Friday 15th August 2025
Blog Page 1574

Fear over Torpids cancellation

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Owing to high levels of rain and the flooding of the Isis, rowers across the university fear that  Torpids will be cancelled. In a statement, OURCS said they were unable to predict whether the event would go ahead. 

Michael Pontikos, OURCS Secretary, said, “Torpids has not been cancelled, and we are progressing in our preparations for running Torpids safely. Multiple contingencies are in place to allow racing in adverse stream conditions, with the final decisions made by the Senior Umpires. Weather and stream conditions are variable, and thus we are unable to accurately forecast what they will be 14 days in advance, so making predictions now would be futile.”

The Oriel Captain of Boats Maximilian Lau commented, “The possibility that one of the two main events of the year may be cancelled can be a pretty soul-destroying prospect. Our club is on the verge of feeling like a boot camp, training for a war that may never actually happen.”

If Torpids were to be held, performances are likely to lag behind previous years. According to Hertford Boat Club men’s captain Chris Jones, “Word on the tow path is that many colleges are secretly hoping of a reprieve for fear of being bumps bait, due to lack of water time and an inexperienced crew. It’s been frustrating to have a great group of keen novice rowers who think that this is what rowing is all about — lots of land training with a rare hastily thrown together water outing when the flag changes.”

Lau revealed, “Oriel has compensated by upping the social side as much as possible. We were on two crew dates a week at times, to keep the rowers keen.” Crispin Smith, the Univ Boat Club President, expressed worry that his rowers could be “catching crabs in Park End.”

Vince Cable visits Oxford

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Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, visited Oxford and Oxford Brookes universities on Wednesday, to hear about Oxford research into commercial applications which benefit the economy, health and the environment.

During his visit, he saw the development of next-generation solar cells. Oxford scientists are currently experimenting with a variety of surfaces and materials to allow the delivery of affordable solar power at the scale of many terawatts.

Cable was also shown how engineers and medics have created a OrganOx device (pictured) that can keep organs alive outside the body, using blood at normal body temperatures. The OrganOx technology allows livers to be preserved for up to three days, which is more than three times longer than is possible by conventional cold storage, meaning that more organs will now be available for transplants.

Cable said, “Oxford University is a powerhouse of science and research covering a wide range of academic disciplines. Today I saw how it is also bridging the gap between the lab and the marketplace by turning its leading expertise into cutting edge new products.”

In the evening, Cable addressed an audience of 100 students at Lady Margaret Hall College for an event co-hosted by Oxford University Liberal Democrats and LMH’s PPE Society, the Daisy Circle. The talk and discussion was centred on governing under coalition and austerity.

Cable defended the coalition government’s existence, stating, “The economy helps explain the current political system.”

He continued, “Instead of talking in abstract, I’ll try to relate that to the experiences of young people and the prospects you have. One of the big underlying shifts in Britain has been a shift from young to old. My generation has become extremely wealthy, not through the result of doing anything very much but simply because of who we are and where we are in relation to the young. There has been an enormous transfer of wealth through the property market. For young people, the average age at which it is possible to buy a house is 35 across the UK.

“The job market has changed, certainly. My generation looked forward to stable employment, rising increments every year, secure and substantial pensions; all that has gone, almost.”

After the talk, Cable was questioned about relations between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in government. Cable argued, “The British system in many ways has considerable advantages over the American system,” but noted the ideological differences between the parties.

He stated, “Britain is a highly unequal country in income and wealth; the Conservatives would, I think, be fairly relaxed about that but we are not relaxed about it.”

Cable claimed, “We’ve had what Marx would call a ‘crisis of capitalism’. But both the Right and the Left are in denial about it. The right are in denial about it because, well, they would be, wouldn’t they? The left are in denial about it because it was on their watch. Neither of them are dealing with the issue. It’s our job to make it clear that they are both wrong.”

One first year student told Cherwell after the talk, “He has made me remember why I study PPE.”

However, not all were as receptive to Cable’s visit. Hours before Cable was scheduled to speak at LMH, a Facebook event calling for an emergency demonstration outside the college was created. The organiser, Nathan Akehurst, told Cherwell, “Vince Cable colludes in a government which is destroying higher education as we know it. University applications are falling, students are being saddled with a lifetime of debt whilst courses are closing, jobs are being cut and education privatised.

“This is why we do not feel he is welcome at institutions that value academia and will protest the presence of coalition ministers when they visit.

“Whilst we did not protest at LMH in the end because of some logistical issues, activists made their presence felt to him at Brookes earlier, not without sympathy from many staff.”

One Billion Rising in Oxford

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A flashmob was held in Bonn Square on Thursday afternoon, as part of the One Billion Rising campaign.

The flashmob involved around 50 participants performing a choreographed dance to ‘Break the Chain’, the campaign’s official song.

One Billion Rising is organised by ‘V-Day’, a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls. The movement claims that “One in three women on the planet will be raped or beaten in her lifetime.” The flashmob in Oxford was part of thousands of One Billion Rising events across the world to mark the campaign’s 15th anniversary, including marches in Afghanistan, poetry readings in Somalia, and a debate in the British parliament on Thursday.

Lily Wonham, the Keble dancesport captain who helped to organise the event, told Cherwell, “It was absolutely fantastic! The sun shined and everyone was really energetic. The crowd caught the spirit and began to join in, which was wonderful. I had a big smile on my face throughout, as did everyone else.”

One third-year English student from Brasenose College who watched the flashmob commented, “There was a huge crowd, it filled up the square. Everyone involved was really enthusiastic but the audience was a little more mixed: some were getting really into it, but others were more confused and sceptical.”

Figures scheduled to speak after the flashmob were Imam Monawar Hussain, Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire and founder of The Oxford Foundation, and Jenny Lewis, a poet and member of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. In addition, In the Pink, an Oxford all-female a cappella group were also scheduled to perform.

Organiser Sarah Apetrei, a student at Keble, explained, “I decided to organise this event after being deeply distressed by the news from Delhi, Ohio, and more recently Mexico and Oxford (Operation Bullfinch), but also moved and overwhelmed by the demonstration of solidarity in India.

“I started to realise that this was part of something much bigger, a groundswell of protest against deeply embedded cultures in which women and girls are routinely raped, exploited, trafficked and silenced.”

She continued, “We regard dance as an appropriate response, because it celebrates the freedom and dignity of women in their own bodies, and rather than marching or ranting expresses our conviction that violence can only be overcome by love and beauty. That is why we are rising on Valentine’s Day: we are rising for love, compassion and justice.”

Suzanne Holsombach, OUSU Vice President for Women commented, “I think the One Billion Rising is a fun, interactive awareness raising event. It gets people moving, acting, and talking about violence against women and that is a conversation our society needs to have.”

New College’s accommodation question

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New College JCR voted last week to change the way student rooms are allocated across all year groups. The motion was proposed by JCR Housing and Facilities Office Nick Howley, after he noticed a discrepancy between the final admission figures and the number of rooms available.

The JCR motion noted, “Accommodation for third-years is undergoing a rapid decline to the point of being wiped out by 2014. In two years, accommodation for fourth years may not be guaranteed. Next year the number of third-year rooms will be 12, significantly less than expected and far less than previous years.”

Room shortages have forced students to live out in their third year despite having thought that accommodation would be provided by the college. The motion further noted, “It is of the upmost importance that there are some rooms available for the third years that need them, whether simply for welfare reasons, because there is nobody to live with, or because living out would be an incredibly uncomfortable situation for them, which would dramatically affect their well being, and ultimately their academic performance.”

The motion prescribed several changes to the balloting system, although full implementation has proved difficult owing to lack of accommodation. Because of the disparity in the quality of randomly assigned rooms, the motion called for first-year rooms to be graded, and for freshers to pick their second year rooms through this system. An increase in demand for rooms by other years with higher priority has meant that the number of rooms potentially available to third years is steadily decreasing.

The motion observed that “a number of second-years have had to look for private accommodation at short notice, after everybody else had sorted it and having been led to believe by college that they would have rooms, which means that many have missed their opportunity to live out with the people they want.”

The JCR declared its support for reformation, stating “It is unacceptable to continue to advertise on the New College website and other promotional material that fourth year rooms are guaranteed, and that some third year rooms are available.”

Howley told Cherwell he had instigated “talks with the college to look into getting more accommodation – something they don’t seem opposed to, which is a good start. I think it’ll be something that can be effectively campaigned for and that’s the direction the JCR will be moving in. There are now just a couple of students who still don’t have a room guaranteed by college next year. I am very doubtful that college will fail to find them accommodation; in the worst case scenario a room will be found in another college.”

Students struggling to find accommodation were directed to the Oxford Student Pad website. When asked about the problems at New College, a spokesperson for Oxford University stated, “Providing accommodation for students is a priority for the collegiate University and we are building to meet this need.”

The Warden of New College, Sir Curtis Price, said “The College is very much aware of the increasing pressures on accommodation, for both undergraduates and graduates, and we are acting on various fronts to try to resolve these pressures as quickly as possible. We are also working closely with the JCR to refine the room balloting system.”

Howley added, “My aspiration at the moment isn’t going on holiday, or getting a great job, or winning the lottery. It’s the thought of a college organisation making several concurrent leasing deals with middle-aged landlords.”

Review: Another Country

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★★★☆☆
Three Stars

Another Country is not a reflection of Oxford, but one might be forgiven for seeing in it the worst excesses of Oxford stereotypes: boarding school slang, crisp English accents and wood panelling abound.

Set in the 1930s, Another Country is overtly political. Systems of government, or systems of boarding school hierarchy, are discussed time and again, and the main character, Guy Bennett, is based on the spy Guy Burgess, one of the Cambridge Five. But don’t go along hoping to see anything about espionage; the action here stays firmly school-bound.

If, that is, “action” is the right word. “Spice and semi-colons” is how one of the characters relates a teacher’s advice on letter-writing. The phrase could describe the play. The audience succumb to frequent laughter, but the script tends to bumble back and forth between various amusing situations without ever going anywhere in particular. Little makes one want to see the next scene rather than just get to the next punch-line, and it does not help that scene changes are frequently lengthy. An overarching plot is decidedly lacking.

But despite flaws in the script, the company do their best to bring out its strengths. Joseph Allan as the communist Tommy Judd manages to create a character that is both irritating and loveable, while Tom Lambert’s performance as Wharton, a fag (in the 30s sense of the word), makes it hard to believe the man is a fresher, not a twelve year old.

The rest of the cast were strong, too, with the notable exception of James Methven, who played Vaughan Cunningham, an uncle of one of the boys who comes round for tea one afternoon. Methven flounces on, whirling around like a spinning top, and generally hamming up his role. The subtlety to the portrayal of homosexuality that is created by Peter Huhne (playing Guy Bennett) comes under significant stress. Methven’s has to be among the more cringe-worthy performances at a Playhouse show.

As surreal, though more intentionally, is the set. Most of it is very realistic, except for a gouge that rips through the wood-panelled room, and for the odd-coloured and rich lighting in the background. The effect is unsettling, and works well with the tone of the play.

Another Country is not an excellent play, nor is everything in this production excellent. But the final scenes are powerful, and one walks away moved, if unsure quite how the script manages to go so far towards redeeming itself at the very last moment.

Review: You Maverick

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★★★☆☆

Three Stars

“This town ain’t big enough for the two of us/And it ain’t me who’s going to
leave,” insists Russel Mael in the eponymous Sparks song. In You Maverick, written by Matt Parvin, two young men sing a similar tune at each other, except the town is an unnamed Oxford college and leaving means expulsion, something most students here envision only in nightmares.

The play opens on what appears to be a legal meeting but is revealed to
be an academic hearing of sorts. The bumbling man in a suit is not a lawyer but Timbey (Charlie Metcalfe), a counsellor mourning the glory days he never had as an undergraduate at the college where he now works. “This is a welfare meeting,” he tells Gregory (Charlie Hooper), a fast-talking lad accused of plagiarism. Kasper (Tim Drummond) is the kid whose paper he has, by all appearances, ripped off, and who sits silently as Gregory delivers a dubious self-defence. He has clearly copied, says Timbey—why not come clean. No, Gregory chides; he has apparently done so—and he’ll stake his academic fate on the difference.

If the many elements of You Maverick are laced with a single theme, it is the danger of mistaking evidence for clarity. The meeting of the opening scene proves the first of several, as Kasper levies allegations of increasing consequence against Gregory, and Timbey’s sensibilities are torn between the outsider with whom he identifies and the insider whom he wishes to be. That Gregory has done all that he stands accused of we never doubt, but as the punishment he faces becomes more severe, roles of victim and aggressor become increasingly duplicitous. “Maybe I can be both fragile and scare you,” Kasper tells Gregory, and we believe him.

If You Maverick has a weakness, it is occasional heavy-handedness. Gregory and Timbey deliver what amount to soliloquys in the guise of dialogue, and Kasper’s homoerotic taunting of Gregory once the tables have turned feels cliché, or at least overplayed—as does some superfluous symbolism having to do with sunlight. One hopes that Parvin will approach future scripts with more confidence in the subtlety of his own writing and the intuition of his audience to read between the lines. When Timbey tells Gregory, “I’m here to help, not accuse,” his naiveté in thinking the two distinct is not lost on us.

"Middle Class Food Column": Going Against the Grain

Bread. Rice. Pasta. Potatoes. The names alone inspire nothing but boredom and that slightly nauseous sensation you get just before the onset of a stitch. Starchy, stodgey, staple foods that in all honesty, we could all do with a bit less of in our lives. I mean, what are they really good for? Sustaining  us against starvation is a thoroughly over-rated attribute in the age of the Amazon Kindle, the sustainable teak Chaise Longue and the Olive Oil tasting party chez nous in Tuscany. It’s time we did what any reasonable, bourgeois-minded person would do, and replace them with more marketable alternatives!

And what alternatives! These days you can hardly step into a humble delicatessen without falling over the piles of hip, replacement staples available. And with nearly the same carb content as your dull old pie and mash, these exotic newer models needn’t result in you wasting away from malnutrition. From your classic cous cous (discredited, now that I hear they have it on the salad bar in Pizza Hut, but still a joy with a nice quail tagine and a glass of chablisse), to the dirty hipster of the grain world, quinoa (pronounced ‘Keen-Wah’- say it how you imagine Montezuma might have talked) the options are many and varied. Frankly, there is no longer any excuse for living off over-done fusilli and Lloyd Grossman sauce, so quit complaining and dive into the rich and multi-textured world of alternative carbohydrate sources with us. You will not be disappointed.

Staple #1: Quinoa

Lewis says: Although a recent Guardian article has forced me to accept that quinoa no longer fits with my personal ethics, I was prepared to shred a tiny piece of my soul for the sake of a last hoorah. I don’t know if it was the salad box we served it in, or the cries of raped Amerindians I had ringing in my ears as I ate it, but quinoa doesn’t do it for me anymore. It’s certainly exotic and versatile, but taste-wise? Save it for the Llamas. 3/10

Katie says: More importation! Having read the same Guardian article, I was preparing myself for a sweet farewell. But these delicate husks of heaven won’t be leaving my diet anytime soon. And neither should they leave Western supermarkets. If we plough on in our Western demand, perhaps we will inadvertently provoke a new pulse, the monolith of quinoa being too expensive to sustain. And perhaps it will be even tastier, or more versatile, or contain even more amino acids! Fellow gastronomes, if you care about your mouth, your health, and the future of the world of superfoods, I must urge you to beat down any namby pamby Guardian-quoting liberals and buy as much of this contentious grain as possible. 8/10

Staple #2: Cous Cous

Lewis says: I can confirm that this was indeed, cous cous. Little else to say really. Those little North African grains are just so, well, 2006. I’ve probably eaten my own body weight in cous cous six times over, and can now feel nothing but indifference towards it. The heady, mid-noughties days of cous cous orgies are long past. Really it’s just a sort of dry porridge that people happen to sometimes serve nice sauces with. 4/10

Katie says: Shit porridge. Inedible, passé and not really as versatile as it makes itself out to be. A rare instance where the less exotic substance of rice would have been preferred. And I don’t mean Basmati, wild or black rice but the bog-standard Tesco variety! That’s something. 2/10

Staple #3: Butter Beans

Lewis says: I prefer the term ‘Cannellini’. Butter beans makes them sound like something people in Middlesbrough might serve with fish fingers. And that, fellow gastronomes, can never be a good thing. That aside, I have a childhood aversion to over-sized pulses that disqualifies me from commenting. No Score.

Katie says: Tearing off a crisp outer shell I wrap my tongue around the succulent flesh of these gorgeous beans. I suck the paste out gently and smile to myself, fully satisfied. The sensual experience these balls* of pleasure induced was enough to make me want to write a review that I could later enter into the Bad Sex Awards. Viva Italia! 9/10

Staple #4: Puy Lentils

Lewis says: So we used to have these things called lentils right, and they were dry, and bland, and something that hippy mothers fed their kids. And then we thought, let’s make them black and name them after a French Département, and voila! Puy lentils were unleashed upon an unsuspecting world! Reasonably tasty and a nice accompaniment to either salad or liver. 7/10.

Katie says: Very much fulfils the requirement of ‘staple’. Bland, metallic (tasting), rusty (looking) and generally to be found in boring places, like bad restaurants or offices. Useful enough, but as the cliché of the vegetarian diet, they are too overused to be exotic and too tasteless to really get my pulses racing. 5/10

Lewis concludes: If you take Katie’s word for it, Italians really do, do it better. However, in my honest opinion we should forego all of this alternative staple bollocks and get back to the tried and trusted potato. Maybe it’s the Irish in me, but I would never replace spuds with any of these laughable alternatives. And when you consider that they were originally bred in Peru, for the Inca court, their foody cred goes through the roof. Viva la carbs!

Katie concludes: Will spend next week attempting to come up with a saucy version of “Beans, beans good for the heart” that does not feature flatulence.

*The Egyptians had a strong aversion to beans because of their apparent resemblance to genitalia. And, ‘bean’ also may have been a slang term for testicle in Ancient Greece. (The above tone of my review is therefore not entirely unfounded.)

Dates with Disaster

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TV dating shows have come in many guises since the birth of the genre in the ’70s. But from the days of Cilla Black having a lorra lorra fun on Blind Date to the frankly terrifying trend of reality shows like The Bachelor, the fundamental principle has remained the same: get people together and see if sparks fly. At any one time, there is some form of dating show on; it’s a seemingly endless genre respawning itself into oblivion on a channel whose name is some combination of the words Sky Entertainment Lifestyle Reality HD +1. 

It is imperative to remember that dates are about tricking the other party into thinking you are a nice, normal, well-rounded person. But increasingly, TV dating seems to be moving away from this attempt at self-sanitisation. Take Baggage (C4) a show essentially about shame. Three potential suitors reveal their embarrassing secrets, or ‘baggage’, and it is then up to the contestant to decide which they find the least off-putting. Humiliation is encouraged, although a good 40 per cent of the show seems to involve Gok Wan just repeating the word ‘baggage’.

Similarly in Sing Date (Sky Living), the audience revels in seeing singletons making fools of themselves. It’s pure car-crash telly, but this mortifying karaoke-based torture results in a surprising number of promising matches.

As well as humiliation, superficiality abounds in TV dating formats. In Take Me Out (Saturdays, ITV), a panel of 30 women can turn their light off (indicating they don’t want a date) just from one look at a contestant, while a nation muses over just how many more tedious jokes Paddy McGuinness can feasibly make. Dating in the Dark (Sky Living) attempts to eschew this shallowness by getting its hapless couples to meet each other in a pitch-black room. But wandering hands and sneaky smooches are usually regretted once the light-reveal allows potential matches to see one another. All too often compatible partners are dismissed on the basis that they’re now visible.

It is for that reason that I find Channel 4’s The Undateables, now in its second series, so refreshing. I have qualms with the title, but the show itself is touching, genuine, and sensitively presented. In each episode, we meet three new people, all of them living with a challenging condition that can make dating difficult. Instead of accentuating these people’s differences, The Undateables succeeds in showing how universal their experiences are.

Heterosexuality dominates, as does the prevailing idea that absolutely everybody in the world must either have a partner, or be looking for one. Dating on TV has a lot to answer for. It reinforces gender norms, and embraces vacuity. I am grateful that occasionally a show like The Undateables comes along to restore faith in humanity.