Tuesday 7th October 2025
Blog Page 864

Criticism of Diane Abbott is rooted in racism and misogyny

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Criticism of Diane Abbott is rooted in racism and misogyny

“EXPOSED: SHOCKING SCALE OF HARD-LEFT BULLYING,” blared the Daily Mail’s front page on 12 June, its front-cover an exposé of the particular hatefulness of the left. The next day it ran another story, this time entitled: “LEFTIE HATE TROLLS UNMASKED”, which unveiled three left-wing activists responsible for the publication of a menacing photo of Yvette Cooper, a Labour MP from the right wing of the party.

Undoubtedly, there are a large number of abusive voices on the left and the attacks and intimidation suffered by politicians like Cooper should not be minimised. Nevertheless, this recent spate of headlines has depicted online abuse as a phenomenon unique to socialist activists. This narrative turns the problem into a partisan matter, instead of confronting the genuine questions that it raises about social media and the prevalence of prejudice in our political discourse.

Diane Abbott’s recent speech during a debate concerning online abuse makes clear that this abuse is not the preserve of the left, but a problem rampant across the political spectrum. She – clearly accustomed to the hate she receives – reads through a number of messages directed towards her, messages which contain rape threats, death threats, and an endless use of the n-word.

Anyone following the general election campaign will have seen some of this abuse. Abbott was attacked frequently in the wake of a series of substandard interview performances. Robust criticism of her performances is entirely justifiable. Yet the level of condemnation endured by Abbott was not equalled by the amount received by Jeremy Corbyn when he forgot the cost of a key child care policy, or on Philip Hammond when he misstated the cost of HS2 by £20 billion. This disparity is testament to the fact that women – and especially women of colour – are subject to disproportionate amounts of scrutiny compared to their male colleagues.

Furthermore, genuine criticism was, on the whole, subsumed by appalling, repulsive, indefensible abuse, by a mire of hatred in which even the least disgusting attacks were shot through with a distinct and disturbing strain of racism and sexism.

Abbott also points out that this abuse is far from a new phenomenon, and that any uptick in abusive behaviour has more to do with the advent of social media than with a genuine surge in hatefulness. The anonymity afforded by Twitter and the ease of sending an abusive message online enable bullies and trolls to disseminate their harassment with less effort than ever before. To suggest that political abuse was non-existent before Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader is to misunderstand entirely the nature of the beast with which you are grappling.

It may be tempting to turn a blind eye to abuse for partisan reasons, to let damaging behaviour go unchallenged so long as it is perpetrated against one’s political opponents, but we must – collectively – stand against such conduct. When Tory candidates suffer threats from elements of the left, the left must stand in solidarity with them; when Diane Abbott suffers racist death threats from parts of the right, the right must do the same. This is not to say, however, that political discourse should be emotionally uninvolved or that politicians should be exempt from moral condemnation. This is far from the case. Debates are inherently divisive, democracies inherently adversarial and policies inherently personal.

Simply acknowledging that we ought to denounce abuse while retaining our adversarial political culture is hardly a solution to this pressing issue. A good start would be to apply greater pressure to online platforms to tackle abusive content with the same fervour with which they approach copyright infringement.

More importantly still, we must recognise that this abuse is not just driven by disdain for one’s political opponents; rather, we must challenge the prejudices which remain deeply rooted in our culture, and which are poisoning online discourse. A large proportion of abuse – no matter from where it emanates – is bolstered or driven by misogyny or racism, systems of thought which we must continue to reject regardless of how overt they may appear in a given context.

Right now, we’re having the wrong discussion about abuse. Hopefully, Abbott’s intervention will help to move the debate towards the root causes of this phenomenon, rather than a small selection of its symptoms.

Council unveils ‘cycling city’ signs despite rising accident rates

Susannah Goldsbrough
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Council unveils ‘cycling city’ signs despite rising accident rates

 

New ‘cycling city’ signs may signal good intentions, but Oxford’s two-wheeled commuters are facing increased risk on the road.

The Lord Mayor of Oxford, Councillor Jean Fooks, will today unveil the first of eleven signs around Oxford proclaiming it to be ‘a cycling city’, despite the fact that the most recent figures show cycling accident rates have increased in Oxfordshire.

The signs form part of the Council’s long term transport strategy, set out in its recently published draft Vision 2050, which proposes to replicate the commuter cycle rate in its twinned city Leiden, in the Netherlands.

Oxford City Council hopes to increase the number of commuters who cycle to work from its current rate of 17%, to 70%.

In a press release, Councillor Louise Upton said: “these new signs will be a statement of intent from Oxford City Council.

“Our long-term aim is to replicate Leiden and significantly increase the number of people commuting to work by bike. This obviously won’t happen overnight, but this is one step towards that goal.”

However, Green Party Councillor Dick Wolff told Cherwell that, while he welcomes the signage initiative, it must be set against “a background of falling cycle use and increased accident rates.”

Between 2012 and 2015, the number of cycling casualties per year in Oxfordshire rose from just under 300 to just over 350, while over the same period, the level of cycle traffic fell by about 1000 vehicle miles, according to data collected by Oxfordshire County Council.

This rise in accident rate occurred despite the City Council investing £367,000 in cycling infrastructure between 2012 and 2016, in order to improve the experience of cycling in Oxford.

In February of this year, a study by Map-mechanics using Department for Transport statistics found that The Plain roundabout, situated at the junction of Iffley Road, Cowley Road, St Clement’s and the High Street, in the centre of Oxford, is the second most dangerous roundabout for cyclists in the UK.

According to analysis of Department for Transport statistics by Cycling UK, while cycling fatality rates in the UK have been dropping since 2005, the KSI (killed or seriously injured) rate per billion miles has grown significantly over the last 10 years. In 2005, it stood at 875 cyclists per billion miles, but by 2015 it had risen to 1,025.

According to Cherry Allen, Cycling UK’s policy information coordinator: “It’s clear that cycling safety needs serious attention.”

Councillor Upton believes that the ‘cycling city’ signs will “remind drivers to be more aware of cyclists within Oxford City Centre.” However, this is the first time signs like these have been installed in the UK, and there is as yet no data to support her belief.

Travellers asked to leave University College sports fields

Cherwell News
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Travellers asked to leave University College sports fields

Police have ordered a group of travellers to leave University College sports fields, after they arrived in caravans to the site last night.

Scores of caravans began arriving on the fields, on Abingdon Road, last night, with more arriving this morning, the Oxford Mail has reported.

Thames Valley Police have asked the group to move on, after an angry response from local residents. The group were expected to leave by 7pm tonight.

One local resident told the Oxford Mail: “A few arrived last night and now there are loads of them. There is already rubbish piling up and people have complained of trouble.”

A Thames Valley Police spokesperson said: “We were called at 7.30pm yesterday to say some caravans had arrived at University College sports field.

“The people who are on the site have agreed to leave at 7pm tonight.”

Cherwell was unable to contact a member of the travellers’ community for comment.

King of Spain tours Oxford during state visit

Ethan Croft and Fred Dimbleby
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King of Spain tours Oxford during state visit

The King of Spain, Felipe VI, visited Oxford today as part of his state visit to the United Kingdom.

In the first official trip of a Spanish monarch to the UK since 1986, King Felipe, his wife Letizia and their entourage chose Oxford as the final destination of the historic visit. He toured the Weston and Bodleian libraries with University Chancellor Lord Patten, and went on to make a speech in the Divinity Schools praising the University of Oxford’s role in European development. He said that learning “is and should be open and available to society.”

His particular emphasis on “transnational scientific collaboration” comes in light of the current debate on the UK’s membership of European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). Four Oxfordshire MPs have condemned Prime Minister Theresa May’s plans to leave the organisation as part of the Brexit settlement.

King Felipe was greeted by local residents and flag-waving school children, who gathered behind crowd barriers on Broad Street and Radcliffe Square. The Spanish press pack were also in attendance, reporting back home on the day’s events.

Tonight, the King will attend a reception at Exeter College, recognising the institution’s particularly close association with the Spanish monarchy. A college email, circulated to students yesterday, cited the King Alfonso XIII Professorship established in 1927, and the Queen Mother Sophia’s Honourary Fellowship, as reason for the disruption. Some Exeter students were given a place at the reception, but spaces were limited.

Exeter College Medic Sam Zhang told Cherwell: “The splendour of the royal couple was only matched by the ferocity of the glare from security as I tried to get closer.”

Spanish journalists relay news of the King’s visit back home

This comes after the King, a former Olympic sailor, made an address to the British Parliament at Westminster on Wednesday. He raised the controversial issue of Gibraltar’s sovereignty, sparking concerns among members of the UK government. The trip had been planned for June, but was delayed by Theresa May’s decision to call a snap general election.

Queen Elizabeth II made Felipe VI a Stranger Knight of the Garter as part of his visit, a traditional honour for foreign monarchs that stretches back to 1813.

In his tour of the Weston, King Felipe was shown a manuscript of the Codex Mendoza, a document originally intended for the eyes of his Sixteenth century predecessor Charles V.

At the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

Altair Brandon-Salmon
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At the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

One thousand and ninety-two. It’s a large number. Too large. It’s the number of artworks on display at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition – a vast, packed exploration of where we are now, and perhaps where we are going, in art. It’s an unwieldy beast, bursting at its boundaries, hard to grasp fully. The two hundredth and forty-ninth summer exhibition held at the RA – never missing a year since it began 1769 – brings to mind the adage of the curate’s egg: ‘good in places’.

International artists like Marina Abramovic are represented, as are standout British names such as Tracey Emin; yet it is probable most of the myriad of painters and sculptors will be unrecognisable to you. The famous, the up-and-coming, the bubbling under, the old hands, academicians and amateurs, all fight for your attention on the walls of Burlington House. Curated by Eileen Cooper, Keeper of the Royal Academy, directing a Hanging Committee including Yinka Shonibare and Farshid Moussavi, Cooper claims at the beginning of the show that it intends to celebrate diversity and global culture. The follow through, however, is disappointing: the plethora of work on display, from wildly disparate artists, prevents any coherent overall theme being established.

Many critics have taken Alastair Sooke’s line that ‘[this] is not a vintage year,’ with most reviews, untethered from a particular frame of viewing the exhibition, becoming webs of observations, noting fine works, disparaging others. It was ever thus, even going back to Joshua Reynolds’ and Benjamin West’s presidencies in the eighteenth centuries. By including the traditional room of architectural plans (fascinating, but belonging to another world), the whole format of the show resists a unified argument. It is a ritual to be undertaken, rather than compared to concurrent exhibitions. Perhaps that’s a secret strength, to have one flagship annual exhibition left in London which doesn’t have a thesis, but lets the audience guide themselves, picking out the pieces they enjoy the most, leafing through the two hundred and sixteen page List of Works to discover who they’re all by.

As I walked through the exhibition, I marked each artwork in the booklet which in someway emerged out of the surrounding morass to engage my curiosity. Reviewing the haphazard series of titles which I highlighted with an asterisk, it becomes apparent the most interesting works came from minor artists. Apart from Anselm Kiefer’s flower painting Und du bist maler geworden, works from prominent artists, from Gilbert and George to Frank Stella, seem rote, conforming to stylistic expectations. Instead, many of the most impressive pieces were not those which sought to explode formal boundaries, but rather explored existing genres with great facility. Jock McFadyen’s huge Calton Hill 3, depicting a vast, outsized moon rising over Edinburgh’s central hill, is beautiful for its embrace of landscape, while at the same time it uses encrusted paint to make the ridges and mountains of the moon rise up from the canvas’ surface. The moon sits above a navy blue background, glowing in white and grey, far outstripping and overpowering the surrounding paintings.

Other works, equally, have sly streaks of wit running through them: Glen Baxter’s amusing cartoon ‘But I distinctly requested a Rothko!’ barked Big Red is drawn to appear straight out of The Telegraph. With Hassan Hajjaj’s wonderful photograph, Henna Bikers, however, the surface humour serves to underline a deeper political point on female empowerment in the Middle East.

Yet it’s clear, even amongst the works which appeal to my own aesthetic sense, little commonality is shared amongst them. Is this adequate cause to side with Sooke and his compatriots to opine that the show ‘is the last word in déjà-vu’? Far from showcasing the rising stars, so the argument goes, its mixture of established artists, Sunday painters, and men and women spanning every conceivable decade, is a hodge-podge, indicative of nothing outside its own self-referentiality, the walls filled by works from minor academicians.

There’s weight to the attack that we should be cautious of burdening the Summer Exhibition with significance greater than it can bear. Yet no doubt the exhibition has its own unique, idiosyncratic pleasures, the occasional frisson of dissimilar works brought together in the same gallery space. The Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition should be seen, if only to understand that once all public art exhibitions were like this – as much as it wants to be seen as forward-thinking, it’s also a vision of a past way of viewing art.

Oxford academics involved in Google’s push to influence public policy

Henry Straughan
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Oxford academics involved in Google’s push to influence public policy

A new report by the Campaign for Accountability (CfA) has revealed Google’s financial influence on academics and policy experts, showing that Google funding for 329 research papers since 2005.

The papers were in key public policy areas where regulatory changes could be perceived to cost the company significant amounts in fines and lost earnings, and were authored by academics from such institutions as Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard.

The revelations suggest Google is spending millions on seeking to sway public opinion and influence policy in favour of the company’s interest. CfA Executive Director, Daniel Stevens, said: “Google uses its immense wealth and power to attempt to influence policy makers at every level. At a minimum, regulators should be aware that the allegedly independent legal and academic work on which they rely has been brought to them by Google.”

Google reportedly paid between £3,900 and £310,000 to authors for papers on topics crucial to its interests such as antitrust, privacy, search neutrality, patents and copyright. The CfA claim that the overwhelming majority of papers funded in some way by Google tended to support the company’s policy or legal positions. Papers funded by Google argue, for example, that collecting huge volumes of personal data was a fair exchange for the Google’s free services and that the company did not use its market dominance improperly.

The report further showed that in 66% of the cases the authors did not disclose the Google funding, with researchers at the universities of Bournemouth and Sussex among those who did not reveal their funding.

However, Oxford academics who received funding to write on Google’s policy interests did declare the payments. Google are also key funders of the Oxford Internet Institute, a multidisciplinary research and teaching department of the University of Oxford.

Google’s funding for competition-themed papers spiked in 2015 when the European Commission filed formal antitrust charges against the company. Last month European regulators issued a record $2.71 billion fine against Google for unfairly favouring its own services over those of rivals in its search results.

The CfA analysis attempts to show how Google creates the image of significant and expanding body of academic research supporting its policy positions – with Google-funded studies systematically citing each other, a practice which also helps hide the initial Google funding. Stevens argued that by doing this: “Google has joined a list of business sectors that have exercised a corrupting influence on academic research, including the tobacco industry over the effects of smoking and the fossil fuel industry over the science of climate change.”

Google dismissed the CfA report, describing it as “highly misleading”.

“Our support for the principles underlying an open internet is shared by many academics and institutions who have a long history of undertaking research on these topics – across important areas like copyright, patents, and free expression,” said director of public policy Leslie Miller in a blog post. “We provide support to help them undertake further research, and to raise awareness of their ideas.”

Oxford University has been contacted for comment.

My Cousin Rachel: a disturbing world of unanswered questions

Becky Cook
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My Cousin Rachel: a disturbing world of unanswered questions

This latest adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s novel is directed by Roger Michell of Notting Hill fame, yet as a mid-19th century period piece set on the Cornish coast, it is a sharp departure from that classic romantic comedy. The audience is immediately thrown into the world of Philip Ashley (Sam Claflin), growing up in a rural idyll with his cousin Ambrose. The flecks of Hardy that are scattered through the film begin here, with sprawling shots of the pastoral landscape. This is set to an opulent score from Rael Jones, replete with sensational strings and woodwinds as well as menacing piano riffs.

Ambrose soon falls ill and has to leave Philip and England for Italy, where it is hoped the sun will help nurse him back to health. It is thus supremely ironic that Ambrose dies in Florence, after he has encountered and subsequently married his eponymous cousin Rachel (Rachel Weisz). This union and Ambrose’s illness are relayed back to Philip through a series of increasingly frenetic letters that culminate in a desperate plea for help. Philip goes to Florence but it inevitably too late; Ambrose has supposedly dies of a brain tumour, but Philip suspects foul play.

The film revolves around the unresolved question this initial fatality poses: were Ambrose’s insinuating letters due to hallucinations provoked by a tumour, or did Rachel contrive to poison him? The ambiguous atmosphere only intensifies once Rachel takes up residence on Philip’s estate in England; despite the proximity her motives become impossible to discern as Philip oscillates between trust and doubt just as the audience does.

The symbolism of Italy as the fiery passion of the soul that England suppresses, only to be released abroad, is reminiscent of Forster’s novels and is powerfully conveyed through the contrast between the two. The sumptuous scenes in Florence burst from the screen. The rich orange of the Duomo sharply contrasts the humble verdant English scenes. The cinematography alternates between the expansive coastal vistas as laymen scythe and the brooding darkened indoors scenes on the estate.

Michell’s introduces Rachel once the film is well underway in a splendid scene. Weisz’s silhouette is clad in mourning black, framed by an expansive bay window where the moon hangs high behind her. In that moment Weisz is the femme fatale epitomised. Yet, this is immediately subverted once she turns and is so startled she nearly drops her teacup and saucer, objects which become a motif for her obscure morality. Philip is spellbound. He becomes a man possessed; he ignores all surrounding advice and common sense in his hellish pursuit of this enigmatic woman, whose age and treatment of him tinges the plot with Oedipal connotations.

His rapture is understandable: Weisz’s performance is a tour de force. Her portrayal of this morally vague character is enchanting, defined by her inscrutable gaze which seems good one moment and sinister the next. Michell’s camera focuses in on the faces of the protagonists, revealing every minute twitch of emotion that flashes across their features. The unsettling nature of this scrutiny is compounded by the loaded silences that punctuate the dialogue, leaving the audience jarred, unsettled, and acutely conscious of the erotic tension between the characters. The audience sees Rachel as Philip does; alluring and feminine, but impenetrable.

The most intimate scene between the two is also the most revealing, where Philip and Rachel sleep together in the depths of the woods. While Philip is in the throes of ecstasy, the camera trains in on Rachel’s face; she looks skywards with disturbing distraction. Weisz’s expression is once again indecipherable. It could be an expression of ennui, yet it could equally be one of calculation. They finally dress and wander off, leaving a patch of crushed bluebells amid the standing beauties; they seem to be mimetic of the havoc Rachel wreaks on Philip’s life, regardless of whether or not she intended to.

“U2 still deserves a place at the forefront of modern rock”

Calum Bradshaw
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“U2 still deserves a place at the forefront of modern rock”

“What a dream to wake up in” mutters Bono into his microphone as the opening riff of ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ swells to fill a packed Twickenham. His observation is apt – few bands as aged as U2 could hope to perform a 30-year old album with such energy, style, and biting modern relevance as Bono and co. have achieved with their The Joshua Tree album anniversary tour.

The concert opened in swaggering style, with the still razor-sharp drum intro to ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ beginning a medley of crowd-pleasing 80s hits including ‘New Year’s Day’ and the ever poignant ‘Pride’. Bono, now 57, showed no signs of age as his Cuban heels strutted up and down a tree-shaped stage jutting into a sold-out arena crowd.

As the centrepiece of the evening, The Joshua Tree itself simmered and roared, an inescapable reminder of just quite how good the pioneers of stadium rock were at their height. With anthemic choruses, as in ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’, and moments of touching and raw emotion, as in ‘Running To Stand Still’, not a second of the album dragged. The Edge’s soaring guitar hooks and Larry Mullen Jnr.’s frenetic drumming delivered energy and passion most modern rock bands would struggle to match. Far from a pedestrian nostalgia trip, there was a sense of unrelenting urgency and belief which proved that U2 still deserves a place at the forefront of modern rock – they played the album like it had been released yesterday, and you believed it.

Visually, the gig was stunning. A 200-foot screen behind the stage played host to a series of hauntingly stark monochrome films by Anton Corbijn, the man behind the original 1987 album sleeve photo. There was a tangible sense of awe in the stadium as the camera rolled down a desolate road through the featureless Mojave desert as the juggernaut-like ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ built to it’s climax. Despite its obvious huge size, there was nothing bombastic about this strikingly effective visual component – haunting shots of America’s wilderness provided a perfectly understated backdrop to an album often called ‘cinematic’.

An Irish love letter to a sweeping, romantic American wilderness, The Joshua Tree is, as Bono noted in pre-tour interviews, still thematically as relevant in 2017 as it was 30 years ago. ‘Exit’, a brief track often lost at the end of side two, became a blistering attack on Donald Trump, while the heart-rending ‘Mothers of the Disappeared’ paid tribute to the victims of cartel violence in Latin America.

Intending initially to play only two shows, one in Europe and one in America, the band were inspired by current world events and a desire to “honour this album that meant so much to us”, expanding their effort to a 51-date tour, with The Joshua Tree played in its entirety every night.

Bono’s ego is often a talking point, yet it seemed to take a backseat for the evening. The band, often stood close on a massive stage, played as one indivisible unit. Watching them, one can see why these four teenage mates have stayed together for so long with not even the slightest hiatus or lineup change – a feat so few have managed. Bono was in fact uncharacteristically humble, giving fans and long-serving crew alike credit for the successes of his career, while joking before ‘Trip Through Your Wires’ that he never properly learned to play the track’s spiky harmonica line.

The most overtly political statements were saved for the gig’s closing segment, a cavalcade of recent hits including ‘Vertigo’, ‘Beautiful Day’, and a heartfelt rendition of ‘Ultraviolet’ dedicated to women’s rights campaigners including Malala Yousafzai and murdered MP Jo Cox. ‘Miss Sarajevo’, originally recorded by U2 and Brian Eno before being popularised by George Michael, played in front of a film shot in a Syrian refugee camp – the lyrics are as resonant today as they were to Bosnia in the 90s.

By this point in the evening, U2 could do no wrong. Even the usually lukewarm ‘Elevation’ (home to moments of lyrical brilliance including “a mole digging in a hole”) soared. The show closed, as is traditional, with ‘One’, a sweeping ballad whose message of unity feels oh so timely in an increasingly fractured world.

If the aim was a bid for modern relevance, U2 could have done little more. They play with the drive of their teenage punk selves, which, coupled with the experience of a 40-year old band, provides a masterfully accomplished and impressive experience. An often divisive group, U2 have proven all naysayers wrong with a blistering, up-to-date return to form.

“Charlie Fink is a genius, and ‘Cover My Tracks’ a triumph”

Katie Sayer
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“Charlie Fink is a genius, and ‘Cover My Tracks’ a triumph”

The unexpected release of Charlie Fink’s new single ‘Firecracker’ in April was surrounded by ambiguity. A vague link to the Old Vic website with the title Cover My Tracks, some dates of performance, and no other information, sparked a riot of questioning and speculation in the Fink fan community. The marketing that emerged over the succeeding few weeks did little to assuage the intrigue; fans knew that performances would take place at 10pm (a typical gig time) in a theatre (typical play venue), with an accompanying album (gig?) and a credited director (play?).

Consequently, I really did not know what I would be watching when I sat down in the Old Vic for the final performance of Cover My Tracks. I do know that I certainly wasn’t prepared for the hilarious, moving and unexpected journey I was taken on by Charlie Fink and lead actress Jade Anouka.

The format of the evening was unique, somewhere between ‘play’ and ‘gig’, but completely bypassing ‘musical’. The curtain opened to Fink sat on stage with a guitar, to be joined by Anouka, whose opening lines described the way the story should officially have ended, with the funeral of an unnamed character. David Greig’s outstanding script took the form of an open letter from Anouka to the dead figure as she looked back in time over the history of their relationship before deciding to search for her lost lover, via a series of dramatic (and sometimes comedic) monologues, with Fink’s softer musical interludes complimenting the story both structurally and tonally.

This initial dyadic separation broke down after the opening scene, as Anouka’s monologue moved from describing the funeral to a remembrance of her first meeting with the dead man, at which point it became apparent that Fink would be acting as well as singing. What followed was a beautiful duologue, charting the relationship between a hotel worker and a suicidal pop star, as they met, started a band and toured the country, before the eventual disappearance (and supposed suicide) of the singer.

A fairly simple premise, based around Anouka trying to find Fink’s character after his disappearance, unable to accept his suicide, was elevated by the care that went into the production. The use of songs from the album to foreshadow plot twists credited the viewers with a perceptive ability to appreciate the two mediums, and the simplicity of the staging, with Anouka stood and Fink sat in front of a microphone, meant that the production could be both minimal and ethereal. In particular, a monologue from Fink’s character addressed to Anouka from heaven could not have had the dignity or the power that it garnered without this minimalist context.

Rising star Jade Anouka excelled in her role, and seeing Charlie Fink try his hand at acting (after stints producing and writing film soundtracks) was delightful. The script was powerful, and the direction effective – it is only a shame that Cover My Tracks did not play for more than 12 performances.

For me, though, what made this production more than just a five-star play was its meta-theatrical value. The relationship between music and theatre was richly manipulated; both the album and the play could stand up alone, but the combination is what really made them. Indeed, while the songs may not represent a return to form for the former Noah and the Whale front man, the play definitely represented a return to the raw, personal form of his work that defined albums like The First Days of Spring. And Fink’s portrayal of the tortured artist, recovering from his brief fame as a one-hit wonder, seemed so close to home that the person I was with expressed a legitimate fear that the album constituted a suicide note. (Fortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case, and Fink is touring the album across the country, beginning with Latitude this weekend.)

As well as offering a richly rewarding standalone narrative, Cover My Tracks paid homage to its heritage with a number of embedded gems for Noah and the Whale fans. Those who remember final album ‘Heart of Nowhere’, an album defined by its character-driven story ballads, will recall the defiant titular track with the story of ‘Sarah’ who runs away from suburbia to try and be with her lover, promising that “I would follow you to the heart of nowhere”. There are definitely parallels between the character in the song, and Anouka’s angst-ridden, angry protagonist, who spends most of the play searching obscure locations where she thinks her lost lover may be, ignoring the overwhelming evidence for his suicide. It was only while researching this article that I chanced upon the ‘Cast and Creatives’ page of the Old Vic website, which gave identities to the otherwise nameless characters. Anouka’s character name? Sarah, of course.

The play was modest but powerful, socially and politically charged, intelligent and funny, but if I had to describe it in one word, it would have to be unexpected.

Charlie Fink is a genius, and Cover My Tracks a triumph. 5 stars without a doubt.

Gus Poyet: “You have to be clear in what you believe”

Daniel Curtis
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Gus Poyet: “You have to be clear in what you believe”

Interviewing footballers can be the journalistic equivalent of pulling teeth: an arduous process which ultimately leaves both parties unfulfilled. With Gus Poyet, I needn’t have feared.

The Uruguayan has always cut a popular figure throughout his career, from promotion to the Championship with Brighton, to last-gasp Premier League survival with Sunderland. He’s on a brief visit back to the UK from China, where he manages financial powerhouse Shanghai Shenhua. When I sat down with him in the belly of the Union, he was on good form, having already let loose at the balloted pre-event drinks and in the Q&A on a host of topics.

A word which cropped up constantly throughout both was “pressure”. I opened by asking what marked the difference between the good pressure to which he frequently referred and the negative pressure which can derail entire seasons.

I didn’t expect his words to be quite so applicable to the Oxford experience: “I think it’s untenable when you can’t control it – when it starts affecting your personal life or your health or your sleeping or whatever. Without pressure, you don’t care. But when the pressure is dramatic, and really big, it can start affecting your life.”

He goes on to talk about its impact on his own life, and I get the sense that his handling of the stresses of managerial life has greatly improved as he has got older.

“Sometimes we need to be strong to control it. It’s not for everyone,” he says. “At Sunderland, I was finishing the games – for example playing a game in the afternoon—and I wouldn’t even reach Match of the Day because I was so exhausted mentally. For five, six hours, I was asleep like I was on another planet. Gone.

“But then you wake up and you start thinking at five or six o’clock in the morning. I think it was all the pressure and demands of the Premier League. For example, I’m in Shanghai now, and I’m struggling to sleep after the games. It’s a different kind of worry. There’s less pressure than in Sunderland – or it feels less.

“But it’s dangerous and it’s a shame because if you put too much pressure on yourself, you’re going to have a problem for sure. I think the League Managers Association here help managers a lot, and I learned incredible things about how to control it, to manage it, how to improve it, how to rest. That’s one of the biggest problems with being a manager: we never rest, we never stop.

“The manager will go to the game, and then will check the game, and then will go through the game again, and then will do the next game, and will never rest. Sooner or later you’re gonna collapse. It’s important to have the strength to know.”

His approach to a work/life balance is now more healthy than ever. He talks me through his post-match schedule: “For example, now the day after the game I do no football related to my team. It’s not negotiable. If I had said it to you five years ago, I wouldn’t have believed it myself. It was impossible.

“Of course, when my wife is here, I can spend time with her, I can do something different. When I’m on my own, it’s a little bit more difficult, but it’s key for me to completely stop thinking about training, the game, the result. It makes me recharge my energy and be fresh for the next game.”

I wonder if that negative pressure he speaks about is exclusive to the Premier League. “I think it’s a little bit yourself, but the Premier League is incredible because of the repercus- sions,” he says with an air of experience. “I was in Spain and there was a lot of pressure and I didn’t enjoy it. There’s pressure in Shanghai, but the Premier League is unique. The Premier League repercussions are amazing. Wherever you go in the world, it’s the Premier League first.”

With that in mind, I worry about those young men my own age or younger who are thrust into what seems to be an unforgiving world, and ask Poyet if the pressure has changed his approach to coaching young players. He points me to the impact of social media on young millenials, and again, the answer is far closer to home than I was expecting.

“Everything they do on social media is them, and they feel the repurcussions good or bad. If they make a mistake, they know it because they get killed for it when they open their phones for a text or a tweet.

“On the other hand, social media keeps them away from football because they are watching and doing 100 things that have nothing to do with football. The problem is not to be in the extremes. We try to show the players what is best for them, depending on their characters – they are not all the same.

“One of the biggest lies for me in football is when people say, ‘He’s a great manager, he treats everyone the same’. It’s not true. You cannot treat everybody the same because they are different people.”

It’s an inspiring answer. Even the most teleologically-minded of football fans would concede that the game is now a machine which gobbles up young players and spits them out bereft of footballing or personal futures. For Poyet then, pressure affects both managers and young players, even if in different ways.

It’s at this point that I ask if the press contributes to this cult of pressure. He inhales. I perspire pre-emptively, expecting to be put in my place as an MSM hack. However, he’s contemplative when it comes to the topic of managerial sackings.

“It’s a little bit of everything,” he explains. “It depends on how you’re doing, depends on the comments. Everybody comments now – newspapers will publish an article, and there are 300 comments on it, and from those comments it becomes a bigger issue. I would say that it depends on how the people at the top accept your responsibilities and the pressure.”

When he talks about his sacking from Brighton, he twice calls it “funny”. For a man who was essentially given his P45 live on air when working as a pundit for the BBC, it seems anything but. Indeed, as his characteristically relaxed demeanor becomes tense, I get the sense of what it would be like to sack Gus Poyet.

He recalls that a small minority of fans started to stoke rumours on the forum citing “somebody at the club”. One example which seems to particularly sting is an accusation that he turned up to a 7.45pm match fifteen minutes before kick-off.

“How on Earth am I – the manager – gonna arrive fifteen minutes before the game when I was in the hotel, when we had pre-match together three hours before the game, when we had the meeting in the dressing room an hour and a half before the game?”

I nod appeasingly as I realise that I may have become a vehicle for pre-existing anger. He returns to his 300 commenters. “250 of them believe it, and then you’ve got 50 of them saying no.”

“And then, the people in charge are gonna read that – and people do care about what the fans do – then they think maybe it did happen. You have to be clear that it didn’t happen. Everything is put in a context and leads to you keeping your job or losing your job.

“It’s four or five who provoke from what they’ve been reading and they shout at you questioning what you’ve changed. Change is part of the solution, remember that. Like Leicester: they were going down. And they got rid of [Claudio] Ranieri and they didn’t lose another game with the assistant.”

“But why?”, he asks, doing my job for me. “Why change?”

“It’s part of the game,” he answers himself definitively.

Given the ridiculously high turnover of managers in the Premier League, I often wonder why they’re so keen to throw themselves back into the fray, fresh from the disappointment of dismissal. I expect some comment in response about how it’s a bug, or a love affair or some such stock phrase about ‘The Love of the Game’. Rather, his drive is far more personal. “You have to be clear in what you believe. You’ve got two options: go to the highest level or get to a place where they understand you and believe in you and give you time. That would be the dream job. It’s not about money. It’s about believing it’s possible and letting you do it.”

Ah, the ‘M’ word. Seeing as Gus broached the topic, I bite, and ask him if managerial power is watered down by new money.

“Yes”, he immediately replies, “because there is too much money to spend and it is dangerous. You cannot spend that much. I think the problem with money is that in every single job in the world, where the product produces money, there is money.

“The amount produced by TV is incredible. Is it too much? Yes, it is. But people shouldn’t blame the players. It’s the product. It’s extraordinary. It’s incredible. The Premier League is watched in every little town in the world, and that costs money, and I don’t think it’s bad that the money that is paid goes back to the players.”

But isn’t saying there’s too much money slightly hypocritical when he’s managing in China, currently one of the world’s big spenders? Shanghai Shenhua – under Poyet’s leadership – are reportedly paying former Manchester United, Manchester City and Juventus striker Carlos Tevez £615,000 per week.

Poyet argued in his Union talk that most of the squad decisions were made before he joined, but he still manages in a league which boasts Oscar (signed from Chelsea for a reported £52m), Ezequiel Lavezzi (reportedly earning around £200,000 per week), and the much-coveted Jackson Martínez (signed for £31m).

Not the first time, he answers altogether too quickly. “I think it’s a little bit too much. I have always thought the extremes are bad. Too much or too little is bad. It’s about the balance. If I was in charge I would tell you what it is, but I’m not—so I take advantage of it.”

That final sentence is accompnied by a knowing laugh, and it is a disarmingly honest answer from a man who, for many, can do no wrong. It’s hard to begrudge a fan favourite his time among new money – even if many of us hope that soon he’ll return to old friends back in the Premier League.

He certainly talks about the Premier League with striking regularity during our short time together. I wonder if, despite the bright lights and hefty cheques of Chinese football, he may yet have unfinished business here.

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