Thursday 17th July 2025
Blog Page 947

So, what will actually happen at Donald Trump’s inauguration?

Fred Dimbleby
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So, what will actually happen at Donald Trump’s inauguration?

At midday on the 20th of January, a time and date which has been set in stone since 1937, Donald Trump will become the 45th President of the United States of America. Up to this point, despite having been confirmed as the winner of the Electoral College vote, Trump has had the title of ‘President-Elect’ whilst Barack Obama has fulfilled the end of his term.

The actual inauguration has no constitu­tional necessity; the constitution solely requires an oath to be made. However, as with all parts of American politics, this moment has been hyper­bolised and romanticised to create the occasion that we will witness on the 20th of this month.

The Vice-President will be sworn in first, after a number of musical performances and religious invocations, directly before the president. Then Chief Justice John Roberts will rise and Trump will be made to swear, on a bible of his choice, to uphold the office of the presidency.

John Roberts has a tricky relationship with the words of this oath as, during Obama’s first inauguration, he confused some of the lines leading to the ceremony being repeated in the White House, a day later, in order to ensure that Obama had actually become the president. This is suprising considering that the oath itself is relatively simple and is defined by the constitu­tion. Trump will say: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Consti­tution of the United States.” That’s it! 35 words and you are the President of the United States.

A number of gun salutes and some more singing will follow this and then we will end with Trump’s inauguration speech. Hopefully Trump’s speech will be shorter than William Henry Harrison’s, whose 8,445 word address in 1841 is the longest in inauguration history and is alleged to have given him a cold that killed him 31 days later.

The event usually finishes with the new President and the old President departing together. The new President will drive or walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House whilst the old President will take one last flight on the plane that would have formerly been known as Air Force One. The plane is named as such because it carries the President rather than because of its specific model and thus, because Obama will no longer be the President, the plane will no longer be Air Force One until its new occupant enters its historic doors.

After the event, Melania and Donald Trump will attend a gratuitous number of balls and dinners before settling to govern the nation. It is an archaic and positively unnecessary ceremony that will, in a matter of moments, hand the greatest power into the (small) hands of Trump.

Science may be far from true

Rachel Dunne
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Science may be far from true

The nature of science is notoriously difficult to pin down. Many think of it as a straightforward progression towards truth, but this is overly simplistic. A radical and controversial model proposed by 20th century physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn highlights how far from being linear and truth-oriented science might in fact be.

Kuhn suggests that scientists in a given field of study work within a ‘disciplinary matrix’ of common beliefs shared as a community. These include the correct use of instruments, key values and even metaphysical principles. The disciplinary matrix stipulates the important problems in a given area and how to go about solving them. The key aspect of Kuhn’s account of science is his description of the transfer of favour by a scientific community from one disciplinary matrix to another, an example being the move from classical Newtonian to quantum physics in the early 20th century. Such transitions occur during times of ‘revolutionary science’, when anomalies build up to the extent that the current set of core beliefs is perceived to be inadequate. A new set must be found to replace them. The way any new disciplinary matrix is selected from the many options during a revolutionary period is of vital importance and determines whether science can be said to be a linear progression towards the truth. Kuhn thinks this is not the case.

In his original work, Kuhn claimed that we have no objective means of comparing disciplinary matrices and the theories within them, that even experimental evidence is not theory-neutral, since we interpret it based on the theories we hold to be true. The jumps between disciplinary matrices are, he said, just based on the psychological and sociological factors at play within a community rather than on any that are truly truth-seeking. This argument led Kuhn to be accused of attributing the choice of which disciplinary matrix to adopt entirely to ‘mob psychology’, therefore depriving science of its objectivity.

Kuhn countered this criticism by suggesting that some objective values are applied when choosing between disciplinary matrices: those containing accurate, simple, consistent theories with a wide scope are preferred. He still maintained, however, that these values cannot fully determine the decision and that psychological and sociological factors do play a role. Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee that these objective factors—accuracy, simplicity, consistency—will always lead us towards truth. All we can say is that they have guided us to effective theories in the past, therefore we expect them to continue to do so.

Kuhn’s model, while radical, nevertheless has considerable influence among philosophers of science, promoting the view that there may be no perfect theory or ‘truth’ that we are heading towards. Rather, science is like an evolutionary process with the selection criteria leading to theories that are increasingly ‘useful’, in that they are good at making predictions but which may have no proximity to the truth about the way the world is.

Oxford – a tale of two cities sitting in the same space

SJ Novak
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Oxford – a tale of two cities sitting in the same space

Quietness, quietness, in a place characterised by the shuffle and buzz of centuries-old university life, has an audible impact. It is, indeed, very, very quiet here.

It is the day after New Year’s Day, when the revelries accompanying the dawn of a new year have faded and all that is left is quiet. And yet, the quiet is not simply the by-product of a sombre January afternoon, amidst the post-Christmas lull where cities sleep and townspeople softly shuffle around the streets waiting for the cosy comfort of the evening darkness to envelop them. The quiet is the distinct silence brought about by the absence of something essential because this city, Oxford, is starved of its life blood—students.

The absence of students is practically tangible on this midwinter morning. Libraries peer at you from around every corner; you can almost feel them sighing with emptiness, longing to be filled with students who will pour over tomes and study furiously for collections. Pubs and restaurants have patrons, but they are not bursting at the seams in the way they do during term time. Reservations seem like almost comedic propositions, and at this time of year pubs like The Perch—its fire burning softly as the winds whistle by on a Sunday night—seem impossibly large for their clientele. There is no need to spend 20 minutes scouting for a seat next to a power socket in Costa, there are barely any tables taken and G and D’s, that student staple, is closed. There is a quiet sleepiness that can’t be fully explained by the month or the time of year. Oxford’s urban character seems permanently bonded to its student population in their absence, and through them to their historic university.

And yet, this is a city that exists without students. This is a city with a population of some 160,000 residents. It is a city that is home to a thriving publishing industry, a successful car manufacturer, and a growing IT industry. It is a city with an eclectic art and music scene, a city which is considered to be the home of modern folk music. It is a city that provided refuge to King Charles II during the English Civil War. Of course, it is also a city with soaring property prices and an increasingly serious homelessness crisis. Oxford is not merely a municipal infrastructure demarcated by its insufficiencies in the absence of students. It is a city characterised by its own inner life and also the question, perhaps, of what could free it from its attachment to those same students.

The town and gown divide has deep historical roots; tour guides pointedly emphasise that the first prisoner locked away in Oxford Castle was allegedly an inebriated student. Tensions between university students and Oxford’s medieval Jewish population related to the pawning of books are said to have contributed to the 1268 Ascension Day riots, after which the Jews were made to sponsor a gold crucifix erected on the grounds of Merton College. The Winchester historian R.C. Richardson describes fierce political disputes over the university’s historic privileges, which around the time of the English Civil War included the ability to set some prices, regulate bread and beer, and collect tolls within city limits. A town once taxed by a university might justifiably harbour some lingering resentment towards its academic elite.

Conversations with local residents and workers heighten the sense that the town and gown divide remains, and its effects are pronounced during University vacations. Some of the benefits are easy to notice and intuitively appealing to townspeople. Oxford resident Maegan Reed was keen to extol the benefits of the University holidays on grounds of the proportional reduction in noise.

“There are fewer drunk people yelling in the street outside my at at 3am on a weekday, and that’s a holiday from my rage,” she said.

These frustrations are self-evident, although they might pale in comparison to the two Quaker women who Professor Richardson describes being “set upon and nearly killed” by Oxford students during the Commonwealth government under Cromwell. Ms Reed’s concerns are shared by other Oxford residents whose complaints seem to more straightforwardly highlight the cultural divide between the two camps. One local worker said in passing that “there’s a perceptible decrease in braying students annoying me, which is nice.”

But statistics imply that actual crime seems largely unaffected by the presence of students. Louis Thurman, a graduate from the Policing Studies programme at Oxford Brookes University, says that crime data for the period from December 2015 to November 2016 shows a seasonal spike in theft in the city centre around Christmas that is most likely not related to students. Increases in Anti-Social Behaviour offences in the summer and Violent and Sexual offences in September and October were not statistically significant.

“By crime statistics alone it does not appear that the students of Oxford themselves have much of an effect on the levels or recorded crime,” Thurman says.

J.M.W. Turner’s painting ‘Oxford: St Mary’s and the Radcliffe Camera from Oriel Lane’, currently on display in the Tate Britain, might speak to a cultural divide that resists empirical classification. In that 1793 painting, the University’s first building at St Mary’s Church and the Radcliffe Camera dominate the backdrop, while the vague outlines of a cart and buggy hint at the possibility of a broader community outside the academic sphere.

The perceived cultural disconnect might be understandable in terms of just how much there is to the city obscured in Turner’s sketchy blur, and how much of this place is and has been ignored in favour of the grandeur of the University.

What the rivalry means in practice is difficult to pin down. Generally, as Michael Jacobs wrote in a Cherwell article last term, it is understood to be the various tensions which arise between the people living and working in Oxford, and the very large transient student population. Snobbery or hostility may no longer underpin that dynamic, Jacobs said, but “the lives of students [at Oxford] are inevitably structured differently to those at school or with jobs”, and that is an irreducible fact.

But how much material difference does the mass exodus of students at the end of every term actually make to Oxford?

University facilities can take on a different face to townspeople when students are gone. One Iffley Road user likes the holidays because the centre “isn’t crowded and I can get a treadmill that is not occupied, or have my own pool lane”.

There is definite feeling among local workers and residents that the vacations bring with them a chance for locals to reclaim their city. Empty lanes at the pool are concurrent with shorter lines for activities that carry inverse health benefits. As one burger fan pointed out—albeit slightly tongue in cheek—“when students leave, the Peppers Burgers wait time goes from fifteen minutes to ten. Time is money. And burgers are brilliant.”

Not all locals are so quick to rush to judgement of students. John Kay, a local worker, was keen to stress that students often provided mild doses of amusement for those who work in the city.

“What you don’t get, when the city is empty of students, are the occasional, delightfully surreal sights. I quite enjoy spotting a bewildered, drunk fresher waiting for a bus in a robe and comedy crown,” Kay said. He drily noted that this has happened on more than one occasion.

The divide can be sensationalised, although Thames Valley Police do occasionally find themselves having to interact with students, drunken or otherwise, who have placed themselves in hazardous situations. Three LMH students were arrested in 2008 and made to perform community service after skinny-dipping in the Castle Mill Stream, drawing serious criticism from the university and a torrent of criticism from local media and online commenters. At the time, some oxfordmail.net users described students as “unbearable toffs” and “generally worthless to society”.

But not everybody who works in Oxford is so quick to proclaim the virtues of a vacation period that sends students across Britain and the globe. Visiting a local coffee shop, usually bustling with students fighting for seats, was a quick lesson in how much the town depends on the University for its livelihood. At one of the busiest times of the day the coffee shop was desolate. There was myself, two members of staff, and two other customers. I asked one of the members of staff to comment on how they find business outside of term time. They said they were unable to comment in an official capacity, but they did take a look at the almost empty shop and give me a knowing look.

The economic impact of the mass departure, according to conversations with workers, seems to affect some sectors of the local economy more painfully than others. A taxi driver, who wishes to remain nameless, explained that “without the students and staff in the University at this time of year, there is hardly any work”. He explained that there is no need for as many taxi drivers as normal and that he must personally budget carefully throughout the year to ensure that he makes enough during the term time to tide him over during the vacation periods. A local off-licence also highlighted how perilous the vacation period is for business. Pointing to his empty shop (save for the two of us), he told me that “this time of year is so quiet. We have to change the window displays to appeal to the different market, but we miss the students”. He went on to explain that not only does the shop notice a drop in income during vacations due to the lack of students, but they also really suffer from the lack of university staff who are in Oxford during the vacation periods.

This highlights an important point. Many of the locals and residents who have expressed views about the city in the vacation have focused on the students, but there is a hitherto yet discussed dimension to this: University staff. Whilst much of the town’s small businesses rely on the students and the University to support their livelihoods, many of them rely on the staff of the University to support their businesses. And the University relies on the ‘town’ to support it in its endeavours. The University is one of the major employers in the city of Oxford—both reliant upon one another to function.

The Oxford University staff count is at slightly over 13,000 employees, and that number doesn’t include those employed solely by colleges or Oxford University Press, which is part of the University. Counting those employed by OUP and the colleges results in a final sum of over 15,000 thousand people employed by way of the University. For a city with a population of 159,000, this means that around 10 per cent of the population of the city might conceivably work for the University, a figure that might well be higher given the difficulty of finding figures related to the staff employed by the individual colleges.

What’s more, this figure of around 15,000 people dependent on the University for their livelihood, or, expressed differently, the 15,000 people the University depends on in order to run smoothly, doesn’t take into account the number of people indirectly employed by the University like freelance writers, editors, designers, and consultants, or the number of people and businesses who benefit from the disposable income of those employed by the University. The footprint of the University, both in terms of student expenditure and staff payroll, is inextricably intertwined with the economic output of the city.

The empty seats, open pathways and new signage that physically denote the start of a student holiday may express something fundamental to the city’s character, not in terms of how Oxford three times a year chooses to reject its students but in how everything, eventually, reverts to normal. Locals might celebrate regaining their city three times a year, and students might find the empty city lacking. But as much as there is a divide between the town and the gown, there’s also a symbiotic relationship. The University provides for the ‘town’, and the city provides for the University.

Far gone are the days when the Laudian bishops Bancroft and Skinner struggled mightily to impart Laud’s notions of “good order and decency” onto the university’s students, as Richardson writes. No longer do the university’s students jeer the town councillors as they make an annual pilgrimage to atone for the fatalities incurred in the St Scholastica Day Riot of 1355. It would be difficult to seriously sustain an argument these days that the university is now “the dominant partner in town-gown relations” as it was during the Restoration, not when Oxford is the global centre of Mini Cooper production. But the two parties do depend on each other. Though townspeople continue to regard students with various resentment, apathy, and mirth.

To paraphrase from China Mieville’s novel The City and the City (a novel about two different cities which occupy the same physical space), perhaps as we walk around Oxford, “we should all walk with a little more equipoise, walk in either city; be Schrodinger’s citizens.”

Extra detail: local policing student on Oxford’s crime patterns

Louis Thurman, Graduate of Policing Studies from Oxford Brookes University

With most areas, it is possible to see certain types of crimes which are more prevalent, and when one looks at the crime statistics for the central area of the city during the period of December 2015 to November 2016 (police.uk, 2016), as one might expect, there is a noticeable spike in theft offences; such as shopliftings, thefts from persons (pickpocketing etc.), and thefts of pedal cycles. These figures show that the general trend of crime frequency in the city centre does not seem to show much fluctuation throughout the year.

However, the trend of theft offences shows a peak in October and November. Considering that the city centre has an abundance of shops, and an increased amount of footfall before Christmas, I think it is unlikely that this trend is related to the present or absence of students. There are other very minor trends that occur such as an increase in ‘Anti-Social Behaviour’ in the summer months, and an increase in ‘Violent and Sexual’ offences around September and October.

It could be interpreted that these changes are due to an increase in the amount of time that the remaining students spend socialising in the city in the warmer weather, and their return around September; but these trends are minor and cannot be considered statistically significant from just one year’s data, nor is it possible to attribute these fluctuations specifically to the comings and goings of students in the town.

In short, by crime statistics alone it does not appear that the students of Oxford themselves have much of an effect on the levels or recorded crime. However, when looking at the crime stats for areas of the city which contain large clusters of student halls, mainly for Oxford Brookes University, one can see an increase in the frequency of burglaries, which could be due to the students’ presence providing more opportunity for criminals.

When the students make their way home over Christmas, the town fills with Christmas parties and New Years celebrations. The result is a shift in the types of people in the city rather than the volume.”

Debate: does fake news directly threaten democracy?

Richard Birch and Joe Baverstock-Poppy
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Debate: does fake news directly threaten democracy?

Yes:

Fake news isn’t new, and history shows us that the tangible impact it can have shouldn’t be ignored

Richard Birch

The relationship between media and politics has often been fraught. Spin doctors are now all-too familiar in the political world, who seem the true architects of the country’s future, while portraying a false image of political figures to the coun­try’s major news outlets to make them seem electable, trustworthy, and honourable, when in fact the entirely opposite may be true. This fixture of political life has oft been parodied in popular culture, but shines a light into the dangerous lies that can be propagated, and the political consequences they may have.

Questionable facts and ‘spinning’ the truth was as somewhat of an open secret under the regime of New Labour and Tony Blair. The infamous dossier that exagger­ated the probability of Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction led Britain, indisputably, into a war for the wrong reasons. Even if one thinks the Iraq War was necessary, there can be no denying that fake news was used to falsely justify this war to the British public.

Some years on, the extent of the lies became apparent and there was an outcry, and rightly so. Yet recently we have noticed something of a resurgence of this kind of systemic lying, and I would argue that this represents a huge threat to democracy. Voter systems are predicated on the idea that me­dia outlets reliably present facts regarding political parties and candidates such that voters can be informed when they cast their ballot for the leader of the country.

So when news outlets give unprecedented amounts of airtime to certain candidates in the run up to an election, ignore others, and slant the information to favour one candi­date over another; this represents a threat to the democratic system. Fake news is this taken to an extreme. Wilfully confusing matters and misinforming people should be viewed in a dim light in any scenario or form of journalism, but in the political sphere, it can have particularly disastrous consequences.

Ted Cruz’s campaign trail for the Republi­can candidacy was marred by such repeated attempts by media outlets to confuse mat­ters, to obfuscate his positions, and to make him the target of ridicule. Regardless of what one thinks of Cruz’s suitability to be Presi­dent of the United States, again, there can be little doubt that the manner in which he was portrayed by mainstream media made him little more than a bumbling comic foil to Trump’s alpha-male posturing.

It was claimed that Cruz was the Zodiac Killer, an accusation which was originally deliberately started as a mock-conspiracy, but eventually evolved into a genuine conspiracy among a surprising amount of Americans. Ten per cent of Floridians agreed with the accusation, despite the Zodiac Killer having operated before he was even born.

Ted Cruz also had to fend off the accusation that his father was part of the conspiracy to assassinate JFK. The dissemination of this obviously ridiculous information by major news media outlets was irresponsible inso­far as it derailed the Cruz campaign—Cruz being the most significant competitor to Trump in the run-up to the candidacy vote.

These completely ridiculous stories, some would argue, unjustly influenced the out­come of the election. This culture of fake news that sprang up around the time of the campaign for the Republican candidacy and has continued ever since has skewed voter masses, and could well be one of the most powerful reasons behind Trump’s eventual success in the Presidential election.

Now that this resurgence is in the public eye, various groups—Facebook and the Labour Party most notably—have vowed to combat fake news online. If political groups are starting to become involved, we must read this as a clear indicator that today’s fake news threatens the way our democracy operates.

 

No

Fake news doesn’t pose a direct threat to democ­racy, but it does expose its fundamental flaw

By Joe Baverstock-Poppy

Fake news is media content that aims to mislead. Examples of falsehoods spread by fake news include claims that the Pope had endorsed Trump for President and that Clinton practices witchcraft. If successful, fake news has a potential to generate a significant impact on elections. However, does this impact threaten democracy? I would argue it doesn’t threaten de­mocracy but exposes democracy’s fundamental flaw.

If it were so that fake news’ impact on elections were threatening democracy, there would be something about that impact that undermines the conditions required for our politics to be democratic. I would argue that the fundamental condition for our politics to be democratic is that those who hold the legal reins of power, the government, must be accountable to the interests of those subject to that power, citizens. There is much discussion on what it means to be accountable to those interests, but that discus­sion isn’t necessary for this question.

The greatest impact that fake news can have upon our politics is to make the people elect a government on false pretences. Yet people elect­ing a government on false pretences doesn’t threaten democracy. Even if the people have mis­led interests, it doesn’t make the government any less accountable to those misled people.

It must be distinguished that fake news doesn’t undermine democracy like a state con­trolled press does. With fake news, people freely choose to read that which misleads, which con­firms their beliefs, under a state controlled me­dia the people have no choice but to read the misleading state media. Those who consume fake news vote in their interest: falsehood. A state controlled press undermines democracy by denying people, who desire the truth, the truth and so obstructs them from voting in their interest: truth. Nothing in the definition of democracy requires voters’ interests to be in­formed.

Lately, many have viewed democracy as a sacred cow without flaws. We need to be more critical and aware of its shortcomings to be pre­pared for them. Fake news demonstrates that de­mocracy can quite easily produce governments that will act according to feelings as opposed to evidence.

This limitation of democracy has been pointed out throughout the history of political philosophy. Plato argued that democracy fails to form good governments since it was subject to the irrational whims of the wider public, whims which fake news today exploits.

Many have tried to find a remedy to this irrationality that fake news exploits and show that a democratic society can exist without fake news. John Stuart Mill suggested granting the educated extra votes. In response to Mill, many argue that the educated already have more elec­toral weight, since the opinions the educated express through the press would be heeded by the public. Therefore, granting the educated ex­tra votes would be demeaning and unnecessary.

This seemed to be true for a long time. However, following the rise of the internet, the press now has a diminished role in informing the electorate: 30 per cent of US adults get news from social media. As a consequence anyone can disseminate news online.

Others have argued that libel laws are a way to ensure the public aren’t swayed by lies. How­ever, there are many limitations to libel laws. Corrections often go unnoticed. Journalists can easily continue practicing in the industry and spreading new, subtler, falsehoods. Govern­ment entities can sue those who lie about the state, granting immunity to anti-government conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones. But the final deathblow to libel laws has been the internet: the anonymity and scale of the internet has made libel laws impossible to enforce. The police lack the resources to identify and arrest the perpetrators of viral lies like Pizzagate.

To conclude, fake news, although mislead­ing and dangerous, does nothing to obstruct the will of the people from being expressed in politics. Furthermore, not only is fake news com­patible with democracy but, with the advent of the internet, fake news seems inseparable from democracy.

Jones’ toughest test yet?

George Mason
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Jones’ toughest test yet?

With the Six Nations just over a fortnight away, all eyes turn to England. Eddie Jones’ side are set to challenge back-to-back Grand Slam wins and improve on their perfect record of 13 games from 13 , which they have maintained since Jones took over from Stewart Lancaster following England’s depressing World Cup run. But this feat could now be even more difficult, with injuries affecting more than half the starting pack.

Five are likely to miss the opening game against France on 4 February: the Vunipola Brothers, Mako and Billy, flanker Chris Robshaw and locks George Kruis and Joe Launchbury. All have played integral roles in the success of the side so far.

This will test England’s strength in depth, with dominant forward play integral to game- control, providing the service the backs need to seal victories. Robshaw and Billy Vunipola are particularly big losses to the side. Robshaw, captain under Lancaster, has brought a great deal of experience and leadership to a relatively young team. Billy’s absence, which looks set to last the entire series, will mean that the forwards need to make up for his unmatched work ethic and ball-carrying.

The loss of such leaders in the forwards has undoubtedly shaped Jones’ decision to stick with Dylan Hartley as Captain, despite a six-week ban for a reckless tackle on Leinster flanker Sean O’Brien. Hartley has now totalled 60 weeks in suspensions throughout his career and will not have played for almost two months if he starts the opener.

Jones says that he has had multiple talks with Hartley regarding discipline and his responsibilities as a leader. He has also given Hartley a strict fitness regime to ensure that he is fit and ready to go come the Portugal training camp on 22 January. Hartley’s leadership has undoubtedly helped mould the team into its winning form and Jones’ decision to keep him as captain is a wise decision—provided he stays fit—given the issues facing the team. By maintaining continuity, Jones’ is giving the team a better chance to stay disciplined and focused despite the inevitable changes of personnel the side is going to experience come 4 February.

But talent is still abundant with in the side. England still have a full-strength back-line to work with. The anticipated return of Anthony Watson from a jaw injury will only help to strengthen an already formidable attack. His world-class finishing and speed make him a key asset to the side in determining games and his chemistry with Bath teammates Jonathan Joseph and George Ford has often embarrassed defenders. Owen Farrell, as one of the best goal-kickers in the world, gives England the ability to score points consistently from penalties won anywhere in the opposition’s half. Having him at inside centre and George Ford at fly-half means the side will keep both Farrell’s boot and defensiveness, and Ford’s playmaking magic.

The recent news of Manu Tuilagi’s knee injury has saddened many who want to see the Leicester centre return to dominating the midfield of international rugby with brute force. But despite being an incredible player, he is yet to have played under Jones. Given the current success of the English backs, Manu has hardly been missed.

The silver-lining for the forwards could be the potential return of James Haskell following foot surgery. This had left him on the sidelines for six months, leaving him free to make a trip to The Bullingdon and show-case his musical talent last term.

If the Wasps flanker were to return in the same form as during the summer internationals against Australia, he would most definitely improve the forwards’ chances of maintaining their strength. So, not all hope is lost for Jones and English rugby going into the Six Nations. But for their success to continue, a level of adaptation will certainly be required. The talent is there, but whether the experience and chemistry of the side can hold up no one will know until 4 February.

The stigma of a woman travelling alone

Erin Melton
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The stigma of a woman travelling alone

“Oh, you’re going alone?”

Such was the almost unanimous reaction to my winter break plans. As a visiting student, I had chosen not to return to the States for the holidays but rather to take advantage of my short-term proximity to Continental Europe and spend a few weeks traveling. Each time I was asked what I was doing for the holidays, I repeated my itinerary: Oslo, Budapest, Würzburg, Amsterdam. And each time I recited that scripted list, my excitement diminished in keeping with my rising awareness of just how shocked people were that I would consider travelling by myself, particularly as a young, small, non- travelled woman.

There is a stigma in both the United States and the United Kingdom in support of the norm that a woman, particularly a young woman, must not travel alone. Horror stories range from uncomfortable rooming situations to kidnappings and rape, while the perception of danger is reinforced by sobering articles by women on travelling blogs that emphasise the difficulties they say are inherent to the solo female experience abroad. Even women in small groups are supposedly an invitation for mistreatment; before my year abroad, I was disturbingly frequently warned to “always have a man with you.”

But my friends and I have travelled to cities in the near aftermath of terrorist attacks. Our travels defied others’ expectations and our own for how we could experience a foreign continent, a place that was startlingly new to us but whose inhabitants consistently embraced us with open arms.

Some of us, like Rebecca Wolfe, a fourth-year institutions and policy major from William Jewell College and a past visiting student at Mansfield College, Oxford, found that the way we saw the world and ourselves was reshaped by solitude. That heightened knowledge of risk in foreign environs could sometimes, ironically, foster inner peace.

“Something about having to keep it together ensures that you do,” Wolfe said. “Travelling alone was a much calmer experience than travelling with a partner.”

My mother was the loudest voice of caution in my travel-planning process, terrified that I would be “taken” and upset that I would not be home for Christmas. One friend from high school decided that she would message me every single day to make sure I was “being safe” and “making smart choices.”

I sought to maintain a cheerful, confident attitude, but the relentless negativity was unsettling though the tickets were already bought and paid for. I followed through on my plans and set out for three weeks of navigating the unknown alone.

I was not accosted by lurking men in black overcoats at every street corner. No one asked me to accompany them into a secret room in the airport. My food wasn’t even stolen out of the communal fridge in my hostel. For the most part, I was left completely alone unless I asked for directions or advice, which were kindly and readily given. Nor did I encounter any young women travellers who had found themselves in precarious situations. Though none of my hostels were terribly tightly run, they all had multiple measures in place to keep people who were not customers far from the residential areas. I felt comfortable in my sleeping situation even when I was in a 10 person room with six young Norwegian men and two 18 year olds.

None of this is to say I never felt uncomfortable. But even when I was momentarily unsettled, situations that at first appeared uncertain would resolve themselves in ways that could be rewarding. In Oslo, a group of middle-aged male workers approached me uninvited in the kitchen and joined me for dinner. However, they turned out to be incredibly kind and welcoming and were just concerned at having seen me eat alone the night before. We ended up sharing quite a few meals, stories, and experiences during our stay. Young women like me, inside and outside the Oxford community, have braved this experience and found that worries about risk or peril were belied by a reality that was usually far more friendly and accommodating. Family pressure to take a more conventional route—read: man-in-tow— to visiting foreign shores could be intense. But some women are willing to discard overbearing norms, like my highly adventurous friend Macy Tush, a fellow American from William Jewell.

Tush devoted an entire year of her life to travel before college, despite sustained and nearly successful efforts by her parents to counsel her out of her long-planned trip abroad. She followed through on her commitment and found that the truth about travelling alone was more positive than she had been led to believe.

“Every time I bought a plane ticket my mom was standing over my shoulder commenting about how expensive it was or how my trip was too long” Tush said. The practical impediments to travel did not dissuade her from an experience that proved to be formative, highlighting the importance of determination to follow through on a desire to travel for women who could otherwise let potentially valuable experiences fall by the wayside. “So if I didn’t have the intrinsic motivation to get out and travel I would have fallen back on my parents’ comments and not gone, which would have been a huge loss.”

This isn’t to say that women travelling abroad are independent from the social spaces whose norms their travels might seem to undermine. A lack of family support still shaped Tush’s experiences of her time abroad dramatically. During her 40-hour trip to Namibia, Tush made herself sick by refusing to sleep out of fear of things being stolen. Tush came to realise that her fears were unwarranted; they were indicative of the mindset so many around her might have shared before her trip but not of the lived reality of a woman abroad in Namibia.

“Nothing went wrong,” she says. It might have been wiser to try to relax and more fully immerse herself in the experience as it happened. “Looking back, if I had not been so worried I might have actually enjoyed some parts of it more.”

Women may travel by themselves, but they do not travel in isolation, and contact with the broader social world surrounding them is inevitable. These moments where the veil of seclusion is lifted can range from uplifting to mundanely irritating. While I was in Würzburg, I went to a bar on New Year’s Eve and two slightly older men asked me to join them. I was hesitant; bars are where young, foreign women are kidnapped and last seen alive. Despite the fear I have been taught to have of every stranger, I sat with them. They turned out to be simply sympathetic that I was spending a holiday alone in a bar. I ended up bar hopping with them and their friends we joined later. At the end of the night, I was left alone with no resistance.

I was sometimes left to my own devices, required to undertake active outreach if I wanted to socialise. In Amsterdam, the only people who talked to me on the street were three Americans whom I approached myself, excited to hear a familiar accent after almost three weeks of unknown languages.

Perhaps unavoidably, there were less enjoyable interactions: moments where I was reminded that those around me could be just as human and grating as people everywhere are at their worst. In Budapest, a man approached me, again in the kitchen, and struck up a conversation. While I definitely did not enjoy the talk—he had an elitist attitude, would not let me get a word in, repeatedly told me how much he is paid annually in rent, and is a Trump supporter—the worst thing he did was be incredibly irritating.

Travelling in a country where fear has pervaded the social fabric of daily life, even if only temporarily, can also leave a decisive imprint on the travel experience of a solitary woman. Rebecca Wolfe flew to Brussels in historic circumstances one week after the March 2016 bombings, months into a spate of attacks on the Continent, she felt a palpable atmosphere of distrust and unease upon arriving.

Suspicions against anyone coming into the country were high; military officers were deployed in the streets, and general hostility and tension were in the air. Like anyone else might after touching down in a nation on edge and in arms, she felt apprehensive.

“Forget being a woman, it was scary to be there as an American, as a human, as anyone alone,” Wolfe said. She remained concerned about the specific threats she was potentially vulnerable to as a female traveller.

“I had a lot of additional fears because of being a woman, but none of them were realised.” But in the final analysis, regardless of the circumstances of Wolfe’s trip, she does not believe that being a woman ended up exposing her to any more actual danger than she would have faced as a man. Alone with two men in a hostel about to permanently shutter its doors in France, she ended up with two friends with whom she is still in touch.

Wolfe acknowledges that being a woman, especially a woman alone, makes one be seen as and feel more physically vulnerable. Her travels, though, made her feel more autono- mous, safer, and stronger than she did before.

“Overall, I would do it again the exact same way,” she says. Total independence was one of the chief appeals of solo travel to her. “I liked having the freedom to spend my days how I wanted without having to compromise.”

Some compromise might be unavoidable, or at least prudent. Some women like Brianna Steiert, a visiting student at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, and a third-year biology major also from William Jewell, might not look forward to travelling alone at all. In fact, our original plan was for the two of us to travel together, but to her chagrin I decided that being alone would be a more formative experience for me. Despite not having high expectations, Steiert ended up enjoying her solo trip to Dublin.

“I expected to be lonely or bored because I really like to discuss the things I’m seeing with other people,” she said. She was still able to have those kinds of exchanges, but instead she was speaking to new faces from entirely novel backgrounds. “I’ve met other people and have been able to share my experiences with them.”

Steiert noted that she exercised some caution—she didn’t go out alone or stay out incredibly late. Fears about safety did not materialise. “I feel the same as when I was travelling with a friend or with my mom,” she said. Steiert, like me, found that she was more than capable of directing her own excursions even in a society in which she had never before stepped foot.

The fact is, though, that despite these being well-known, largely American-friendly destinations, I was still met with incredulity when I explained that I was going alone. Even when I had arrived safely back in Oxford with no terrifying experiences to share, people reacted with shocked relief. My experiences and those of the women I know tell us the value of encountering new perspectives while being prudent.

If Macy and I had listened to our parents, we would have missed out on experiences that have moulded who we are. Getting lost in a strange place and having to rely on yourself to get back comes with a magnificent feeling of accomplishment. Like Rebecca, I became more sure of myself as reliable and responsible. Even Brianna, who had hoped to find a travelling companion, feels that she has grown thanks to travelling solo: she has realised her own strength and has had much more fun than she expected. I knew that being a small American woman would increase my risks when travelling, but I also know that being a small American woman increases my risks all the time.

I think the red eyes and half-drunk smiles of my newfound German friends from one chance encounter in Würzburg are testament to just how meaningful travelling alone was for me, and could be for anyone: three strangers sharing beers on a midwinter night, brought together by opportunity, friendliness and no small degree of daring.

Bigger babies? So what?

Ellen Pasternack
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Bigger babies? So what?

In October 2016, a research paper prompted widespread news reports that caesarean sections are affecting human evolution by causing the size of newborns to increase. Larger babies which, in the past, would have died from obstructed labour are now able to survive. The alleles—gene variants—that cause this obstructive ‘fetopelvic disproportion’ (FPD) are no longer selected against and are, it is claimed, becoming more prevalent in the human population. However, the story was massively over-hyped as no solid evidence has been found.

The original study, published in PNAS by Mitteroecker et al., is a mathematical model that seeks to explain a longstanding evolutionary conundrum. Worldwide, a woman dies every two minutes from a complication of pregnancy or childbirth. FPD accounts for many of these deaths through the impossibility of natural birth; without medical intervention, both mother and baby will almost certainly die. Evolutionarily, this is puzzling. How is it that, despite near-certain death, babies continue to develop that are too large to be born? Shouldn’t natural selection have ‘fixed’ this?

Let’s imagine all foetuses are small enough that they can be born safely. Some are larger, some are smaller, but each is small enough that its birth won’t pose a problem. The larger ones, however, are ‘fitter’ than their diminutive peers, so over time the population will evolve to include more alleles encoding greater foetal size.

What if the average size of foetuses increases a little further? Now the largest foetuses run a risk of dying if they find themselves in the womb of a woman with a relatively small pelvis. However, due to variation in pelvis size, most will be fine, and these especially large newborns will enjoy even greater health than those who play it safe.

Mitteroecker et al. calculate that this improved health makes up for the risk of death, and that we should therefore expect a constant proportion of two to six percent of pregnancies affected by FPD. In short, the optimum baby size is slightly larger than can be safely delivered by all women, and this means that an evolutionary pressure continues to push us towards this optimum despite the fact that some unlucky mothers and babies will die.

Are caesarean deliveries changing this balance? The availability of this intervention has greatly reduced the selection pressure against oversized foetuses in many parts of the world. Mitteroecker et al.’s model predicts that this will have caused a relative increase of between nine and 20 percent in the number of babies that are too large to fit through their mothers’ pelvises. This is the figure that has been seized on and wildly misreported by clickbait headlines.

However, this study relies on a theoretical model rather than real world data, and so does not report an actual increase in the observed rates of FPD. The news coverage of this research often reports an increase of incidence of FPD from 3.0 percent to 3.6 percent of pregnancies over the last half century. These figures do not appear anywhere in the original paper. Instead they seem to have been extrapolated from the relative nine to 20 percent increase predicted by the theoretical model. This really is a very serious bending of the facts.

The actual rate of FPD is difficult to measure, with estimates cited by Mitteroecker et al. ranging from two to eight percent of pregnancies. So we don’t know precisely what the real world rate of FPD is, let alone whether it has increased by less than one per cent in recent decades.

Much of the sensationalist reporting on this result has taken the angle that mothers ‘too posh to push’ are to blame, but this is misguided and irresponsible. It makes the patronising accusation that pregnant women opt in for major surgery on a whim, as well as entirely missing the point. The only individuals relevant to this evolutionary change are by defi nition those for whom a caesarean prevents death due to FPD—mothers with large babies and too small a pelvis. The rate of delivery by caesarean for pregnancies where the foetus is not oversized has no impact. This misrepresentation risks discouraging mothers and doctors from a caesarean delivery in cases when it would in fact be the best option.

Perhaps the greatest mistake made when discussing the impact of modern medicine on human evolution is the implicit assumption that this is undesirable.

All changes to our environment will inevitably shape the direction of our future evolution. Natural selection involves, nay, requires the untimely deaths of individuals unlucky enough to carry faulty genes—in this case the mothers and babies aff ected by fetopelvic disproportion. Thanks to caesarean deliveries, women and children who would previously have died in childbirth are leading long and healthy lives. If that’s not progress, I don’t know what is.

The week according to… An Oxford tutor

James Lamming
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The week according to… An Oxford tutor

Monday

Floated a new paper to the department today. Friends and colleagues congratulated me on my inoffensive premise, mild argument and bland conclusion. Think I suggest that the future will bring new developments in the field, and that others should continue my work etc. It seems to keep the department happy, who stop firing off angry emails.

Tuesday

Diary says I have the weekly tutorial coming up on Thursday, but I remember I accidentally set all my students’ emails to spam last week. Easily fixed—I send off a pair of disapproving emails about student tardiness, which invariably draw immediate apologetic responses from both tutees. At first viewing, their essays appear uniformly unoriginal and derivative. This will take too much effort to explain to them over email, so I sigh and close my computer.

Wednesday

Dr Williams and I play battleships to determine where the ticks should go on essays. I always win; once again he is forced to write at least one intelligible sentence of constructive criticism as a forfeit. Rookie. I can’t even remember what the essay I set was about.

Thursday

Arrive ten minutes late to college. Thankfully these particular students understand the importance of thoughtful introspection in the academic process, so the tutorial is mostly completed in silence. I return their uncorrected essays and tell them how original and underivative their essays are.

Friday

Begin day by drifting off to give a lecture at 11. I begin with useless observations and gradually shift into generic truisms on the nature of reality, all while staring at my feet and muttering. Dr Williams jealously noted how uninterested my audience was. The department are concerned that his lectures may be inspiring general interest, and there have been slanderous allegations of occasional audience-lecturer interaction.

Saturday

Wife and I had another row this morning. She shouted at me for being a terrible husband and father. Later, she said she had filed for a divorce. However, I have not changed my mind: I fear she is on track for a low 2:2 in her OxCort report.

Sunday

Wake up to the news that Dr Williams has been fired over those essays I made him mark. Turns out he accidentally ticked a student’s comment which wasn’t wholeheartedly in favour of Cecil Rhodes. Oriel seem to have kicked up quite a fuss about it.

‘The Prize most poets want to win’

Katherine Mennis
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‘The Prize most poets want to win’

With the beginning of first week comes the announcement of the T. S. Eliot Prize winner. Poetry collections may not be the sort of collections on your mind at the moment, but this shortlist is worth all the time you can give it. This prize is the one that, according to Andrew Motion, “most poets want to win.” In recent years it’s been the biggest and most prestigious award for (published, page) poetry in the UK (though lately it’s getting a bit of a run for its money from the Forward Prize, which is fittingly a little more forward-looking). Financially, at the very least, the impact of the prize on its winner should not be underestimated. Vahni Capildeo, shortlisted poet and winner of the Forward Prize, does well to remind those who listen to her that a poet really must have money and a room of her own if she is to write.

I have no idea who will win. Judge Ruth Padel praises “variety” as one hallmark of poetry today, saying “we were looking for musicality, originality, energy and craft, and we believe the shortlist reflects this in a wonderful range of important and lasting voices.” She’s right to have confidence in the shortlist, but its very strength and variety makes choosing a winner seem arbitrary. As Dominic Fraser Leonard says: “the varying styles, skills and performances of these books go to show (in a potentially quite nihilistic-sounding way) how pointless these prizes are, at least in saying Which Book Is Best.” The best thing about the Eliot Prize isn’t its winner. It’s that many people pay close attention to its shortlist and have the chance to see ten of our best poets read from their work on one night at the Royal Festival Hall.

Vahni Capildeo’s Measures of Expatriation recently won the Forward Prize for Best Collection and is perhaps the standout volume on the shortlist. Capildeo loves words of all tongues and ages, having worked as an etymologist on the OED, but questions their stability and fitness. Throughout her childhood, “my mother recited poetry by heart (in French, Caribbean dialects, and English) for the love of it, as did my father (in Hindi and English).” When she reads, she pronounces each word slowly and deliberately: “Sitting next to someone can make my feet curl: shy, self-destructive and oyster-like, they want to shuck their cases, to present themselves, little undersea pinks.” Capildeo’s poetry is omnivorous, sweeping through prose poems and short imagistic bursts, summoning double —or triple—perspectives on the questions of colonialism, migration and expatriation.

At a reading Alice Oswald said that an audience member once suffered an asthma attack from forgetting to breathe whilst listening to her recitations. Her “sound carvings” emerge from a process she has compared to erosion or excavation—as if something is already there—to become meticulously timed oral performances. The poems in Falling Awake are succinct, perfected and possibly her best—and she’s been excellent for quite some time. Bernard O’Donoghue’s The Seasons of Cullen Church, a moving volume of expert lyric poems reanimating the characters of his childhood in County Cork, is similarly accomplished. Shortlisted too is Denise Riley, who hammers words into new expressions for the deadly commonplace of bereavement.

Among these well-established poets are a few underdogs (and their underdog publishers). Ruby Robinson’s first collection, Every Little Sound (Pavilion Press) takes its epigraph from tinnitus expert Dr David Baguley: ‘Internal gain—an internal volume control which helps us amplify and focus upon quiet sounds in times of threat, danger or intense concentration.’ The memories are domestic—viewed from bedroom windows and over plastic mugs—and haunted by the figure of her mother. The titles are simple—‘Apology,’ ‘Tea,’ ‘Tuning Fork’—but her unflinching precision demonstrates that one small word or sound can carry a personal history of pain and love.

The rest of the shortlist is similarly varied: Rachael Boast’s musical, intoxicating Void Studies, realising a project that Arthur Rimbaud proposed but never wrote; J. O. Morgan’s strange epic poem Interference Pattern; Ian Duhig’s witty, learned The Blind Roadmaker; Jacob Polley’s Jackself, a fictionalised autobiography told through the many ‘Jacks’ of legend and folktale. Katharine Towers’ book The Remedies slightly resembles a less accomplished version of Alice Oswald’s, but nonetheless the prose-poem ‘Rain’ is rather wonderful.

Don Paterson, the only poet to have won the Eliot Prize twice, writes that “A poem is a little church, remember […] Be upstanding. Now: let us raise the fucking tone.” For Alice Oswald, who might win it twice, a poem is also like a church: her Memorial, an excavation of Homer’s Iliad, stripped away narrative “as you might lift the roof off a church in order to remember what you’re worshipping.” When I’m not reading enough poetry for pleasure, I feel the guilt of a lapsed church-goer. If you’re a seasoned church-goer, perhaps you’ll make the prestigious shortlist one day—this one is full of Oxford alumni and academics. If you don’t often voluntarily set foot in the navel of a poem, give one of these ten poets a try. The Eliot Prize still forms a defining look at the state of poetry in the UK today, and 2016 certainly wasn’t a bad year in that regard.

Single of the week: Ed Sheeran’s ‘Castle on the Hill’

Will Cowie
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Single of the week: Ed Sheeran’s ‘Castle on the Hill’

A jangling guitar, a stampy beat and then a throaty voice emerges: Mumford and Sons are back. But wait—it turns out this is Ed Sheeran’s latest release, ‘Castle on the Hill’, which sounds half-way between the aforementioned folk band and Springsteen.

With ridiculous amounts of online hype and publicity, the single became this week’s most exciting news in the music world. Ed himself announced that new music is nigh earlier this week, plunging millions of Sheerios (Sheeran-approved nickname) worldwide into mass hysteria.

Strong rumours of Ed headlining Glastonbury this year simply add fuel to the fire burning in the hearts of many a fan who have had to wait nearly two years for new music from the redheaded heartthrob. Well, buckle in kids, your prayers have finally been answered.

Just like Kanye, Ed is a guy who loves to court controversy—he admits to driving at 90 on the Suffolk roads. That’s illegal Ed. Those “country lanes” will be national speed limit—that’s only 60 on a single carriageway. Let’s hope he was talking in metric, not imperial, terms. Anyway, the song’s bland but will be huge regardless.

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