Thursday 17th July 2025
Blog Page 956

Recipe: Let the festivities be-gin

Julia Alsop
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Recipe: Let the festivities be-gin

Christmas and alcohol go hand in hand, and whilst your standard mulled wine or glass of prosecco may be classics, sometimes shaking up (or perhaps stirring) your winter party cocktails can be the best part of festive drinking. So here I have a few yummy favourite cocktails of mine.

You’ll see that I don’t offer exact amounts of each ingredient to use: I prefer to use ratios, and even then, I recommend tasting it to ensure the drink is exactly to your preference.

Sloe gin fizz

Sloe gin is probably the nectar of the Gods (what is a cocktail without gin, am I right?). If you have homemade sloe gin then this is a great way to use it, but if not, many supermarkets stock it. If you want to stay down the locally made path, Demijohns on Little Clarendon Street stocks a very tasty sloe gin made in Worcester. A simple cocktail that not only tastes good but looks beautiful too.

Ingredients:

  1. Sloe gin
  2. Champagne
  3. Lemon juice
  4. Sugar syrup
  5. Edible glitter

Each glass should be 1/5 lemon syrup, 2/5 sloe gin and 2/5 champagne.

Method:

1 – Start with decorating your champagne flutes – this isn’t optional because it looks amazing, and you’ll feel like a domestic goddess. To do this, moisten the rim of each glass with lemon juice before gently placing the glass upside down in the edible glitter on a plate until the rim is covered in glitter.

2 – Combine your lemon juice, and sugar syrup together and mix, before adding to a Boston shaker along with the sloe gin, and shake the ingredients together, (alternatively, stir vigorously).

3 – Pour into your glass and fill it up with champagne.

 

Mulled Sloe Gin

Once again sloe gin is making an appearance (sorry not sorry) in our second drink on the list. Finding a really tasty juice to make this with is a key part; I was lucky to pick up some of the highly coveted apple & pear juice made from fruit in the orchards of Worcester College. However, Marks & Spencer has a brilliant one too. This is the ideal drink for if you’re a little bored of mundane mulled wine (if that’s possible).

Ingredients:

  1. Sloe Gin
  2. Apple & pear juice
  3. Mixed spices (star anise, cinnamon sticks, cloves etc.)

Aim for ¼ sloe gin to ¾ juice here.

Method:

1 – Put the juice into a pan and leave it to simmer.

2 – Add in the cinnamon sticks, star anise and cloves.

3 – Then add the sloe gin, gently stirring the juice and spices with it.

4 – Take off the heat and serve into your glasses.

 

Cinnamon Bellini

So this one doesn’t have any gin it, BUT as a bellini is such an elegant celebratory drink, I shall allow it as an exception – at least for the Christmas season. Also, cinnamon is delicious. Cinnamon tea can be difficult to find, but there’s a great 3 cinnamon tea made by Pukka. Equally, if you struggle to find cinnamon syrup, you can make your own using liquid sugar and ground cinnamon.

Ingredients:

  1. Cinnamon tea
  2. Cinnamon syrup
  3. Prosecco
  4. Cinnamon sticks (optional)

Method:

1 – Brew your cinnamon tea, trying to make it quite strong. Once you are satisfied, place it in the fridge to keep it cool, alongside your prosecco and cinnamon syrup.

2 – When the ingredients are chilled, stir together your syrup and tea before filling half the glass with the mixture.

3 – Add the prosecco and place a cinnamon stick in the glass for decoration.

 

Enjoy and drink responsibly this Christmas season!

Oxford University brands MailOnline story about its ‘snowflake’ professors “misleading”

Marianna Spring
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Oxford University brands MailOnline story about its ‘snowflake’ professors “misleading”

Oxford University has called the MailOnline’s claims that it “shields its snowflake professors” by offering counselling to avoid traumatisation from research “very misleading”.

It has also taken issue with the MailOnline’s assertion that “‘Mr and Mrs’ is banned” at the University.

An article, published on 18 December, states that “experienced academics at Oxford University are being offered counselling so they can avoid being traumatised by their research”, which critics are calling “the latest example of pandering to the emotionally delicate ‘snowflake generation’ who are over-sensitive to difficult situations”.

A spokesperson for Oxford University said, “The courses that they referred to are only offered to a very small number of individuals who are doing research involving fieldwork in physically dangerous and emotionally distressing environments.

“As a university, we research some of the most challenging and distressing social issues, such as sexual abuse, genocide, natural disaster or domestic violence. Our vicarious trauma workshops were designed for researchers whose work involved traumatic situations such as war or conflict zones, and whose own safety may have been in jeopardy.

“The health and wellbeing of staff and students working in these areas is a priority for the university. It is important that researchers are also aware of the effects that their research can have on them and their personal and family life.”

These trauma workshops have been offered since October. However, they appear to have been used by the MailOnline in light of the Sunday Times’ claim that Oxford University Student Union (OUSU) had released a leaflet that “told” students to use ‘ze’ as a gender neutral pronoun in place of ‘he’ and ‘she’, which Cherwell revealed to be untrue last week.

In their headline, the MailOnline explicitly states, “First ‘he’ and ‘she’ became ‘ze’. Now ‘Mr and Mrs’ is BANNED: Oxford University tells colleges to ‘remove gender-specific titles'”.

The guidance on the use of non-gendered titles that the MailOnline refers to in its second article, which was also published on 18 December, has been on the website of the University’s Equality and Diversity Unit since 2013.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Oxford University explained that the guidance is “just a suggestion for staff”.

They commented, “Their suggestions arose out of discussions about what was supportive for transgender staff and students, but also from a wider question about whether gendered titles such as Mr and Mrs were outdated as in the academic, collaborative working environment, first names are generally used and marital status is usually irrelevant.”

The MailOnline has been contacted for comment.

OUSU campaign takes consent classes to France

Jack Hunter
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OUSU campaign takes consent classes to France

It Happens Here (IHH), Oxford University Student Union’s (OUSU) sexual harrasment campaign group, has recently taken their consent classes to France.

Several members of the IHH committee ran the workshops with students aged 15-18 at the Anglophone Section of the Lycée François Premier in Fontainebleau, a commune close to Paris, from 24 to 27 November.

The consent classes, which are similar to those IHH organise through JCRs for freshers’ week, mark the first international trip of the group’s latest initiative to offer adapted versions of consent workshops in schools outside Oxford.

The workshops were some of the first of their kind to take place in France, where the idea of consent education is relatively unknown compared to the UK.

Josh Rampton, the co-chair of IHH, which is “committed to raising awareness of sexual violence, supporting survivors, and promoting consent and first response education”, described the work as “a great success”.

Rampton told Cherwell, “The committee members were pleasantly shocked by how quickly and fervently most of the students became engaged with the subject. The students, much like those in Freshers Week, were horrified but often not surprised by the statistics that were discussed. They were given French statistics illustrating the prevalence of sexual harassment, assault, and rape in these workshops.

“Despite many comments to the effect of ‘but this is obvious…’, quite a few very basic misconceptions surrounding sexual assault were successfully dismantled. Many students were surprised to learn of the controversy these workshops provoked in the UK.”

One sixth-former at the Lycée, Antoine Sacco, shared the optimism of IHI. He said, “It was definitely a good idea, and the fact that we had data for both France and the UK was very pleasant. Students liked it much [sic], even though it would have been great to have different activities. Reading comments about sexual harassment was quite boring from the fourth one.

“I believe everybody enjoyed it and praise the initiative taken there.”

On behalf of the University’s Faculty of Modern Languages, Simon Kemp, Associate Professor of French at Somerville, told Cherwell, “We’re very proud of our students’ determination to make a difference and delighted to have the university associated with such important work. I’m glad that the consent workshops in France were a success, and that French media interest means their efforts may have a broader impact.”

For the first time this October, every Oxford JCR ran ‘compulsory’ consent classes.

Similar workshops were met with backlash at some universities. Undergraduates at York University and Clare College in Cambridge boycotted the “patronising” consent classes.

The Department for Consistent Failure

Matthew Roller
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The Department for Consistent Failure

1,000 drivers on strike. 156 stations, in a part of the country stuffed full of commuters, rendered useless. More than 600,000 journeys disrupted. This week the biggest rail strike since privatisation, 22 years ago, has led to a collapse in the operation of Southern Rail’s vast network, causing turmoil on some of the most economically important rail services in the country.

The strike has been organised by Aslef and the RMT Union, whose head, Mick Whelan, will enter into talks with Transport Minister, Chris Grayling, to attempt to find a resolution to this carnage. If unsuccessful, more industrial action can be expected next week, the week after Christmas, throughout January, and for “ten more years” according to Whelan. Unfortunately for Grayling, who previously denied Boris Johnson’s proposal for Transport for London (TfL) to take over suburban rail services on the ground that it might give more power to a Labour mayor, there remain very few companies that demonstrate any kind of confidence in the Department for Transport—and rightly so.

Even before this fiasco, the list of errors that the ministry had made since the Conservatives came back into power in 2010 was vast. Under Phillip Hammond, the current Chancellor, the government decided to adopt Labour’s vague plan for a high-speed train linking London and Birmingham, proposing to spend £42.6 billion on the project. Likewise, under Hammond’s successor Justine Greening, the department cost the taxpayer some £40 million by making, what was later admitted to be, a “terrible mistake” in awarding the West Coast rail franchise to FirstGroup, stripping Virgin of the contract. Under the leadership of Hammond, Greening and recent incumbent Patrick McLoughlin, the department decided to continue to convert several major British motorways into ‘smart motorways’, at immense cost, despite safety risks.

Whilst the recent controversy surrounding the department has rightly focused on the railways, the ‘smart motorways’ proposals should not be allowed to slip under the radar.

These ‘smart motorways’ have seen hard shoulders converted into permanent driving lanes in an attempt to ease congestion on some of Britain’s busiest routes. However, breakdown companies, such as the RAC and the AA, have expressed safety concerns about the scheme, and an inquiry by MPs on the Commons transport select committee suggested that the proposals had not been properly considered.

The Department for Transport has insisted, throughout the running of these schemes, that the move towards ‘smart motorways’ is “an incremental change” that has “almost halved” journey times on some of the routes on which it has been implemented.

But the AA’s president Edmund King has retorted, saying “right from the outset, the AA raised substantive safety concerns, also voiced by our members, over the dangers of breaking down on a motorway without a hard shoulder or with an inadequate number and size of lay-bys. Whilst we need to increase capacity and reduce congestion we must ensure that we are not cutting corners, which compromise safety just to reduce costs.”

The current roadworks on the M3—a motorway which links London to much of the South including Guildford, Woking, Basingstoke and Winchester—are examples of the ridiculous nature of the Department for Transport’s policy.

In January 2015, a £129 million contract was awarded to an infrastructure company to upgrade a 13.4 mile stretch of the motorway. This has resulted in a 50mph speed limit on much of the road, as well as consistent closures of the whole road at night and the build-up of traffic jams, which often stretch for several miles. Somewhat inevitably, the project is set to miss its initial completion date of January 2017 by a minimum of six months, due to “additional unforeseen works.”

With questions being raised about the safety of ‘smart motorways’, it is entirely possible that, by the time these roadworks are completed, the Department for Transport will have been forced to introduce a new set of schemes to extend the width of the M3, and that the Hampshire/Surrey area will be further plagued by delays on its most important road. This would not only be an inconvenience to millions of road users, but yet another huge waste of public money.

The Department for Transport has an annual budget of £5.3 billion and it is the role of John Hayes, the current Transport Minister and potential future Transport Secretary, to co-ordinate with Highways England to make sure that England’s roads are as safe and efficient as possible. But the current state of the whole department, with regards to both roads and railways, demands investigation. This is not an issue that should be focused on one administration—its work under the Blair/Brown governments was equally poor—but instead on the department itself. Someone within the department must hold the ministers accountable for their shoddy work over the past decade, and sort out the mess in which British transport finds itself.

Christmas around the world: Austria

Jack Schofield
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Christmas around the world: Austria

To describe Christmas as one holiday alone is perhaps an understatement. In Britain, it much rather feels like a series of holidays, a weeks-long chain of rituals, that monopolise December and the proceeding months. This is a sentiment, as I have realised during my year abroad in the sadly-not-yet-so-snowy Alpine mountains, that seems all the more true of Austria and its captivating traditions.

The ritual of Krampusläufe (the Krampus processions) is the stand-out example. Sankt Nikolaus (Saint Nicholas, of course) may gladly take responsibility for the good children, but it is Krampus who is left to deal with all the bad ones. It soon transpires that Santa giving naughty children coal simply does not suffice for these hardy mountain dwellers.

Throughout folklore, Krampus has whisked disobedient children away in sacks to be drowned, or taken them straight to hell (they really don’t hold back, apparently…) and the practice of today is not so thematically dissimilar. In early December, a Krampuslauf takes place in many towns where adults dress up as the demonic part-human, part-goat, and wholly-terrifying horned beast. Parents take along their children to the ocassion, one can only assume, out of a desire to see them scared absolutely shitless. The night-time event features fire and sticks with which the Krampuses (Krampusses? Krampi?) beat the children to whom they run up to at random. Think less ‘walking in a winter wonderland’ and rather ‘attempting survival in any horror film you’ve ever had the guts to watch’. That pretty sums up Krampus and his festive role in western Austria.

You can watch a summary of this year’s event in the Tyrolean ski resort town of Sölden for the least Christmassy thing you have ever seen, and to prove that I’m not making it all up:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VSdrH3B6JE&w=560&h=315]

There is, of course, much more to Christmas in the Austrian Alps than Krampus. On 6 December, Sankt Nikolaus visits the houses of families with children, giving them small gifts that are usually heavy on the chocolates. The Immaculate Conception is also marked throughout Catholic Austria and Italy with the day off on the 8th.

Christmas markets, the staple of the Germanic advent, spring up in towns from Innsbruck to Vienna. They are filled with handmade and local products, be it knitted scarves or fruity jams, mulled wine, Bratwursts or Kaisershmarrn (sugared pancakes with raisins). The imitations of such markets in the UK are a positive sign of a lovely cultural event catching on, but they often seem fake and lack the spirit of their European counterparts, despite many having come directly from there. Perhaps this is because of the lesser importance Brits place on the market as a place where friends and family spend time together, defying the cold. Indeed, in the UK, the market itself takes on a far greater role, making more necessary the fanfare of the likes of Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland.

During my year abroad, it’s been an incredible experience to witness the traditions integral to the Austrian Christmas calendar. Indeed, I was surprised to hear that in the more Catholic areas of Austria and southern Germany it is baby Jesus himself, rather than Father Christmas, who is believed to deliver the presents. Given that in the UK we have a hard enough time trying to convince children that a fully-functioning adult, equipped with a sleigh and elves, does the job, I very much pity Austrian parents. However, I suppose that this aspect of winter festivities, as with Krampus’ hard-to-forget role in the run-up, says a great deal about the surreal aspects of Christmas here, and the significant mix of pagan traditions with the country’s relatively more recent Christianity.

The auto-revolution

James Evans
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The auto-revolution

Let’s not delude ourselves—the robots are coming, and nobody is truly safe.

Today, robots aren’t all that impressive. They’re expensive, prone to breakdown, and often require teams of skilled professionals to ensure their smooth operation—particularly in industrial settings. It would, however, be madness to argue that this will never change.

Technology improves all the time, especially where economics provides a huge incentive for innovation. Start up costs aside, automated production is cheaper than employing human beings. Robots don’t need to sleep, or eat, and they don’t get sick; they don’t make mistakes (well, not as often as humans), require holiday pay, or set up pesky trade unions.

The capitalist dream of a perfect, compliant, workforce is on the horizon; and while there are always weaknesses in long term economic speculation, there can be no doubt that a massive proportion of jobs (with estimates ranging from 35-50% in the next couple of decades beginning with the lowest skilled and most repetitive), will be entirely replaceable. It is not a question of if but when.

This isn’t something contained to manual labour either. Improvements in AI, in conjunction with the growing presence of bots (as has already been seen on the stock market), will undoubtedly gnaw away at white-collar employment as time goes on. We are on the cusp of a massive structural change to the economy – and we are not even close to being prepared.

Even now, the silent rise of the automation is happening. Robots are used in factories, warehouses, and perhaps most noticeably in the transport sector. Driverless cars have already clocked hundreds of thousands of miles on the world’s roads, driverless railways have sprung up, and as the recent Southern strike shows, the era of the guard on commuter services is drawing to a close—all thanks to new technology.

This phenomenon is of course not new. Stone working was superseded by bronze, workshop manufacture replaced by mass industrial production, and the horse-drawn cart by the power of internal combustion—but the scale of this is different. Despite the cheeriness of Deloitte’s “From Brawn to Brains” report, in which they noted that while lots of jobs have vanished, more (and on average better paid) jobs have been created, we are only at the very tip of the automation iceberg. Within our lifetimes, technology will cease to augment modern work and begin to entirely replace it.

But then what? To what are economies supposed to turn? In a future that is far too close for comfort, policy makers are going to have to devise solutions to an unprecedented problem: how do we ensure growth and good living standards in an economy where a significant proportion of the workforce (if not most of it) is not just unemployed but fundamentally unemployable?

The first instinct, as seems to be the pattern of 2016, will be to fight. For unions, political parties, and populist movements (as has been seen on issues such as migration) the natural response will be to pull up the drawbridge and banish the automatons to protect jobs; but the historical precedent and nature of the world economy will not make this easy. Take manufacturing, a sector not only quite vulnerable to automation but also responsible for 44 per cent of UK exports. Even if Britain, in the name of protecting livelihoods, put legislative constraints on the use of automation, there is no guarantee that any other nation would. In fact, it would be in their interests not to. The free market would render British manufacturing totally impotent and uncompetitive as other nations automated; decimating the industry we were trying to protect.

While this is just one example, it is clear that in the long term there can be no hiding from the auto-revolution and the mass unemployment it will inevitably create. How the unemployable workforce is supposed to house itself, eat, and ultimately live happily in an economically sustainable way will be perhaps the greatest question for a generation of policy makers. Right now, massive state intervention seems to be the only realistic option. But from where this will be funded is of course less clear. Businesses too must expect to be squeezed, not only by the pressures of taxation but equally by the inevitable falls in consumption increasing unemployment will bring. The interdependent nature of our economic system makes the rise of automation a universal headache.

But beyond economics, perhaps the greatest question is a philosophical one. In a world where a great many have become totally state dependent, have no profession as a source of fulfilment or pride, and have incomes that will fund little more than their basic needs, what value is there to the system? And more directly—what are those who have been left out in the cold to do with their lives?

In the case of the latter, any notion of welfare on the condition of constant pursuit of work will have to be abandoned. The former is much more complex. To use an overused adjective, our economic system is ultimately a construct, and the society of the future will be forced to decide whether it is a construct that needs to be altered to meet the challenges of the age.

Some may argue that time has already been and gone; that particularly in the cases of Trump and Brexit we are already seeing what happens when large sections of the population feel left behind—but the economic realities of the present do not compare. Nowhere in the western world has truly experienced the entrenched, long term, and seemingly insurmountable structural unemployment that is to come.

This is a depressing topic, but sadly it’s an unavoidable one. The forces that dictate the path of the free market and its drive to ever greater efficiency will bring the automatons whether we like it or not—and these forces are already at play. Some comfort can be taken in the knowledge that this silent revolution will not happen overnight, but it would be foolish not to prepare. The sooner we begin to grapple with this challenge the easier the transition will be.

After all, the robots are coming.

Vacation blues: what to read when you’re missing Oxford

Laura Hackett
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Vacation blues: what to read when you’re missing Oxford

My first week at home was bliss; my own bed, a warm fire, home cooking, old friends. But round about now, two weeks into vacation, it all becomes a bit stale. Mum asking a million questions about your plans to go out, extended family forever asking, “How’s uni going?” – not to mention the inconvenient detail that you need to walk more than 15 minutes to get to your nearest pub, club, restaurant, library and Tesco. In short, we begin to miss Oxford. But how to return to the beauty of the dreaming spires when your college is probably renting your room out for conferences? Aside from taking patriotic refuge in the varsity meme war, there have been so many books written about and set in Oxford that you needn’t buy a train ticket. We all know the obvious ones; Brideshead Revisited, Inspector Morse, His Dark Materials, but here are some other literary treats I’ve enjoyed to remind you of the beauty (and insanity) of Oxford.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling

Oxford isn’t Hogwarts, as much as we wish it was. But even if you don’t go to Christ Church, re-reading Harry Potter as an Oxford student certainly introduces some parallels. The acceptance letter arriving in the post, being planted in a totally new and strange world, getting used to the lingo, your first formal hall. J.K. Rowling’s first novel will bring back all the ups and downs of your first term.

Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain

I know this is a huge English student faux pas, but I was drawn to this book after seeing the film a few years ago (and crying intermittently for several weeks). It’s a wonderful and heartbreaking true story of a girl from a provincial family who decides (much to her father’s horror) to apply to Oxford. The book tells of her acceptance and arrival at Oxford on the eve of the First World War. She finds and loses love, drops out to work as a nurse on the front line, and loses so many male friends from Oxford. Full of tenacity, bravery and perseverance, Vera became a role model to me (and made my decision to apply to Oxford over Cambridge).

Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy

Granted, this book doesn’t have festive cheer written all over it. The story of an Oxford hopeful, Jude, and his failed attempts to penetrate the elitism that looks down at his self-taught education, and his cousin-lover Sue, does not lift the spirits. However, it gives an outsider’s view of the city, and the perspective of someone who lives and works there (yes, people live in Oxford who aren’t students). What’s more, you’ll have great fun trying to identify the different pubs and buildings that Jude describes. If you read the Penguin edition, the notes will tell you (who knew that Jude’s reunion with Arabella took place in Turf Tavern?!).

Your vacation reading list

It has to be done, and it will remind you why you were so ready to come home after eight weeks. Trawling through Ulysses and remembering you’ll need to write an essay on it next term is enough to make anyone put up with anxious mothers, nosey grandparents, and the competitive undertone amongst your school friends as you all gush about how fantastic uni has been. Good luck getting through it and having time to read any of the aforementioned novels!

The ultimate soundtrack to your revision

Dom Saad
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The ultimate soundtrack to your revision

Nobody likes working in the vac, especially around Christmas when distractions are at an all-time high. If, like me, your productivity outside Oxford plummets to the point where you struggle to remember what subject you do or what a collection is, a bit of music to help you power through coursework, reading or revision (or if you’re lucky, all three) might be just what you need. I’ve picked out a few albums that should be your first port of call when you need some tunes to see you through the hours at the grindstone.

Jazz: Kamasi Washington, The Epic

There isn’t really another word for Kamasi Washington’s titanic 2015 record than epic. Sprawling across just under three hours with a good number of securely double-digit runtimes, The Epic is sizeable enough to handle any academic challenge you can throw at it (I can confirm this album saved me in prelims a couple of years ago). The lengthy tracks undergo considerable development and there are a lot of grand moments; favourites are the cosmic chorus of ‘Askim’, playful drums of ‘Leroy and Lanisha’, and the mellow organs of six-eight standout ‘Henrietta Our Hero’.

Film Soundtrack: Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, The Social Network

Film soundtracks pair perfectly with work when you consider that they’re meant to add to the visual experience without drawing you from it. None are better than Reznor & Ross’ 2011 score for The Social Network; hit play and you too can pretend you’re Zuckerberg writing line after line of billionaire-quality code, when really you’re just trying to make sense of doodles you drew half-asleep in a Friday 9AM. ‘A Familiar Taste’ and ‘Carbon Prevails’ experiment with irregular beats and distortion, whilst ‘In Motion’ and ‘Intriguing Possibilities’ are particular masterpieces of Reznor & Ross’ arpeggiator-driven, sequenced sound.

Game Soundtrack: Disasterpeace, FEZ

If film soundtracks are great background tunes, video game soundtracks are designed to be repeated on loop for hours and hours without distracting from the experience. Disasterpeace’s charming, chirping accompaniment to FEZ is a wash of filtered drum machines and bit-crushed synths, and tracks like ‘Progress’ and ‘Flow’ will hopefully be eponymous with their effects. Not to mention, FEZ is a puzzle game, meaning its music needs to bring out the peak of your intellect: problem sheets and translations alike will crumble in the face of your newfound cognition.

Ambient: William Basinski, The Disintegration Loops

For the real 2AM isolationist experience, shut yourself away with The Disintegration Loops. This is literally the sound of the same repeated six-second taped sample progressively falling to actual physical bits over the course of seventy-four minutes. Some describe it as a statement on the fragility and temporary existence of analogue sound corrupted by a digital age; others would say it’s kerosene in the essay tank. Try not to draw too many parallels as you churn out two thousand words with the sobering sound of steady degradation in your ears.

Hip Hop: J Dilla, Donuts

For a more upbeat essay-writing experience, look no further than the undisputed master of hip-hop production’s posthumous magnum opus, Donuts. Tracks like ‘Workinonit’, ‘Stop’ and ‘Two Can Win’ are particularly inviting for rap talent, but sans-flows – as they are presented in Donuts – are uplifting anthems for study. Expect a wide array of inventive beats, catchy instrumental hooks and ingenious manipulation of samples.

Electronic: Bonobo, The North Borders

Bonobo’s trademark fusion of sampled instrumentation and clean, side-chained synths is perhaps its most effective in 2013’s The North Borders. Sprawling, harmonic soundscapes are crafted in ‘First Fires’ and ‘Emkay’. The thumping bass of single ‘Cirrus’ and garage beat of ‘Know You’ keep up the pace, whilst Erykah Badu’s vocals in ‘Heaven For The Sinner’ take a brief tour of the astral plane (a great place to pick up particularly far-fetched essay points).

Shoegaze: My Bloody Valentine, Loveless

From the moment the opener ‘Only Shallow’ thunders in with its less-is-more fill, there is simply so much noise present in My Bloody Valentine’s ’91 classic that to take any notice whatsoever of the outside world with it in your ears would be an impressive feat. As such, it silences any distraction and puts you firmly in your own personal bubble, from within which forty-eight minutes of blissfully uninterrupted productivity can sprout. In ‘Loomer’, the churning, revolving guitars grind out nostalgic chords, while the massive, ride-heavy drum groove of ‘Come In Alone’ keeps the midnight oil burning.

Folk: Nick Drake, Pink Moon

Sometimes a stripped-back, exposed acoustic guitar and the occasional tinkle of piano is all we need to keep us thinking. Nick Drake’s Pink Moon sounds as current as anything, but consider its 1972 release and you realise Drake’s genius was well before his time. Tracks like ‘Which Will’ and ‘Place To Be’ are warm, melodic, and serve as great background atmosphere (though have much merit as centrepiece songs in their own right), whilst the quicker rhythm of ‘Things Behind The Sun’ keeps the neurons firing.

Techno: Objekt, Flatland

There’s a special kind of panic reserved for rapidly-approaching deadlines when the odds are stacked against you. If you’re still blessed with forty-four minutes on the clock, fight back with Flatland, Objekt’s gritty 2014 record. ‘Agnes Revenge’ explodes in and bombards with drowning space-age synths, before the ticking time-bomb beat of ‘One Fell Swoop’ takes over. All guns blaze in ‘Ratchet’, while the relatively reserved ‘Interlude (Whodunnit?)’ provides a chance for a well-earned breather.

Minimalism: Steve Reich, Music For 18 Musicians

Steve Reich’s iconic 1976 piece spans just under an hour, and yet is known to have defined a new concept of extended music. Blending classical instruments with synthesised sounds, Reich builds through a series of movements so subtly you’ll have to rewind to figure out at what point the music changed. Chimes trill, angels coo, and arpeggiated synths bubble in and out; all the while you take a leaf from Reich’s book and, in honour of the great composer, focus on your own minimalist approach to revision.

Review: The Grand Tour

Peter Edmondson
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Review: The Grand Tour

After three false starts, Top Gear is back – just under its new name, The Grand Tour. As every episode starts in the studio – or tent now due to legal reasons – this is where we must begin too, and it did not get off to a promising start.

The ‘fight’ scene with the audience in episode one was simply not funny. It was too scripted and dragged on for twice as long as it should have. Perhaps some viewers do crave this kind of humour, especially the American audience, however it is not the trio at their best. Their best is the off-the-cuff, self-deprecating, and dry humour that was the hallmark of the ‘news’ segment of Top Gear.

‘Conversation Street’ – its new name – has finally got back to this in episode four. Clarkson’s sly dig at Chris Evans for “trying hard but making a hash of it” is the perfect example – even if I did initially take it as a dig at Hammond’s new beard, an equally justifiable insult. It is quips like this that make the show unique. Therefore, I sincerely hope they do not revert to the style of episode one, in particular, for the rest of the series. Time will tell whether they do.

Disappointingly, the replacement of The Stig with ‘The American’ has proved to be a complete failure. The joke that he finds everything non-American to be “communist” was moderately funny the first time but after the 700th time? Not so much. He fills the rest of his roll with one-liners while testing cars on the new track. I am yet to hear a funny one. Clarkson’s reaction to the jokes, that interrupt his commentary of the lap, is usually that of disdain – and rightly so. Perhaps this is the comedy they are going for; if it is I’m afraid it doesn’t work. ‘The American’ needs replacing.

Luckily the test track sequences do not make or break the show, that role belongs to the films. Here, after three episodes of finding their feet, they have finally nailed it.

Episode one was very much car based. Probably a statement that despite all the money – £4.5 million per show to be exact, four times the budget of Top Gear – this is still a car show. It was still funny at times even if it was potentially less appealing to the casual viewer, a risk with it being the first show but it wasn’t a failure.

The second episode was like nothing we’d seen before on Top Gear. In fact, nothing we have ever seen before anywhere really. An almost hour long sequence, completely scripted, about rescuing the queen from a fake terrorist organisation. Can’t see the car link? Neither could they. It was an experiment worth doing but one that probably shouldn’t be repeated.

Episode three undertook a grand tour of Italy, reminiscent of the Top Gear of the past. However, there was one big issue. There were no challenges. Therefore, the trio had to make the comedy up themselves, not just let the usual chaos unfold. Hammond played the clown, doing a series of doughnuts in some of the most historic locations in Italy. This can be put down as another fairly unsuccessful experiment, but again not a complete failure.

So, it took four weeks, but with the fourth outing of The Grand Tour they finally got the perfect mix. Who would have guessed it would be the standard Top Gear ‘How Hard Can It Be?’ challenge? The scripting was subtle and you got the impression that many of the presenter’s laughs were genuine. That is what the trio, under whatever name, has always been about and what audiences love. Utter chaos, childish banter, and complete failure. I would suggest they don’t need to script that, it is just who they are, and long may that continue.

Recipe: festive gingerbread stars

Emily Beswick
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Recipe: festive gingerbread stars

This recipe takes advantage of two things that tend to be in short supply at Oxford: time, and decent ovens. Make the most of the Christmas vacation and bake these treats at home. These stars make great snacks, as well as potential Christmas gifts if you find yourself a bit broke.

Makes around 20 (depending on size)

Ingredients

  1. 50g butter
  2. 100g caster sugar
  3. 100g runny honey
  4. 225g plain flour (plus extra for dusting)
  5. ½ tsp baking powder
  6. ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
  7. 1 tsp ground ginger
  8. 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  9. ½ medium egg
  10. To decorate (optional):
  11. Writing icing
  12. Sprinkles

Method

1 – Heat the butter, sugar and honey on a low heat in a saucepan, stirring until melted and smooth. Off the heat, add the dry ingredients and stir until crumbly, then add the egg and work to a dough (add a little flour if it seems sticky). Tip on to a work surface, and pat until you have a smooth ball of dough. Wrap in cling film and leave to chill for a few hours.

2 – Preheat oven to 180°c/160°c fan/gas 4 and grease two baking trays.

3 – Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to a thickness of about 2mm and cut out stars.

4 – Bake for about 12 mins until golden. Immediately after taking them out, loosen from the tray and place on a wire rack to cool.

5 – Decorate and serve!

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