Thursday, May 8, 2025
Blog Page 485

MP delivers petition to block St John’s quarry

Felix O'Mahony
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MP delivers petition to block St John’s quarry

Matt Western, MP for Warwick and Leamington, has delivered a petition to Parliament in an attempt to prohibit the construction of a quarry on land owned by St John’s College.

The quarry is due to be located near Barford, a village which is home to around 1,500 residents in Warwickshire. If the quarry receives planning permission, it will occupy an area of around 80 hectares. The site is also near a local school.

Mr Western delivered the petition, titled “Protect the health of people who live near quarries,” on February 5th this year.

The petition highlights the increased health risks associated with living near a quarry. It points to the inhalation of silica dust, which can cause scarring in lungs and the development of silicosis, as the central health risk. The petition demands a nationwide buffer of 1 km around any region where people work, live, or study, inside of which quarrying would be prohibited.

Matt Western has also raised concerns about the quarry as part of a speech made in the House of Commons in late 2019, during which he criticised the conduct of St John’s College directly over their conduct in relation to the quarrying site.

Mr Western said: “there is also the role of the landowner, St John’s College, Oxford. I wrote to the president in the late spring and I was not particularly pleased by the response I received. The college is the wealthiest in Oxford—it does not need the money. Why has it put forward this site for development, when it will be so harmful to the lives of all the residents—the children—of Barford and Wasperton? There was a disingenuous claim that it was making the land available for housing development; it was not. This land will be opened up and dug up. Despite being high-grade agricultural land, it will become an eyesore, open for the extraction of sand and gravel. Even the student body at St John’s College passed a motion to stand against the project. There is widespread concern and dismay that a college with the wealth of St John’s should be allowing this to happen. It does not need to be conceding to sell the land to allow this mining. The national planning policy framework states that MPAs should make provision for a sand and gravel landbank of at least seven years of permitted reserves, but, as I have already said, there is sufficient landbank. It currently stands at eight years, but the numbers in the calculation of how many houses are required do not suggest that it is needed at all.”

A spokesperson for St John’s College said: “The College stated in a letter to Mr Western in June 2019 that St John’s College will retain full ownership of the land at Wasperton. Should the County Council allocate the site in its Minerals Plan, then the College would appoint a sand and gravel contractor which would be responsible for submitting a planning application. From the College’s perspective, the contractor will have to pass stringent processes to ensure that it complies with the highest environmental, health and safety and corporate social responsibility standards. Equally, of importance, at the end of the agreement, the contractor will be required to return the land in good order.

“The College had previously offered the land to meet the stated needs of Warwickshire County Council for housing through a planning application with partner Gladman. However, at the end of 2017 Gladman was informed by the County Council that this proposal was refused because of the site’s potential to provide minerals to meet local building needs.”

“We would urge Mr Western to speak to Warwickshire County Council, as Mineral Planning Authority for Warwickshire, which has a statutory duty to produce the county’s Minerals Plan which will set out the spatial strategy, allocated sites, vision, objects and policies guiding minerals development up to 2032. It will be the County Council that will decide, after taking professional advice, whether the supply of minerals is sufficient or not and which sites are preferred for mineral extraction based on a wide- ranging investigation of the environmental impact, safety and capacity of any particular site. We reiterate that as a registered charity and landowner, we have an obligation and responsibility to both the local community and county to respond to a request for sites, via our appointed agents, to be considered to provide sand and gravel for the district councils to build homes for those people needing homes in the future.

“It will be the responsibility of the County Council and potential new sand and gravel operator to address and answer any concerns that have been raised through future planning processes and public consultations.

“Therefore, we continue with Warwickshire County Council’s Minerals development framework timetable. Should our site be selected, we will be seeking full assurances through the planning application and public consultation process that all those concerns raised by Mr Western and those of the residents are fully addressed.”

A spokesperson from Warwickshire County Council said: “The Warwickshire Minerals Plan has been submitted to the Secretary of State and will be the subject of hearings on the 3rd and 4th June at a Public Examination in front of a Planning Inspector appointed by the Secretary of State. The sites and policies in the submitted plan, include the site at Barford amongst several others. After considering all the evidence it will be for the Planning Inspector to decide if the Plan is sound and legally compliant.”

Larry: The Real Bernie Bro

Havard Yttredal
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Larry: The Real Bernie Bro

“Bernard was always rebellious, he loved his independent street life. Some people ask me if it was a tough upbringing. The answer is no,” said Larry. 

He is the older brother of Bernie Sanders, the radical American presidential hopeful who is now head-to-head with Joe Biden in the fight for the Democratic nomination. 

On a crisp January morning, before the primaries had begun, I met Larry in his brick-red home in Oxford. In his terraced house bordering on the natural reserve The Kidneys, he told me about growing up in New York of the 40s and 50s.

Across the kitchen table, Larry affectionately described a little brother who already from childhood was independent and principled. 

“A certain kind of strength”

Their parents sometimes wanted to go visit relatives, which they both found quite boring. 

While Larry was obedient and acquiesced, perhaps because he was the first child, Larry theorises, Bernard was “much more rebellious about it”. On such occasions, “this very fast kid” wouldn’t hesitate to leap and showcase his running ability. His opponent? “My father was heavy. Built like me; probably a little bit fatter,” Larry said. 

“The sight of my father panting along in an impossible pursuit … Bernard could have kept going forever and outrun his father, but he didn’t have the nerve for that. Of course, when he did get in the car, he paid them back by getting sick,” he continued, smilingly shaking his head.

The independence and rebelliousness which characterised Bernard growing up is still very much present. 

“Most people have a certain amount of independence. But it takes a certain kind of strength to be able to persist when everybody says you’re crazy,” Larry said.

Radicals in Brooklyn

If Bernie wins the Democratic nomination, that would make him the most radical candidate the party has elected in decades. There are many reasons why he turned out that way. But although they’ve always been close, also politically, Larry is dismissive of the notion that he exerted much influence on Bernard beyond what an older brother always does. 

When asked about it, he laughingly replied: “Well, he says that I had. Usually, he puts it on page one of his books, then doesn’t mention me again.”

The story of Bernard and Larry begins with the Jewish immigration to New York in the 1880s and throughout the first world war. It was during this period their maternal grandparents left the antisemitism and pogroms of Russia and Poland for a better life in America. Their father, Eli Sanders, came to New York in 1921. Most of his family was later murdered during the Holocaust. 

Like many other Jewish immigrants at time, he settled down in the radical borough of Brooklyn, where Larry and Bernard would grow up together. The inhabitants’ political convictions ran from “the far left to the left of the Democratic party”. There were people in the Communist Party – bolsheviks, mensheviks– and people in the Socialist Party and the Jewish Bund. 

Larry spoke about why the Jewish immigrants’ views were so left-wing.

“They were recruited into the dirtiest most difficult jobs without any union protection without any government protection,” said Larry. 

To illustrate, he pointed to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, in which 146 people, mainly Jewish women, died. The owners had locked the doors to prevent them from stealing and taking unauthorised breaks.

“So that’s what they faced. But they also faced, for the first time, a system with some room for political operation. Some political freedom,” Larry said.

“And they made use of that.”

Profit and early death

The independent upbringing and the radical milieu they belonged to don’t provide the full explanation of the brothers’ political views. Larry believes their father’s early passing was particularly significant.

“My father died from the effects of smoking, long after the tobacco companies knew that they were killing people, and I think a deep sense that I have, and that Bernard has, is that the profit motive, which may work well sometimes, is also very desperately damaging,” he said, drawing parallels to today’s fossil fuel industry.

The two brothers also saw what happened when other objectives guided political decisions. Larry described their family as belonging to the “lower middle class” when the brothers were born. His father was a paint salesman and his mother was a housewife, which, as a side note, Larry thinks “probably was a pity for her”.

Although their apartment was overcrowded, it was, thanks to new tenement laws, “warm and well-kept”. It was also affordable, thanks to rent control.

Additionally, Larry and Bernard saw a “mini welfare state” emerging. This was, said Larry, one of “two great characteristics” of New York Democratic politics at the time. The other was corruption: “Buying and selling votes, stealing, pulling votes out of ballot boxes, things like that,” he said. 

Larry continued: “A lot of the welfare initiatives were damaged by corruption, of course. They had a very expensive hospital which, from what I gather, functioned badly because of corruption and people stealing money all the time. But one of the more creative elements, the City University of New York, which I went to, I went to Brooklyn College, was extremely good.” 

Bernard, too, went to Brooklyn College for a year. But over the period when he studied there, their mother was very ill. He and Larry were mostly in the hospital with her, and when she died towards the end of the year, Bernard just wanted to get away. “He couldn’t really bare to stay on,” Larry said.

Bernard becomes Bernie

Bernard left Brooklyn for the University of Chicago, which at that time was located in what Larry would describe as “a black slum”. He didn’t spend much time in classes there either.

Instead, he was busy politicking and was active in Young People’s Socialist League. But it was in the civil rights movement that his independence and clarity of conviction was put on the greatest display. A sit-in he organised, one of the first ones in the North, successfully pressured the university to desegregate its student accommodation.

Chicago marked the beginning of a long political career. He has been Mayor, and is today senator. Larry doesn’t rule out that some strategy might have been involved when his brother’s campaign posters at some point went from Bernard to Bernie. 

Larry, himself, immigrated to the United Kingdom in 1968. He’s now, at the age of 84, health spokesperson for the Green Party, which he joined when he found that Labour had become too right-wing under Tony Blair’s leadership. It’s from his home base in Oxford, where he has been a student, lecturer, and councilor, that he is now campaigning for Bernie.

Global Primaries

The millions of American Democrats who live abroad can choose whether they would like to vote in their home state or in the Global Primary organised by Democrats Abroad. I 2016, about 35 000 people opted for the latter.

“That’s hardly anybody. So we do advise people to vote in the Democrats Abroad primary because their vote counts more than in most states,” said Larry.

The Democratic Global Primary runs until Tuesday, March 10. Same-day voter registration is possible at www.democratsabroad.org, and voters may cast their ballot via email or at Jesus College on Saturday.

Since our interview, Larry has been on a two-week tour which started in London, continued north to Scotland and south again to Paris in an effort to amass support for his brother. He campaigned in the 2016 Global Primary, too, where Bernie wound up with 68,79 percent of the international vote. But domestically he didn’t do well enough, and at the Democratic National Convention four years ago, a choked-up Larry cast his vote for his brother in an election that was already lost. 

This time he wants it to be different. The policies, with public healthcare, a green new deal, increased minimum wage, and free tuition, Larry described as just “obvious and commonsensical to most people”. 

One thing he hopes, is that Bernie and Elizabeth Warren, who dropped out of the race on Thursday, soon will find a way to work together, increasing the chances of victory. “It was quite obviously with intention Bernard’s team leaked that they’d inquired whether it would be constitutionally permissible for the same person to be Vice President and a member of the cabinet,” Larry said, with clear reference to a potential role for Warren in a Sanders administration.

“What I see in Bernard is a unique candidate. He’s drenched in the class struggle idea, and at the same time he says that you should fight for other people as hard as you fight for yourself. It’s not common to see those two ideas put together like that,” he said.

Larry spoke of his brother’s anti-imperialism, his views on Israel and Palestine, and his conviction that, even though it is useful, winning the election is not the sufficient. “You need to have lots of people who feel that this is their struggle,” Larry continued.

He concluded: “I think putting all that together, he really is more significant, more different than I, and I think most people, gave him credit for. So his success would be even more startling, more good.”

Oxford MP Layla Moran enters Liberal Democrat leadership race

Rachel Cordery
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Oxford MP Layla Moran enters Liberal Democrat leadership race

Oxford West and Abingdon’s MP, Layla Moran, intends to stand for Leader of the Liberal Democrats, it was announced today.

Layla Moran was re-elected as MP for the marginal Oxford West and Abingdon in December.

Moran, an MP since the 2017 General Election, beat the Conservative PPC by almost 9,000 votes to maintain her seat.

The leadership contest follows the resignation of Jo Swinson, who was forced to resign as leader of the party after losing her Dunbartonshire East seat to the Scottish National Party.

Layla Moran said: “The message I’m hearing on the doorsteps is that the Liberal Democrats need to move on from the last decade, and put forward a positive vision for the future. This is what I intend to do as the leader of the party, and I’ll continue to listen to the ideas and opinions of both members and voters over the coming months.

“I’m finding that we have strong support and credibility at a local level, but we need to set out a clear and positive vision in order to win back support nationally.

 “It is clear that we face a battle for the heart and soul of our country. Instead of accepting the path the Conservatives are taking us on, imagine a United Kingdom that is more equal and compassionate, where politicians at all levels cooperate with each other on issues like tackling the climate crisis and electoral reform.

“I want to lead and empower the Liberal Democrats to fight for this future and to grow our support, so that we can make people’s lives better. I want the party to be in a position to win power within a generation, so that we can bring about the change our country so desperately needs.”

Self-isolated student diagnosed with Covid-19

Imogen Harter-Jones
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Self-isolated student diagnosed with Covid-19

Public Health England (PHE) has confirmed that a student at the University of Oxford has tested positive for coronavirus (Covid-19) after returning home from a specified country.

The university has said that “Our immediate concerns are for the affected student and their family, along with the health and wellbeing of our university staff, students and visitors. The student is being offered all necessary support.”

The university has established that the affected student did not attend any university or college events after they felt ill, when they subsequently self-isolated. 

PHE has advised that the risk to other students and staff is very low and that university and college activities can continue as normal. They have also advised that the university and colleges do not need to take any additional public health actions in the light of this specific case.

A university spokesperson has said “We have worked with PHE to make sure that anyone who was in contact with the student after they fell ill have been notified and that they are able to access support and information as needed. PHE do not consider individuals infectious until they develop symptoms.”

The university is providing support for students, staff, and the wider community.

The University is sharing further updates on the current infection at  www.ox.ac.uk/coronavirus-advice.

Picasso at the RA and the experience of solitude

Raphael Zyss
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Picasso at the RA and the experience of solitude

The curved, sick, and boney fingers are everywhere. The Frugal Meal (1904), one of Picasso’s early paper engravings, is immediately striking. A couple sit by one another, elbows resting on the square tablecloth, facing an empty plate and a quarter piece of tough stale bread that neither dare to look at. In the monochromatic piece, everything becomes a matter of contrast. Tension is built through a subtle kaleidoscope of impressions, the last of which is that of the couple drifting apart from one another. As such the dramatic use of black and white takes a multi-layered meaning and comes to play with our very own contrasting impressions. Whilst an initial gaze shows love and unity, a longer gaze quickly reveals disunion, mimicking what French author Andre Gide called the “de-crystallization of love”. The emphasis on movement, the waves of creases in the tablecloth, the filled and empty glasses, the shaded male lover and exaggeratedly bright woman all seems to suggest a rat race to the end of love. The depiction of the couple’s starving fingers comes to magnify the enduring impression of misery and growing resentment, copied onto multiple places, like a leitmotiv shape of the engraving.

 “You little prick, we didn’t bring you the RA to a play Angry Birds” shouts a man to his son before snapping the phone out of his hands. The “sandal and socks” German tourist cracks a dirty joke. I am forced out of the piece. Going to the museum sometimes takes us deep into the experience of solitude, especially when confronted with such magnanimous genius as that of Picasso and such frivolity as that of a couple violently making out by the “Painter as six years old” drawing. The Spaniard, in the space of a rectangle, sometimes a square or a napkin (see later in the exhibition) creates a dense expression of humanity. The “Blue period” is emotionally pervasive, the shades of a single colour resonate like death and love in two corners of a same piece.  Yet we are but walking entities, with limited experience and when we face such diverse and explosive demonstration of what human experience can be, we are forced into our little shell of lonely self. Maybe that’s the reason why we think so much about the trivial stuff when wandering around the fancy corridors of the RA, Have I fed the cat, when next will I be able to down ten pints an hour with the boys, is youth long gone already? I know that soon enough my failing liver will become less trivial than Picasso’s “Crystal” and “Rose period”. But right now, regardless whether trivial or high, my mind is trying its best to take me away from the real stuff.

The real stuff is the jarring confrontation of the self with the intimate universe of another. Almost never in life do we get to contemplate for as long as we would like, the intricacies, the fantasies, the real intimacy of another: the alter ego human. Picasso is a master at its craft because he expresses so articulately the shapeless complexity of desire, fear and all that constitutes us. We are thus forced into a careful and meticulous inspection of the self.

The piece Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe is no better example, inspired by Manet’s historic oil painting which propelled the Impressionist movement. The 27th February 1960 green-themed version is strangely captivating.  In Manet’s original piece, the art of detailed observation is cultivated in the indecisive looks of the subjects, the shy nudity and the subtle variations of green. From dark to light we imagine a secret path to sensuality and pleasure, an esoteric recipe of the senses. If Manet is revolutionary in how he exposes nudity, and stands for his style despite the stifling conformity of his time, Picasso is ground-breaking in the way he reinvents shapes and creates an instinctive emotional language with the observers.

In the Confucian tradition, only a master, a sage, can establish new rituals once he has fully internalised and acquired the ways of the ancients. Only then can he come to truly invent new forms for the expression of essential principles. There is a sense of that in Dejeuner sur l’herbe and the succession of paintings which chronologically precedes it in the exhibition. The master has come to the height of his art through a progressive internalisation of the ways of the past and through intimate experimentation with colours and ideas, but here he establishes a rupture. He negates any sort of accepted conventions but creates something truly meaningful; an enlightened form of human expression. The sense of childishness evokes something universal. The crude and raw nudity brings sensuality to its most sober and fundamental level.

Wandering around further we stumble across yet another form of solitude. That which is necessary in the process of artistic creation, fostering its most essential component: self-cultivation. Picasso was a regular of Gertrude Stein’s Salon and a prominent figure in mundane continental life. Less known, however, are his long periods of retreat in the Spanish countryside and the solitary life he so often led. This exhibition reveals so brilliantly the long inner path that the acquiring of such mastership must have required. It is an exhibition on the perpetual coming of age and constant transformation of a true artist. The initial daunting solitude felt at facing such incredible genius morphs into a model for approaching life; one of discipline, rigor, and belief.

Oxford professor disinvited from conference

Ellen Pasternack
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Oxford professor disinvited from conference

Selina Todd, who teaches modern history St Hilda’s college, had her invitation rescinded from a feminist conference where she was due to speak on Saturday 29th February.

The event, which took place at Exeter College as part of Oxford International Women’s Festival, marks 50 years since the first Women’s Liberation meeting was held at Ruskin College, Oxford. Todd, whose work specialises in the history of feminism and class relations in Britain, had helped to organise the event and was due to give a brief introductory address.

The 1970 Women’s Liberation meeting is regarded as an important landmark in feminist history, which kickstarted the second wave of feminism. 

Selina Todd has attracted controversy for her involvement with Woman’s Place UK (WPUK), an organisation set up in 2017 to highlight women’s concerns about proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act. These changes would make any person’s legally recognised sex a matter of self-declaration, and some feminists are concerned that this would undermine legal protections based on sex as a protected characteristic.

However, trans rights organisations as well as many others regard this concern as transphobic and WPUK as a transphobic group.

The event organisers did not respond to our request for comment.

In a statement for Cherwell, Todd said “ I am shocked to have been no-platformed by this event, organised by Oxford International Women’s Festival and hosted at Exeter College. I was asked to participate in October 2019, and I explained to the organisers that some trans activists may object to my being there. In fact, trans activists had already tried to shut the conference down because they claimed second-wave feminism was inherently trans-exclusionary.”

“However, the organisers decided that as a historian of feminism and working-class women, they would like to invite me, and were open to many different points of view being expressed at their event. I was delighted. I am deeply interested in the history of the WLM [Women’s Liberation Movement]— my first academic article focused on it— and my parents met at Ruskin shortly before the first conference was held there.” 

“Between October 2019 and February 2020 I helped the organisers to get support from Oxford History Faculty and to find media contacts. I was stunned to receive a phone call at 6pm on the evening before the conference telling me that I had been no-platformed because of pressure from trans activists and Feminist Fightback.” 

“I refute the allegation that I am transphobic.”  

The student advocacy group Trans Action Oxford told Cherwell: “Trans Action Oxford had no role in the decision to disinvite Selina Todd, and did not call for it. Our stance on giving platforms to bigots like Todd is clear: at a time when trans people are under vicious attack in the press, it is dangerous and irresponsible. Todd is a transphobe, and she is regularly given a platform by the press to spread her hatred. To claim she is being ‘silenced’ is laughable, and we call for trans voices to be uplifted and our oppression highlighted in place of her hatred.”

Neither Oxford International Women’s Festival nor the conference appears to have issued any public statement on Todd’s disinvitation, and she is still listed as a speaker on the programme published online. A photograph circulated online seems to show a programme used at the event with Todd’s name covered by tape.

In footage of the event posted anonymously on YouTube, one of the event organisers is seen explaining that they were forced to disinvite Selina Todd due to threats from other speakers to pull out if she was involved.

Lola Olufemi, a feminist writer, had posted on Twitter on the previous afternoon that she was withdrawing from the conference “because of their clear links with Woman’s Place UK […] They have no place in my vision or understanding of the political possibilities that feminism offers us.” A statement from Olufemi was read at the event, which said that she had withdrawn because “the organisers had clearly not done enough to investigate speakers’ links to Woman’s Place UK— a clearly transphobic organisation— or to ensure that members of this group would not be in attendance.”

In this same footage, audience members including prominent feminist Julie Bindel are seen questioning the decision to de-platform Selina Todd, and asking for a show of hands to gauge support for her.

The event organisers explain themselves first by arguing that Selina Todd’s talk wasn’t important anyway, and then saying that they had proposed a “compromise”: Todd was “welcome” to attend the event as an audience member but not to give her scheduled address.

After around fifteen minutes of heckling from the audience, one of the event organisers ends up saying that she would invite Todd back to the conference, except that “I don’t have her phone number.”

Prior to this, the organisers are seen reading out a statement from John Watts, Chair of the History Faculty Board, in response to Todd’s disinvitation. He said: “We cannot accept the exclusion of our respected colleague Selina Todd from speaking at this event. As an academic department we simply cannot accept the no platforming of people who hold and express lawful views.”

Samira Ahmed, the presenter who recently won a pay discrimination case against the BBC, also reportedly criticised the decision to no-platform Todd during her scheduled talk at the same event.

Cherwell has previously reported on remarks made by Todd that were criticised for being transphobic. She has previously retweeted a parody account called ‘British Gay Eugenics’, which claims that young people are being pushed towards transgender identities as an alternative to being gay or gender non-conforming. She retweeted a tweet from the account which joked: “Please join our MASSIVE thanks to @stonewalluk, @ruth_hunt, Gendered Intelligence, & Mermaids UK for helping #transawaythegay. Parents, there is an alternative to having an embarrassing gay son or lesbian daughter! All it takes is timely intervention!”

In another tweet, referencing a trans man who said he was happy after transitioning, Todd wrote: “Here are lots of success stories as we #transawaythegay. Emmett wasn’t allowed to be a lesbian and had to wear skirts and makeup. But when he realised he was supposed to be a boy and started taking testosterone, his church accepted him. All better now!”

Outlining her perspective on trans rights, Todd wrote on her website: “As a gender critical feminist, I have seen my views misrepresented on social media and elsewhere. So here, I explain my views. By ‘gender critical’, I mean that I believe that men and women are defined by their sex, not by culturally constructed gender norms. You can’t change sex – biologically, that is impossible.”

“I believe that UK law should remain as it is, with sex a protected characteristic under the 2010 Equality Act, against the claim of some trans activists that people should be able to define themselves as men or as women simply by describing themselves as such.” 

“The notion that people can ‘feel’ like a woman or like a man is highly socially conservative, implying as it does that being a woman rests on dressing or behaving in a ‘feminine’ way. Being a woman rests both on certain biological facts and on the experience of living in the world as a woman, from birth, an experience that is shaped by particular kinds of oppressions. A movement that claims to be advocating a liberating kind of ‘fluidity’ is in fact reinforcing and promoting highly conservative gendered stereotypes.”

“The claim that some people ‘naturally’ feel feminine is ahistorical, since it overlooks that what is understood as ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ has changed over time.”

In January this year, Cherwell and other news outlets reported that the University had issued Selina Todd with security personnel at her lectures, after she received a tip off from two students that threats had been made against her. 

The protection accorded to Todd comes after attacks on other feminists who oppose the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act. Julie Bindel was attacked by a protestor after giving a talk on violence against women at the University of Edinburgh last year. 

Bindel told The Independent in June that the attacker had screamed at her “saying that I was scum, I was a c***, I was filth,” before attempting “to punch me in the face but was dragged away by security.”

In December 2018, Rosa Freedman, a law professor at the University of Reading, said that she had received phone calls making death and rape threats and had urine poured under the door of her office, in retaliation for her public views on gender issues.

A spokesperson for Exeter College wrote in a statement on Saturday “In May 2019, Exeter College, Oxford, agreed to provide the venue for the Women’s Liberation at Fifty conference, in enthusiastic celebration of all that the feminist movement stands for, and in recognition of the symbolic importance of the former Ruskin College site, which now houses Exeter College Cohen Quad. Exeter College has played no role at any stage in the taking of decisions about the programme or its speakers.”

“Exeter College is committed to the open and respectful discussion of ideas and to providing a supportive and inclusive environment in which the rights and dignity of all its staff and students are respected and valued, and in which people can work and study, without fear of discrimination or harassment.”

C’est la Brie: why we love cheesy music

Sasha Mills
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C’est la Brie: why we love cheesy music

Few would care to admit that the dated tunes of ‘cheese’ make up a significant portion of our listening habits, and yet music once seen as a ‘guilty pleasure’ has reached recognition as its own genre- arguably surpassing many other categories in terms of its enduring popularity and recognisability. Areas dedicated to cheese music can be found in student clubs throughout Britain, with both Bridge Thursdays and Park End in Oxford dedicating entire floors to the genre, and clubs such as Vinyl in Cambridge playing nothing but cheese every night it’s open. Spotify playlists collecting cheesy music have amassed hundreds of thousands of followers, such as: Songs that Never Fail to Make White People Turnt (104, 705 followers) and Spotify’s own Cheesy Hits! (825, 954 followers). I’ve somehow managed to end up with three separate cheese playlists in my own account (collecting 90’s cheese, 00’s cheese and general cheese respectively). The genre has even produced distinct offshoots, such as Indie Cheese, a category that has seen hits like The Bullingdon Club’s ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’ event and an unshakeable place at any house party.

Cheese at times seems difficult to define, but certain themes can be seen in any playlist. Pop seems to be the main genre, with artists like Britney Spears and S Club 7 being regular fixtures, and boy bands are a constant hit, such as One Direction, McFly and Busted. R&B and Hip Hop have also found their place in cheese, with songs like Waterfalls and Kanye West’s Gold Digger joining the category. The genre seems to evade clear boundaries, with wildly contrasting music finding a union within it, but common features include catchy lyrics that can easily be sung along to (albeit with varying levels of quality), a strong beat to dance to, and widespread recognisability. Cheese music is also unashamedly uncool – if your Dad likes it, it’s probably cheese. The genre almost refuses to be taken seriously, avoiding critical acclaim and awards in favour of its status as a staple at every wedding reception and New Year’s Eve party.  

The popularity of The Eurovision Song Contest only provides further evidence for our love of the tacky, cheesy, and just plain odd in music. Acts in the contest can sometimes feel like a fever dream, like Russia’s singing and dancing babushkas (2012) and the constant clusterf*ck of fire, flashing lights, and misplaced props that make up almost every performance. Despite the declining popularity of traditional television as streaming services take over, the Eurovision song contest has consistently maintained high viewing figures in the UK, drawing in 7.7 million UK viewers in 2019, 11.6% more than the 6.9 million that watched it in 2018. Viewing parties for the contest have become an almost regular fixture in many groups, with The Telegraph even having produced a list of steps to hold “the ultimate Eurovision party”. Eurovision alumni ABBA are practically a case study for the endurance of cheese, having seen meteoric stardom and two wildly popular feature films built entirely on their songs, despite their unashamedly poppy music and spangled lycra costumes.

So why has music often condemned as tasteless and tacky been able to remain at the heart of pop culture? A wider epidemic of cultural nostalgia could be to blame, with film photography also seeing a resurgence in recent years, and vintage garms becoming the norm. Indeed, few songs post-2010 make it onto Spotify’s Cheesy Hits! playlist, and those that do tend to have a distinctly nostalgic feel, showing a clear link between songs belonging to decades past and the genre. There’s also an argument to be made for the carefree feeling that comes with cheese. In an era characterised by ongoing global conflicts, growing political extremism, and the looming threat of climate change, cheese music provides an escape to times that seem easier, even if they really weren’t. It is easy to feel divided from your peers in a time like this, but the sing-along, inclusive nature of ‘bad’ music brings people together. There’s something to be said for taking ourselves less seriously, and embracing that which makes music fun, rather than allowing the constant necessity to appear cool to overtake us. 

Where Things Turn Out Different

Kavya Deshpande
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Where Things Turn Out Different

Bombay stands upright at the edge of the Arabian Sea as if it is facing a challenge. In a way, it is: it proved that it could conquer water in the mid-nineteenth century, when a mass land-reclamation project by the East India Company combined its seven islands by brute force. Today, the time of embankments buckling under floods, of rubble unceremoniously emptied into the shallows, has passed, and city and sea have arrived at something of a compromise. Bombay no longer aspires to reach further into the water. The two now meet like tired combatants who have decided to spare each other dignity. The buildings on the coast are grand and dry, and the Arabian Sea remains, to the eye, endless. 

Bombay is an Anglicisation of the Marathi word Mumbai. For this reason, it has become a source of awkwardness. In 1995, the city’s name was officially reverted to its indigenous form after a campaign by the Shiv Sena, a far-right political party that is more blood-and-soil than decolonisation-discourse. Mumbai now exists on maps, in news reports, and on the lips of cautious university students. Bombay, however, remains alive and coiled at the centre of the colloquial. It is in personal histories and half-memories. It is in the response a taxi driver gave me when I asked him why he chose to leave his hometown for this place: “Bombay is Bombay, Miss. Things turn out different here.”    

Bombay’s architecture is evidence of the city’s casual relationship with its own cultural ambiguity. The centrepieces were done in Indo-Saracenic, a style designed to belie its late-nineteenth-century beginnings, when imperial architects fell in love with bygone Mughal palaces preserved only in drawings made a hundred years prior. Those hasty sketches transformed into arched and minaretted structures that now exude faded splendour across South Bombay, the grandest of which is the Taj Mahal Hotel. My dad once took me there for breakfast. I ordered a falooda, a creamy dessert drowned in rose syrup, so pretty that I forced myself to drink it slowly.In 2008, the restaurant where I tended to my falooda was strafed. 167 people were murdered in the hotel when terrorists sieged it for three days, one of many synchronised attacks on the city. My family watched the live news coverage in Hong Kong, where we were living by this time.People trapped inside the Taj phoned the news stations and described how they were being hunted in softly-lit corridors, smoke poured from the hotel’s destroyed dome. When we returned to Bombay for the summer holidays in 2011, the city was nearing the end of its recovery. Everybody spoke about what had happened as if it were a fever dream, brief and grotesque but something that was firmly assigned to the past. I found the descent of normality disorienting. I had not been here during the nightmare.

Marine Drive is a coastal road that represents the last front of the urban planners’ incursion into the sea. It is also the site of a long stretch of art deco. The sudden presence of European architecture could easily be misread as a civilising device, an attempt by the British Raj to stain the landscape with colonial imagery. The truth, however, is somewhat gentler. Art deco began in post-war France, where Cubist, Classical, Fauvist, and Ukiyo-e aesthetics were hybridised to create a new shell for living, one that was stubbornly modern. Between 1930 and 1950, Indian architects were called to populate the edge of the newly-constructed coastline, and to do so they plundered the frontier of their discipline. What arose was an uncoordinated assemblage of curved concrete and bright accents, spaces that somewhere else might have demanded to be looked at but here were simply lived in. The design of insurance offices, residential blocks, jazz clubs and cinemas received the care and attention usually afforded to a monument. All emerged from a delight taken in beauty and structure, and for decades now all have had their strange geometries whipped and rusted by winds that come from deep within the Indian Ocean. At the centre of Marine Drive is the art deco building I know best. It is called the Taraporewala Aquarium and it is gloriously eccentric, its facade saturated with cut-out colours and huge paintings of whales. It was here that I first saw a clownfish, an event of great importance at the time because it occurred a few days after watching Finding Nemo in the cinema. 

I have so far positioned Bombay as a shadow city, one that is willed into existence by texture and subtext. It is violence and brine, magpie architecture and the quality of light that sweeps over the Arabian Sea every evening, it is an inconceivable number of people believing in tandem that things turn out different here. But Bombay is also 2004. Bombay is the last full year I spent living in it. When you emigrate as a child, you lose not just the place you come from but all the people that place could have allowed you to become. You can no longer wear the city like you used to. It outgrows you. Familiar spaces disappear and those that persist develop new histories. Memory turns brittle, leaving you with images of broken clarity. Had I not had access to research and photographs, these would be all I have left of Bombay. The only thing I can attest to with absolute certainty is that there is an aquarium on the coast that holds a school of clownfish, and I once watched them with my face pressed against the glass. 

This House Believes Sex is Good…But Success is Better

Debate
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This House Believes Sex is Good…But Success is Better

Proposition – David Tritsch

In a place where much of our lives seem to revolve around collection marks, internship applications, and the praise of cynical academics, some of us have also had our sexual awakening. Be it a messy post-crew date pull in Park End, or a date night with your long-term significant other, could anything even come close to beating sex? I would argue that success is, in fact, better than sex. Contrary to sex, success is multi-dimensional, making it much more sustainable as a source of long-term gratification.

Firstly, let us distinguish between how much we crave sex and how much we actually enjoy it. From a biological perspective, it is essential that we desire sex, so much so that anthropologists mention it together with food and shelter as a human necessity. That being said, we seem to enjoy sex much less than we crave it. Once we get what we want, our desire for it decreases rapidly. A 2017 study found that couples who have sex more than once a week did not report being any happier. So it looks like sex is a desire that we crave to fulfill, much rather than being a source of ever-increasing pleasure. What does success mean to you? Ask twenty people and you are likely to get twenty different answers. Yes, it could be that Goldman Sachs Internship, but for some, it might be dealing with their mental health, being a good friend, or just finding an extra onion ring in your chips. Success is multi-dimensional, meaning that while we succeed or fail at different things, most of us should not see themselves as either completely successful or as complete failures. This is an attitude that does not come naturally but needs to embraced by appreciating our big and little successes. Because this attitude to success is so multi-faceted, it is much more sustainable than our sexual cravings as a source of long-term pleasure. Now, that is not to say that sex has to be boring and repetitive. Same-sex or mixed-sex, threesomes, foursomes, SM and pillow talk, there are many ways we can add variation to our sex lives. For some of us, a fulfilled sex life may even be one facet of success. Understanding your body and how to enjoy yourself can be amazing and will not diminish your excitement when you find out that you have passed this year’s exams.

Sexless success or sex without success? While many of us will have resonated with either of these at some point in time, it is not what this debate is about. We crave sex and a life without it would be miserable. That being said, there are limits to how happy sex can make us. But if we embrace the idea that that success is multi-faceted, we can attain long-lasting satisfaction by succeeding at the big and little things in life.

Opposition – Anonymous

As Oscar Wilde once said, “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” We are animals. We might try to convince ourselves otherwise, but all we are driven to in life is procreation and then, eventually, death. What separates us from the birds and bees is that sexuality dictates everything we doable in the meantime. The brain is the human’s most important sexual organ, though many men would benefit from considering the clitoris a contender. It draws us irrationally to the ugly, ushers us down bizarre pornographic rabbit-holes and beguiles us into supplanting human touch with strings of Thursday night shags. Conversely, our niggling libidos push and pull us in our daily lives too. Why else would we aspire to fame and riches if not to impress potential mates?

Sex seemingly affirms to us our social importance, as anyone who’s slept with a hack knows. It assures us we’re admired and desirable to of our peers. Nothing better explains Oxlove’s cult following. For the distress of the incel, being shag-able is the climax of social acclaim. At our most desperate, we’d do anything to get it, and it can do many things for us in return. The one-off encounter is the world’s oldest bartering chip. Sex is shorthand for so much: adoration, achievement, ability. When powerful men through history have idolised harems, it’s no little wonder that so many view sex in terms of conquest. Conversely, powerful women have always been subject to speculation over their sexual ‘misdeeds’. For sure, sexual favours are exchangeable for arbitrary ends, but not every high-achiever sleeps with her boss. The assumption this must be the case demonstrates how sex is often conceptualized as the social climber’s icepick. In one case, power affords sex; in the other, sex seemingly affords power. There’s often little point in even attempting separating the two.

What do we mean by success, anyway? Is there anything we do that isn’t implicitly sexual? Admittedly, sex is never really had for the sake of sex alone. The bedroom is an adult’s playground, not the exclusive domain of the kinky. We use it to hash out the basic dynamics of our romantic relationships, feeling empowered by pleasuring others and experiencing imitations of real-world reverence by being pleasured ourselves. Paradoxically, sex is also a social leveler. Sharing the experience of nudity with another person is something entirely removed from the economic conditions usually surrounding success. As linked as sexuality is to the world outside the boudoir, sexual intimacy is also an escape from it. Rarely do we get opportunities to be fully honest and vulnerable with another, even if only physically. Oscar Wilde probably didn’t claim that the best things in life come for free, but he may as well have done – sex lends meaning to all our successes, regardless of how we otherwise might define them.

There’s Lots Left to do in Oxford’s Battle with Sexism

Helena Murphy
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There’s Lots Left to do in Oxford’s Battle with Sexism

This Sunday it is International Women’s Day. Around the world people will be marking the occasion with marches and parties in support of women’s rights and gender equality. Here in Oxford, several colleges are celebrating the day with special lectures, dinners, and other events.

Oxford has come a long way in correcting its sexist history. This year St John’s and Christ Church are joining the ranks of the likes of Queen’s, New, and Balliol in celebrating 40 years since starting to admit women. Plus, for the past four admissions cycles, the female proportion of UK-domiciled students at the university has risen each year, and since 2017, Oxford has offered more undergraduate places to women than it has to men. The university looks more equal than it ever has before. But don’t mistake these improvements to mean that Oxford has done all that it needs to do.

If Oxford’s racial and social diversity remains poor it can’t claim to have resolved its issues of sexism. It’s great that more than half of the undergraduate student body are women, but if those women are primarily white and of an upper-social class background then all Oxford has achieved is making itself accessible to only a tiny subset of the female population.

Beyond its evident lack of student diversity, Oxford also fails to offer the same opportunities to female academic staff as it does to male. In July 2019, the university’s statistics on its staff demographic revealed that 80% of the university’s professors are men, as are 70% of its readers and associate professors.

Oxford may like to think of itself as progressive and always improving but its professional academic body suggests quite the opposite. What Oxford’s staff statistics prove is that the glass ceiling hasn’t disappeared for female academics, it has just been raised higher.

Opportunities for women in academia are simply not as bountiful as they are for men. As a woman, you may have greater opportunities while you’re an undergraduate student than those who came before you did, but ultimately if your plan is to pursue a career in academia you’re going to face serious obstacles further down the line. It will likely be, in no small way, because of your gender.

Many of us would like to think that the fight concerning women’s equality in society is a fight only for other people in other countries where women face greater oppression in their daily lives. It is true that in the UK women are fortunate enough to be afforded rights that many other women are not as lucky to have. We can access contraception. By the end of March of this year abortions will be legal throughout the UK. Education is freely available to all up until university. While issues like child marriage, female slavery, and FGM do exist in the UK, for many of us they feel like a distant reality existing only in developing countries.

International Women’s Day is not only a chance to celebrate all that women have achieved and how much has been accomplished in the fight for equality, but it also serves as a reminder. A reminder that Oxford still has more to do, more to fight for. Regardless of how much Oxford has improved over the years it is far from being an equal opportunities university. For as long as it boasts a primarily male academic staff and embodies a lack of racial and social diversity, the fight for equality applies to Oxford as well. International Women’s Day isn’t for someone else, someplace else, it’s for Oxford too.

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