Are marginalia a genre?

Marginalia often follow conventions like a literary or artistic genre. Some were useful to people because they were so conventional, clear. But some are not. One favourite in the Bodleian is a note on a Latin scientific book of the late 1400s: “Kys my ars sir Rafe”. What did this person have against Sir Ralph?

In medieval manuscripts, what correlation is there between the quality of the materials used and the ‘importance’ of the text?

Usually none! We often focus – on #medievaltwitter and in exhibitions and popular books – on what have been called “remarkable manuscripts” (like the Chaucer manuscript I mentioned). But often important texts appear in humble form, and humble forms often tell us more about the humble people who made and used them. We tried to tell those everyday stories in a Bodleian exhibition Designing English. (This is a shameless plug for my glossy exhibition catalogue.)

Any glaring examples of ‘unremarkable’ manuscripts housing important texts?

One important text is unprepossessing visually: the translation of St Gregory attributed to King Alfred. The Bodleian’s copy [MS Hatton 20], probably made at Alfred’s command, is not overly decorated and is by scribes who are not entirely assured. But it has something of the status of a historical relic for the history of the English language: probably the earliest book made in English to survive. Many people painstakingly translate bits for English Prelims.

Before the invention of print, what were some of the milestones in English book culture?

There are shifts in every generation, but in England quite a few occur or get started in the later 1100s: the styles of handwriting and decoration changed, and these jobs began to move outside the monasteries more often. Then from the late 1300s there is more writing by a wider range of people, and increasingly in English too. Printing in English – first done in Belgium in 1473/74 – entered a culture where literacy had already expanded greatly through handwritten media.

Any exciting upcoming events you’d recommend looking out for?

The British Library has a new exhibition about the history of writing, across cultures and periods: Making Your Mark (until August 27th). As soon as term ends, I’ll be popping up to that.

If you could provide funding for an underexplored area of the field crying out for new research, what would it be?

The other languages used in multilingual medieval England – French, Latin and Hebrew and the neighbouring languages such as Welsh. A beneficial side-effect would be improving our language skills now – vital!

You were recently involved in staging excerpts from a mystery-play cycle. Where are these plays written down, and what performance guidelines are there in the manuscripts?

Some manuscripts were used to check that performances went to plan; some were proud records of local traditions. We also have in the Bodleian a rare survival of an actor’s rough rehearsal text from Norfolk in the 1400s. They’re all sketchy on-stage directions, but brilliant theatre historians such as Meg Twycross and Alexandra Johnson have discovered lots of records of costumes, costs and so on. The gaps are liberating for staging them now: it’s not like staging something by Samuel Beckett where your hands are tied. We saw that in the Oxford mystery plays on 27 April: my group used animated gifs; some groups employed gritty realism (the Crucifixion was truly harrowing); others had updated costumes – vampish devils and a sinner in a Trump mask condemned to damnation.

Why weren’t these plays printed at the time?

They were very local community events, so printing might not have seemed necessary. Their religious content also fell from favour after restrictions on Catholicism from the 1530s on. But from the 1510s people printed the secular Tudor interludes, which are like political debates done as drama: whether you should marry a rich man or a good one, or how to exploit the resources of newly encountered North America.

The Oxford website says you’re working on photography; where’s the link between this and your medieval interests? 

Among my other interests are contemporary art and photography. I became interested how photography changes how we look at medieval manuscripts: the photographer’s tendency to focus on the exceptional; the camera’s ability to zoom in more closely than the people who made these books. This is obvious to critics of modern photography, and medievalists need to think about digital photography carefully. That said, among the first photographs made by Henry Fox Talbot [d. 1877] were pictures of fifteenth-century books. Some appeared in the exhibition Salt and Silver at Tate Britain a few years ago.

Students protest at Oxford Sustainability Awards

Havard Yttredal
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Students protest at Oxford Sustainability Awards

Five members of the Oxford Climate Justice Campaign (OCJC) staged a protest at the University of Oxford’s Sustainability Showcase last night, standing for the duration of the ceremony with signs that questioned the University’s continued investments in fossil fuels.

The students rose from their seats to display a sign that read “Still investing in fossil fuels??” as Vice-Chancellor Louise Richardson opened the event at the Sheldonian Theatre.

In her remarks, the Vice-Chancellor acknowledged the protest, saying: “We have representatives from a large number of entities across the University… even some people who are protesting our investments in fossil fuels.”

The protest was broadcast live on Facebook. Source: OCJC

The Sustainability Showcase is an annual awards ceremony in which the University celebrates sustainability initiatives across colleges and the university at large. Efforts concerning investments and finance were not listed among the categories of awards.

The protesters said that their intention is not to detract from the achievements actually being made. Pascale Gourdeau, a DPhil student and spokeswoman for OCJC, said: “Students, staff and faculty at the University of Oxford have done tremendous work to lessen the carbon footprint of its own premises, and these are efforts that should absolutely be maintained and rewarded.

“However, sustainability has a broader sense: it also concerns the systemic, normalized, and institutionalized forces which are rapidly contributing to the deterioration of life, with the most vulnerable among us affected the most.”

The University’s endowment is managed by Oxford University Endowment Management (OUem) in a fund that stood at £3.4 billion as of December 2018. This fund includes investments by twenty-five colleges and six charitable trusts associated with the University. About £74.8 million of it was invested in the energy sector.

Gourdeau told Cherwell: “If you believe the science and you believe the local communities — many of them indigenous — who have been resisting extractive projects for decades, you believe that burning fossil fuels is unsustainable for the planet and its peoples.

“Profiting from the burning of carbon should be viewed as more urgently unsustainable than anything else.”

According to the pro-divestment organisation People & Planet, 76 UK Universities have already committed to full divestment from fossil fuels. Last month, the governing body of the University of Cambridge commissioned an inquiry into the matter. The report will “set out fully the advantages and disadvantages, including the social and political ones, of a policy of divestment from fossil fuels”.

In 2015, Oxford University Council voted to disallow the buying of direct shares in coal and tar sands industries. However, campaigners say that this did not meet their demands of disinvestment of all direct and indirect shares in coal, oil and gas.

Two years later, OUem’s offshore investments were revealed in the Paradise Papers, which documented  indirectly invested in fossil fuel companies such as Royal Dutch Shell through offshore funds.

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