qmessenger 51
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Issue 51 of Qmessenger, the student newspaper of Queen Mary University of LondonTRANSCRIPT
Monday January 9 2012 Issue 51
We interview Richard Garriott, on his many eclectic interests.
Focus on Page 4
Man of Many Worlds
The Newspaper of Queen Mary Students’ Union
Was the Arab Spring Irrelevant?
Job Centres fail 80% of young peopleQM research reveals that only 20% of young people find the service useful»
Young people in search of work are being failed by government-run job centres, according to a Queen Mary Olympics survey.
The research by the Geogra-phy department found that most young people looking for work did not find Job Centre Plus or online job applications to be useful.
The government’s job centre service had not been used at all by 60% of the 160 young people who were interviewed for the survey, with half of those who had used the service saying it had not been useful to them.
Queen Mary’s borough, Tower Hamlets, is home to five govern-ment-run job centres in all, with over 11,000 people currently de-scribed as unemployed.
Though existing official forms of job-seeking seemed to be fail-ing young people, the research did show general optimism about the locally-focused recruitment policy being used for the Olympic Games.
London Citizens, a communi-ty organising group, has been in-volved in organising recruitment days with the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG), that are focused to-wards young people in Olympic
boroughs, and have received over-whelmingly positive feedback.
Professor Jane Wills said that she believes the personalised, community based recruitment style being used by London Cit-izens is more effective at making sure that jobs are found for local young people.
“This research shows just how vital it is that community groups such as London Citizens are em-powered to broker employment, rather than just leaving it up to contractors who may not hire lo-cally.”
“The success of recent Olympic recruitment events highlights the importance of taking local jobs straight to local people, and the value of promoting these events to young people through their schools and colleges. Our students have shown that young people are keen to be a part of the Olympic ex-perience and that they believe the work they do at the Games will be hugely important in helping them find work in the future.”
The surveys, which were car-ried out at recruitment centres for the London 2012 Olympic Games, also found that while young people were worried about long-term em-ployment many were keen to capi-talise on the opportunities provid-ed by the Olympics.
Queen Mary takes the lead in mayoral campaignManifesto puts forward policy demands to the candidates in the 2012 London mayoral race»
Kaamil Ahmed
Dominic Bell, Vice President Stu-dent Activities at Queen Mary Stu-dents’ Union (QMSU), has tak-en a lead role in the campaign to put student issues at the heart of this year’s London mayoral race.
The campaign, which kicked off at the beginning of the academic
year after a speech by Emilie Tap-ping, the outgoing vice president academic affairs at King’s Students’ Union, inspired planning meetings at LSE, King’s, UCA and QM. After months of work, planning, and co-ordination between Students’ Un-ions across the capital, the plan is nearly coming to fruition. It’s of-ficial launch is still to be decided, but it is expected to be announced
by the end of January 2012.Bell has taken the role of
drafting the manifesto upon himself, as well as organis-ing meetings and delegating tasks to other involved unions.
The manifesto was previewed at the last QMSU Student Council meeting in draft form. The mani-festo will put forward policies for each of the four areas which fall un-
der the jurisdiction of the Greater London Authority: housing, crime, transport and employment, all of which have a significant impact on the lives of students. The spe-cific policy proposals are still be-ing formulated and will likely not be made public until the official launch of the manifesto. Howev-er, it is thought that the document will contain proposals for creating
a charter governing the relation-ships between students and land-lords, a re-evaluation of the role of Prevent within the police force, having the student discount on TfL travel extended to Pay As You Go Oyster cards, and a fair wage for interns, among other proposals.
“It can change the lives of stu-dents considerably if it works”
» Continued on page 2
Chris Smith
Most important event of 2012, or a change of figureheads? Page 5
Research by Queen Mary shows that young people in the local area feel let down by these government run centres. Image courtesy of GeoBlogs (via Flickr cc)
QMESSENGER MONDAY JANUARY 9 2012
News
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The Cloud How you fit into the news.
Images by:LHC by Image Editor (Flickr)Iranian Flag by Steve Connor (Flickr)Queen Elizabeth by Michael Gwyther-Jones (Flickr)
By Ariane Osman
Editorial Team:• Executive Editor - Sam [email protected]• Managing Editor - Caz Parra [email protected]• Sub-Editors - Robert Pritchard, Maria Sowter and Lauren [email protected]• News Editors - Rosie Reynolds, Kaamil Ahmed and Ariane [email protected]• Comment Editors - Kashmira Gander and Stephanie [email protected]• Satire Editors - Ben Richardson and Aaron [email protected]• Sports and Societies Editors - Shafi Musaddique, Hollie Carter and Ashley [email protected]• Photography Editors - Keeren Flora and Bethia [email protected]
QMessenger is printed at Mortons of Horncastle Ltd, Media Centre, Morton Way, Horncastle, Lincolnshire, LN9 6JR. Tel: 01507 523 456. Each issue has a print run of 1,000 and costs £445 to print and deliver.
Established in 2008, QMessenger is the free week-ly newspaper of Queen Mary Students’ Union. We are proud of our editorial independence and endeavour to always hold the College, Union and external bodies to account and to provide the best news and analysis to the students of Queen Mary, University of London.
QMessenger is created entirely by students and the publication retains all copyright of design, text, pho-tographs and graphics, along with the individual con-tributor.
Any views expressed in QMessenger section are those of the individual writer and do not necessarily reflect those of the paper, the editorial board, Queen Mary Students’ Union or Queen Mary, University of London.
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60 Arab League observers sent to Syria have found that gunfire and snipers are still a threat to the safety of protestors in the country.
Two more missiles have been successfully test fired by the Iranian govern-ment, ending their 10-day exercise near the Strait of Hormuz.
A new particle called Chi_b (3P) has been discovered by CERN’s Large Hadron Col-lider (LHC) which will ena-ble scientists to examine the forces that hold matter to-gether.
A 15-year-old Afghan girl was rescued after suffer-ing 6 months of imprison-ment and torture by her in-laws for refusing to become a prostitute.
Queen Mary researchers have found that new forms of torture such as rape, bes-tiality and witnessing vio-lent acts are leaving serious psychological scars onvictims.
In his New Year mes-sage, Prime Minis-ter David Camer-on said that he would use the Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee to “up the strength” of Britain in 2012.
Two researchers who helped to create the ma-terial graphene, which is sheet of graphite a sin-gle particle thick, have re-ceived a knighthood.
dents if it works,” Bell explians, “it really depends how much the four or five lead unions put in over the next couple of months. We can make this something re-ally big or it can disappear. It’s going to need support from a lot of people, people are go-ing to have to turn out for this.”
With 139,000 students regis-tered at the University of Lon-don alone, the student vote has the potential to sway the elec-tion. However, this is depend-ent upon students both register-ing to vote and then turning out to the ballot box on the day itself.
Signs that the candidates run-ning in the London mayoral elec-tion will begin to ramp up their campaigns have already begun
London Student Manifesto demands that candidates take notice» continued from page 1
A three horse race: Ken Livingstone and Brian Paddick (Lib Dems) are the most serious challengers to Boris Johnson’s position as Mayor of
London. Images courtesy
of Liberal Democrats, Kate Grey and soulmate02
(via Flickrcc).
to surface, with Ken Livingstone launching a leaflet drive last week, which attacked Boris Johnson’s TFL policy, and in particular ris-ing tube fares in the new year.
This tactic demonstrates that students’ concerns, expected to be expressed in the manifesto, over the price of London travel, are re-flected in the general electorate.
The election will be held on May 3rd 2012, and negotations are cur-rently underway between Dom-inic Bell and Tower Ham-lets council, for the establish-ment of poll-ing booths on Queen M a r y campus.
QMESSENGER MONDAY JANUARY 9 2012
News
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Hannah Stuart, co-author of Islam on Campus: A Survey of UK Stu-dent Opinions and Islamist Terror-ism: The British Connections, has called for stricter regulations on ex-ternal speakers to prevent the Stu-dents’ Union facilitating hate speech and spreading Islamist extremism.
Stuart presented her evidence to the Home Affairs Committee’s in-quiry into the roots of violent radical-isation, but many critics have voiced concerns over Stuart’s suggestions, claiming they do more harm than good.
Out of 138 cases of individuals con-victed of Islamic extremism, 30 per-cent “had at some point attended university or a higher education in-stitute.” While the report doesn’t sug-gest that this correlation implies cau-sation, Stuart argues that “schools and universities were definitely in-volved in that linking-up of individ-uals.”
Second year student Nisha Bargo-ta feels “uneasy” with Stewards evi-dence to the enquiry. She says: “while it’s important that students feel com-fortable on campus, I feel like Stew-ard’s suggestion promotes the com-plete opposite.”
Nabil Ahmed, president of the
Federation of Student Islamic So-cieties dismisses Stuart’s argument that there is a link between radicali-sation and university attendance, he said: ““It’s upsetting and hurtful for Muslim students to be caricatured as potential extremists, potential radi-cals, when none of this is applicable to 99.9 per cent of not just Muslim students, but all students.”
Students’ Unions across the coun-try struggle with providing campus-es with an open platform for debates, without being accused of compromis-ing the safety and wellbeing of their students. The NUS has a no plat-form policy against the EDL, BNP and Hizb-ut-tahrir. However, de-spite some small instances of contro-versy surrounding external speakers, Queen Mary Students’ Union Coun-cil (QMSU) recently voted against im-plementing an No Platform policy.
QMSU Campaigns officer Ozzy Amir opposes Stuart’s proposal claiming it is “impractical” and “ab-surd”. “The whole point of university is to challenge and be challenged in-tellectually and this notion of ‘prob-lematic speakers’ is so vague and un-clear it could be applied to anyone with views outside the mainstream.” He also warns that Stuart’s propos-al risks “alienating and ostracising a large proportion of our student pop-ulation.”
Aamna Mohdin
Alex BadrickKaamil Ahmed
Report says Unions should veto speakers
A Queen Mary academic has spoken out against an attempt by the US Government to stop details of new influenza research appearing in two prestigious scientific journals.
QM’s Professor John Oxford has joined other scientists in condemn-ing the US Government’s request that the editors of the journals Sci-ence and Nature remove key details from a new academic paper pro-duced by Dutch and US researchers. The paper outlines how researchers produced a deadly strain of the bird flu virus H5N1, which they hope will prove useful in producing drugs that pre-empt H5N1 mutations, prevent-ing possible pandemic. The US Gov-ernment funded the research, but fears bio-terrorists may recreate and release the deadly flu strain if the full paper is released.
“Scientists should not be looking over their shoulders” Professor Ox-ford told the BBC, “This is about hu-man endeavour - pressing ahead and transferring knowledge to the wider world. That is the culture of science.” Professor Oxford says the flu re-searchers “should definitely publish” adding, “we should forget about bio terrorism and concentrate on Moth-
er Nature... The biggest risk with bird flu is from the virus itself.”
Researchers in Rotterdam creat-ed the deadly strain by inducing five mutations in two key genes, which al-lowed the virus to spread via cough-ing and sneezing. Currently, bird flu is only transmitted by incredibly close contact, which limits its spread.
Prof Oxford told The Independent the researcher’s paper provides a
“huge service” by reminding the sci-entific community “how wafer thin the barrier is between a benign H5N1 virus and one that could spread easi-ly. The 120 WHO flu labs around the world can use the DNA sequence in-formation to identify and stop the spread of new H5N1 variants.”
Not all scientists share Profes-sor Oxford’s conviction, University of Oxford Professor Michael Parker told the BBC “The position that eve-rything should be published is not tenable. There must be some scien-tific information which contains an immediate threat to public safety if it fell into the wrong hands.”
Professor Oxford is a world leader in virology, based at QM’s Blizzard Institute, and was recently listed as one of London 1000 most influential.
“When any new strain of flu threatens, Oxford is a key adviser” the Evening Standard notes.
QM academic condemns flu research “censorship”
Queen Mary academics uncover the invisible scars of modern torture
Hannah Stuart has proposed to the Home Affair’s Select Committee that Students’ Unions, such as QMSU, should have more power to veto “problematic speakers” Image by Keeren Flora
A former QM student has been tipped by The Observer as a future Prime Min-ister. Tom Chigbo, who completed a Masters in community organising at QM and has worked at Citizens UK for a year, was also named in the Powerlist as one of Britain's 100 most influential black people. He was also Cambridge's first black student president, and was recognised by Rare Rising Stars as the UK's number one black student. Tom says, “I'm interested in people. I think the way politics is conducted in this country does not give people enough respect and recognition, and that needs to change."
A QM computer science professor who has worked tirelessly to attract more women into electrical engineering has been awarded a CBE. Professor Ursula Martin was previously the first female professor at the prestigious University of St Andrew’s since its foundation in 1411, before joining Queen Mary in 1992. She has also chaired the Lon-don Mathematical Society’s computer science committee and served on the women in mathematics committee. Her current research concerns funda-mental ideas for a new understanding of control in engineering applications and designing digital control systems.
Queen Mary grad tipped to be PM
Queen Mary Prof awarded a CBE
Modern forms of torture are just as damaging as old ones, even if they don’t cause physical harm, according to new research carried out by Queen Mary.
Though the UN Convention against Torture had outlawed torture in most countries, Dr. Nasir Warfa’s study confirmed that the practice is still widespread and has become more sophisticated often leaving ‘invisible’ scars.
Dr. Warfa, of the Wolfson Insti-tute of Preventative Medicine, led the team of researchers who focused on the experiences of asylum seekers be-ing detained in Cambridgeshire who had experienced both physical and psychological torture that triggered serious mental health issues for many of them.
The researchers highlighted the need to understand the issues that face asylum seekers who come to Britain.“The torture reported by these people is horrific,” said Kate Izycki, a specialist Trans-cultural Psychiatry.
“This highlights that the use of torture continues and that the perpetrators are finding more elaborate methods; some of which often leave no physi-cal mark.”
The research found that many asy-lum seekers had been forced to wit-ness violent attacks such as rape and murder or were immersed in water. Those who experienced physical tor-ture, were often beaten, stabbed and had body parts ‘extracted’.
“Finding yourself in a foreign coun-try where you must negotiate a diffi-cult asylum system, where you can-not work and where you may not be able to speak the language would be difficult for anyone,” said Dr. Warfa.
“Then add mental health problems caused by torture and the ever-pre-sent possibility of deportation”.
“This new study clearly shows that we need to identify and address the health needs of those who have fled to the UK following torture in their home countries.”
Although modern forms of torture are increasingly psychological, this was banned alongside physical tor-ture in the original draft of the conven-tion in 1975: “torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, wheth-er physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person”.
Dr. Warfa has previously been in-volved in several studies into mental health problems that could be associ-ated with migrants and refugees in the UK and has worked specifically with some of the Somali population.
“Most people might think there is a separation between explora-tion and creativity but I’ve actual-ly found that they are very closely linked”. Meet Richard Garriott, vid-eo-game developer, entrepreneur and one of the first space tourists.
Garriott is a man of real and vir-tual worlds. Creator of the Ultima games series, and pioneer of vari-ous other video-game enterprises, Garriott coined the term “Massive-ly Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game” (MMORPG), a genre of vid-eo-games in which many thousands of players interact with one another within the same virtual world. For Garriott, these fantasy worlds are born out of his own experience of the real world, “I find that my ex-ploration of the world in which we live directly feeds into my desire to integrate those same feelings in the work that I do”. Perhaps it was this principle that led him to pursue his childhood dream of visiting space.
On October 12th 2008, Garriott launched into space, becoming one of the first ever private citizens to step off the face of the planet. The son of an astronaut, this dream was 30 years in the making and his lin-eage broke more ground: he is the first ever second generation space explorer.
“As you can imagine, chartering a flight to the International Space Station is a pretty monumental un-dertaking. Now that it’s been done it seems like it could be pretty easy to do again,” he says. The three dec-ade wait was not filled will thumb-twiddling, Garriott, famous for his initiative, tried several differ-ent way to turn his dream of other-worldly travel into a reality. He ex-plains: “When I had the idea to go pursue this when I was a teenager, there were no commercial means to go into the space of any kind. The governments weren’t interested in flying any private citizens and yet there were plenty of people l i k e me who wanted to go and there were plenty of peo-ple like NASA who had the ability to go. Find-ing people who wanted to support the general idea wasn’t difficult but figuring
out how to pull it off was.”His began by getting astronauts
to try and convince NASA to allow private passengers aboard space flights. However, the ploy didn’t work. Next was the XPrize Foun-dation, of which he is still a trus-tee. The organisation started by of-fering $10 million to the first team who could build a three-person rocket that could take commer-cial passengers into space. The re-sult was several vehicles which are able to penetrate the planet’s orbit but have not yet taken flight. Suc-cess finally came when the Russians were convinced to allow private cit-izen to charter their Soyuz rocket, which has since taken seven people beyond their world in eight flights.
Even with his methodology planned, a 12-day-long stay in outer-space was far from certain.
“Even after rockets exist, even af-ter you have a contract with a com-pany to go, even when you’ve paid money to go, it actually turns out that there are other significant hur-dles”. These “hurdles” involve a year spent in Russia on a gruelling training programme and constant medical tests. Failure to pass any of these tests would have meant a pre-mature end to Garriott’s space ad-ventures, and failure wasn’t unim-aginable to him at the time. “They want you to be pretty darn close to perfect to be able to go to space. So, even after I had paid most of my money to go to space, they found a mayor internal anomaly, where one lobe of my liver did not have a vein to drain it, so I had an over pres-sured liver lobe that they made me remove.” After this surgery, Garri-ott passed every test thrown at him. He says his journey aboard the Soy-uz TMA-13 felt was more like “bal-let” than the loud violent buffering we see in Hollywood productions.
“It’s the same is for re-entering the atmosphere, it’s very smooth, very elegant, while the flames go by at the window, and the plasma gets hotter than the surface of the sun, just a few inches from your shoul-
der.” “Floating in space is a very
giddy feeling,” he enthus-es, “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t instantane-ously have a smile on their face and just con-stantly feel that way
while they’re in
space. Looking back at the earth is probably the most important part, you not only see a sunrise or a sun-set every 45 minutes but you go around the Earth every 90 minutes. You see how weather systems form and move around the earth, you see how tectonic plate movement has modified the surface of the earth, you see the result of erosion by wa-ter, erosion by wind, but most im-portantly you see the impact of hu-manity.”
Garriott’s day job as a celebrated games designer led some to suggest that he should channel his experi-ences in space into his field of pro-fession. However, he sees the pro-cess differently. ”I’ve never been inspired to do that and I don’t think that I could. I’ve got a friend, Chris Roberts, who wrote the Wing Commander space games way bet-ter than I ever envisioned and he’s never been into space.” Garriott says that it’s recreated feelings rather than carbon-copy experienc-es that make a good game. Talking about his trip to Antarctica he re-calls when hunting for meteorites, finding in a valley a moun-tain range where then wind have blast-ed and scoured the surrounding ice, shaping it into what looked like a wave. “It was about 100 feet tall that was fro-zen at the mo-ment when it was about to crest and you could see into the clear blue ice like you might expect to see frozen sharks or fish somewhere in there and like in a Tim Burton movie there was snow drip-ping off the top and the edges as the wind w o u l d b l o w by and t h i s wave
went on for a mile, or two, or three. It was a monumental emotional experience.” He says he wants to create this kind of experience in his games, this sort of “grandeur”. However, personal experiences don’t merely transfer into game design, “you won’t do it by creat-ing a polygonal wave that’s frozen because it won’t really come across the same way. A virtual experience like that won’t create the same re-action.”
So, what, then, is the future of MMO? The success of games like World of Warcraft (or WoW, as it’s known among fans) makes clear that there is a healthy market for the massively-multiplayer genre. However, most of these are “chal-lenge and reward” games, with cy-cles that repeat level after level, there isn’t a story to them. Garri-ott prefers more narrative-driven games: “I’m a big believer in more literary inclusions, my motivation as a creator and as a player is to play games that have more story. One of the real challenges of MMOs is storytelling. Storytelling in an
MMO environment is definitely hard to
achieve, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. How-ever, it’s not necessarily
the thing the buy-ers with t h e i r m o n -ey will re-ward as game me-
QMESSENGER MONDAY JANUARY 9 2012
Newsfocus4
chanics.”What about the players? One
of the things about MMO is that games have become social. The solo player is no more, MMO is the fu-ture. “I’m looking into the new era. What I’m trying to do now is rein-vent role-playing again by creating a casual or free to play, or impulse purchase browser, executable or mobile platform play” says Garriott. Facebook games, purchased, down-loadables or freemiums, they are all following the same trend. “What has changed”, says Garriott enthu-siastically, “is the fact that people no longer have to go into a store to purchase a game, they can down-load and start playing immediately.”
“When you sit down to play [these games] they need to be synchronous, so we can sit down and play it at the same time, and asynchronous mean-ing that if you logged off, I should be able to pass things to you or do some things to help each other in some way.”
Good ideas need to be supported by a good business plan “Is the next thing to create a massive game or create what I want but for a small-er market?” asks Garriott, answer-ing his own question he tells us he is as motivated by business as he is by creativity “Without a successful business you don’t get to do what you want to do creatively, so you have to think about the business side of it.” But in a market saturat-ed with tons of free games, gaining profit seems unrealistic. “I think I’m uniquely suited to tackle this prob-lem to make a compelling literary game that is free or an impulse pur-chase to acquire, that respects you and doesn’t spam you too much but
also says ‘Well if you’re willing to play this
for a days and days, you even-tually have to pay me or be valuable to me somehow’”.
We can’t wait to see what R i c h a r d
Garriott is com-ing up
with.
Caz ParraMatthew TK Taylor
Man of many worlds: Richard Garriott, space explorer and game designer talks to QMessenger. Image by Kaamil Ahmed.
Out of this world: Richard Garriott talks Antarctica, video games and space tourism
QMESSENGER MONDAY JANUARY 9 2012
Comment
Was the Arab Spring the most important event of 2011?
5
Hunter S Thompson wrote in 1986, that Muammar Gaddafi was “savage and treacherous and crazy” and cau-tioned that he would “probably be around a long time, unless Reagan can have him killed”. Twenty-five years later, Libya united in celebra-tion as one of their own put the final bullet into the Colonel.
That unity will be tested in the coming months and years, as it has already been in Egypt and Tunisia. But the reason why the Arab Spring is so important is that it touched the heart of us all. We may have dis-agreed with NATO intervention; we may be sceptical of the motives of Western support, but in a year of fi-nancial crisis, natural disasters, and mad predictions of the end of the world, the triumph of genuine hope was remarkable. We should all ap-plaud the foot-soldiers of democracy who flooded squares across the Mid-dle East, to bring worth to their lives.
It’s extraordinary that normal peo-ple can make such a difference. We have been reminded of human frailty by earthquakes and tsunamis rock-ing New Zealand and Japan. 2011 saw apparently competent people battling to contain a financial wild-fire, fuelled by greed, the damage of which will be felt for generations to come. With institutionalised immo-rality at News of the World, the un-
Paddy Ford Kevin Omwenga
Make Your Vote Count
The Irony of Job Centres Not Working
With the race for London mayor about to commence it’s time to hear an uncomfortable truth. I’m sure each and every one of us has railed against the stereotype that students are all lazy louts who don’t really get up to anything useful. Well, to be frank, it does, in some respects hit the nail bang on the metaphori-cal head.
As a group, we students make up a not-too-shabby chunk of the Lon-don populace and this gives us great power to influence the policies of those running for the position of London mayor. The problem howev-er, is that most students don’t even bother sending off the letter to reg-ister to vote, and even those who do don’t tend to materialise at a ballot box come voting day..
The mayor has power of transport, crime, housing and employment, the four areas that surely impact the lives of students more directly and more immediately than any others. Yet, despite this motivation, last year the student turnout was pitiful. This year, hopefully, that will change.
The London Student Manifesto seeks to articulate to both students and candidates what exactly they can do for one another. We should take advantage of this and take advantage of the clout we have as a voting block.
Voting takes seconds but what it achieves could shape London for the rest of our lives.
Revolution: it has a lovely ring to it. Instantly images of the Tianan-men Square man, Lenin on the po-dium, Delacroix’s ‘la Liberté Guidant le Peuple’ tingle through every hu-manitarian fibre in the body. Finally, our generation had its moment: the ‘Arab Spring’. Millions, with one ac-cord, demanding liberty. The people, creating a fairer world for us all. In their wake, despots, tyrants, old di-visions and attitudes crumbled. It’s surely a time for celebration!
A year later, Mubarak is on tri-al, elections are being held, the army is more powerful than ever and the dubious Muslim Brotherhood have their bloody hands on the prize. Bril-liant.
“Think about the human rights!” you cry. In how many of these coun-tries are the rights of minorities as-sured? Can women, the LGBT com-munity, or religious minorities say they’re better off? The culture of op-pression and suppression pervades. Who did the Arab League choose to lead their delegation to Syria? Gener-al Mustafa al-Dabi, a suspected war criminal.
We were conned. Regime change was sold to us under the guise of de-mocracy. For all our military aid and goodwill, we’ve set the foundations for longer lasting dictatorships. The
Paddy Ford is a first year student studying Modern and Contemporary History.
Kevin Omwenga is a second year student studying Aerospace Engineering and part of Newturn and the Philosophy Society.
The Great Debate
Yes No people were angry at corruption, not because two men could be beheaded for kissing in public. Be realistic, the secular-liberal-progressivism we en-visaged was far removed from the cul-tural and religious climate. The West conflated a desire for the material benefits of a western lifestyle among the elite with a desire for it’s ideals.
Across the board the picture is be-coming clear, the people were rescued from the devils they knew and shep-herded into the arms of angels they will wish they had never known: the packs of religious fanatics wanting to roll society back to the dark ages.
Arab Spring? Damp showers more like. The flames of intolerance burn on. We are not witnessing a momen-tous occasion but in the words of Howard Zinn a “steam valve”, useful for releasing anger rather than letting it foment into revolution. There are people who demanded change, even died for their convictions and now we have less good people in the world. The will for change that took decades to accumulate lies wasted. It’s very much like the changing of the guard; different soldier same uniform
As a commentator mused, the real revolution will happen only once the patriarchal hierarchy is challenged. For me, only once power is trans-ferred from minarets, barracks and hereditary titles to the ballot box.
timely demise of Dominique Strauss-Khan and the death of Steve Jobs, we could be forgiven for thinking that the ordinary man or woman in the street was increasingly worthless.
The Arab Spring jettisoned all these ideas. When Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian market trader, set himself on fire in protest at the bureaucracy and crackdowns confining him to a life of fear, poverty and abject mis-ery, he surely couldn’t have predict-ed the response. Protests, and with them increasingly meaningful con-cessions, have followed all over the region. Another overthrow may yet happen in Syria.
It was the year when people woke up to realize that it made no sense that a woman boarding a plane in Britain, with almost total freedom, could find herself powerless five hours away in a different county. People are cam-paigning in ever-greater numbers for transparency, accountability, and a say in how we live our lives; the re-cent Russian demonstrations were a testament to this fact.
2011, as all years, had highs and lows. But it was a year when the tin-derbox of tyranny exploded. The fallout has only just begun to settle, but we’re running, energised, into a brand new world of hope, freedom and liberal-mindedness. Now that’s worth a toast.
The idea that work is merely an in-convenient necessity, a slavish duty to be endured only for the purpos-es of self-enrichment, is not a good one. Productive, creative work is not only rewarding, it is the fulfil-ment of basic needs intrinsic to hu-man nature.
That Britain’s, and Tower Ham-let’s, unemployment figures contin-ue to rise is therefore of great con-cern. That the rise is particularly steep among 16-25 year olds is of even greater concern.
Macro-economic forces outside of the control of local government control are, obviously, more to blame for this than job centres. But that only 20% of those seeking pro-ductive work, as rare a commodity as it is, find the job centre as an in-stitution to be of value in helping them find work is an outrage.
A nation of self-made entrepre-neurs is structurally impossible. Reincorporating those who lose work must, then, be a primary con-cern for all of us. Whether by in-creased funding, structural reform, or both, this must be addressed.
Eleven students in total. That’s how many people turned up for Universi-ty of London Union’s (ULU) Annu-al General Meeting (AGM). And the meeting lasted nine minutes. Nine minutes! This is meant to be the bea-con of unions. ULU is meant to be guiding Students’ Unions, provid-ing support and rallying the way for change. If you go on the AGM turn out, then people don’t believe it can change a thing.
As a student Representative for QMSU, I was there out of general in-terest. I attended just before Christ-mas but unfortunately due to lack of attendance, we couldn’t make quo-rum. So take-two and we started after waiting half an hour for 239 students to magically appear. They didn’t.
After running through the accounts, affiliations and trustee reports (I highlighted a comical spelling mis-take) we moved on to student submit-ted motions. Two had been scrapped before the meeting started as this was the wrong forum. They proposed to increase the number of associate members allowed to join an ULU so-ciety or club. However this is a consti-tutional matter. God knows why the ULU staff member who accepted the proposals didn’t point this out when they submitted the original motion.
A motion passed with no objections to support World Aids Day every year and fly the rainbow flag above ULU for LGBT History month. A motion for No War on Iran had been already sent and accepted by the Senate so there was little point of discussion or voting. We then moved to ‘Any Oth-
er Business’ and that was the meet-ing done.
Why was I one of only 11 students there? Out of a union that represents all unions of University of London, only 11 could be bothered to come. Is it ULU’s fault? Is it student apathy? I don’t have that answer so I can only guess. Student politics have a histo-ry of low electorate turn out. Students will only care about their Students’ Union if, by not caring, they are neg-atively affected. Basic human survival if you will. So if Drapers keeps pour-ing pints and Ground keeps making
coffee, the student population can ab-sently allow QMSU to pass them by.
Dave Meslin, described as a “pro-fessional rabble-rouser”, gave a talk for TED on apathy. He believed that the general population truly cared, citing several examples, but that es-tablishments such as city hall made it difficult/borderline impossible to get involved. The true source of apathy was due to the lack of want from the public sector for public involvement.
So the student union has to act. They have to convince others to get involved. But even that is a task in its self. The ability to convince some-one that giving up their free time will make a difference is an impressive skill. Even if they are doing nothing, a student will not join a student union event or rally for ‘Stop the Cuts’. I can barely get people to listen to Quest, let alone help to decide the future of QM-SU’s policies. It’s not through lack of care, but through the belief that they cannot make a difference.
Yet this rant isn’t a new thing. TIME Magazine published an article in 1978 and nothing seems to have changed.
Maybe it’s a systemic part of being human. Something we can’t avoid. A small percentage of the population are willing to take up the mantle and made decision that the student popu-lation just don’t seem to worry about.
Some may argue that the tide of student apathy is over. That after vot-ing for the liberal democrats and be-
Can 0.009% of people really speak for all?
recent march, November 9th, attract-ed less than 5% of those who original-ly marched back in March. The strikes were described as a “damp squid” by David Cameron. We lost our sting because we lost our fire. Students are still angry about tuition fees and will moan about the government. But when it comes to it, we do nothing.
Student apathy is truly tested ev-ery year on Queen Mary campus. From the 9th January to 16th Febru-ary, students will have the opportu-nity to become fully involved in stu-dent politics. Whether you run for a position, or you just walk through li-brary square, you are involved. By the end of this you will have enough flyers that are equivalent to a small London park. Voting is important, even if it’s to register that you don’t care. A proportion of the sabbatical officers elected will go on to be fur-ther involved in student politics e.g. NUS. Last year’s president, Vratislav Vraj Domalip III, is now president of ULU. His start came from QMUL and successfully rallied the support of many students to be elected three times. Whatever people may say, NUS has contributed to student life like no other and is still an organisa-tion for change. Should any QMSU sabbatical officer reach that level, they can thank QMUL students for their start.
So as a student representative, as part of QMSU, I still plan to fight. I want people engaged. I want people to care. We can be a force to reck-oned with if we just try.
ing betrayed, students were so moti-vated and engaged, they took to the streets. Politicians feared us for once. They felt our power. Then we realised that £9000 was here to stay and a lot of people stopped fighting. The most
Chris Smith
CommentQMESSENGER MONDAY JANUARY 9 20126
The University of London Union seeks to represent all 120,000 students at the University of London but, if the General Meeting is anything to go by, only engages with 11. Image by Matthew Black (via Flickr CC)
“Out of a union that represents all unions of the University of London, only 11 could be bothered to come.”
If Drapers keeps pouring pints, the student population can absently allow QMSU to pass them by.
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”
Chris Smith is a second-year studying biomedical sciences, is a member of the hockey club and a QMSU Student Representative.
ULU: The who, what, where, when, why and howWHO - ULU stands for the Universi-ty of London Union. It’s the federal un-ion representing all students study-ing at any of the 19 colleges making up the University of London (UoL). The current president is Vratislav Domalip, who was president of Queen Mary Stu-dents’ Union last year, and the Vice President is Sean Rillo-Raczka.
WHAT - ULU runs clubs and socie-ties. It published the London Student newspaper and hosts social events. It
£20,000 because membership of ULU is a compulsory requirement of mem-bership of the UoL.
HOW - Every year all students study-ing at the UoL are able to elect the pres-ident and vice president of ULU and the London Student editor. There is also Senate, which is a decision mak-ing body made up of the presidents of the Students’ Union in all UoL colleg-es. There is also the Board of Trustees which has elected students sitting on it.
acts as a representative body for all UoL students. Last year, the president, Clare Solomon, appeared on Newsnight and met with Nick Clegg to discuss the new fee regime.
WHERE - It is based on Malet Street, next to Senate House library.
WHEN - It was founded in 1955.
WHY - The University pays QMSU’s yearly membership fee of approximately
QMESSENGER MONDAY JANUARY 9 2012
Comment
When it comes to your job prospects it’s time to LinkIn or GetOutis an excellent way to network while you are still at university. For exam-ple, you can connect with the peo-ple that you worked alongside during your internship or work experience. If
you feel like you did a good job whilst you were working, be cheeky and ask for a reference. This will be visible to
David Watson
Stevie Rankin
those who can see your profile, and having someone else’s word to sup-port your own goes a long way to help impress potential employers. Basical-ly, LinkedIn can be viewed as an ex-tended, online CV.
Much in the same way that you join groups that interest you on Facebook, the same principle applies on Linke-dIn. So if your interest lies in market-ing, you join groups that reflect this. By posting regularly in these groups, employers can see that you genuine-ly care about the profession you are trying to enter, and that you are se-rious about the industry. One aspect of LinkedIn that is particularly useful is the “search jobs” facility. You type in key words, for example, “market-ing assistant, entry level”, and it will come up with a series of vacancies.
This is not the most useful part. The useful part is that it will show up if you know someone at that company. You can then ask this person to aid you. This will ultimately give you a much higher chance of securing a job. Intro-
What’s this year’s lie?
Yes it’s a social media site forbusiness people, but it’s an extremely useful tool for others too.
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7
Being anti-New Year’s resolution does not make me anti-making-changes-towards-being-a-betterper-son. I become restless at Christmas with all the superficial niceties, and by the New Year my lack of faith in human potential adapt becomes in-flamed by the reckless initiation of ‘resolutions.’
A ‘resolution’ is defined as a com-mitment to a lasting personal goal. You have 365 days to make this change, so why do so many people fail to complete the journey? I pondered on what the cause of this dissolution of resolution was. I thought first (be-cause I’m a misanthrope) that it was to do with the inadequacies of human character. I thought that it might be to do with the nature of the resolution. If one believes they are addicted to nic-otine, one believes they must writhe in withdrawal as they attempt to end their love affair with cigarettes. This is no easy resolution. Love, like ad-diction, knows no easy fix. Scoff, scoff.
I thought about why one might be-lieve that the turn of the year is ap-propriate as an anchor for a broken promise. Why are we dependent on time to motivate us?
The New Year should not be our reason for embarking on improve-ment. Lifestyle changes are most like-ly to be successful if commenced with no more motivation than one’s own desire. There will be a New Year ev-ery 365 days, but there could be a new you every day (cheesier than intended, but you get the message). We do our-selves ill by contending with the tides of years; we don’t orbit our own exis-tence, but shape it. We should com-pose by the day, not by year. We are not planets, but moons.
LinkedIn is often viewed as “Face-book for professionals”, but this doesn’t necessarily paint the whole picture. Yes, it is a social media site for business people and professional types, but it is also an extremely use-ful tool for others, including us stu-dents. Students can, and should use LinkedIn as a way of increasing their job prospects when they graduate. It allows you to create an online pres-ence to impress potential employ-ers, which is completely construct-ed by you: no compromising pho-tos that your lovely friends decided to tag you in, and no old comments coming back to haunt you. However, I think more importantly than this, it
ductions are another feature which is particularly helpful for students. If one of your Dad’s friends happens to be in charge of graduate recruitment for a company, use this: ask for an in-troduction on LinkedIn. You can then converse with that person and be as well prepared as possible for the ap-plication process. Whilst LinkedIn is never going to be the most entertain-ing social media website, I believe it is the one that all students should be active on. With so many graduates vy-ing for so few graduate positions, net-working through LinkedIn may help to increase your chances of gaining employment if it is used effectively.
David Watson is a second-year English Literature student and a member of the Amnesty International Society.
The numbers game: Social network users in 000,000s
Facebook: 800Twitter: 453LinkedIn: 135Google+: 62Flickr: 50Tumblr: 34 (number of blogs)Myspace: 30 Path: 0.5
Stevie Rankin is a first-year studying English Literature and is co-comment editor of QMessenger.
Zubair Suleman
The End of the Affair: The new year and the Coalition
The romantic post-election press conference of Clegg and Cameron in the gardens of Westminster now seems a distant memory. The two party leaders locked horns on many issues last year. The formation of the Coalition marked a significant shift in modern British politics and many commentators questioned the lon-gevity of this rare political marriage.
For us to predict the stability of the Coalition we must look at the sticking points that characterised 2011. Firstly, the rise in tuition fees to cause divisions within the Coali-tion. Many senior Lib Dems, such as Simon Hughes, the party’s dep-uty leader, are critical of the policy. Pre-election, Nick Clegg has prom-ised to scrap tuition fees altogether, a pledge that now seems laughable. These sort of decisions have made the British public question the integ-rity of politicians altogether as polit-ical careers become more important than political mandates.
Secondly, the con-troversial re-forms to the NHS for-mulated by health secre-tary Andrew Lansley have caused fric-tion. Mea-sures in-clude pro-posals to give GP consortiums 80% control of the NHS budget. Other propos-als included in-creased private sector involve-ment in the health-care sector. This
has led to cries that the Coalition is trying to privatize the NHS. This un-derlying concern has caused a rift between many Lib Dem and Conser-vative MP’s and will continue to be problematic this year.
The most recent rupture has been around the Cameron’s decision to veto the EU treaty changes. The PM was doing his utmost to avoid any possibility of a European financial tax hitting the city. However, the de-cision did not hold too well with Nick Clegg who heard the news on televi-sion the following morning. He stat-ed on the Andrew Marr Show that the decision “isolated and margin-alised” Britain from involvement in rescuing the Eurozone.
Furthermore, the PM has been ac-cused of over representing the inter-ests of Eurosceptics in his party. The issue of the EU remains a touchy subject for the Conservative Party, as John Major found out on 1992.
Despite the trials and tribulations facing the Coalition this year,
the partnership remains rolling along. Howev-er, with the new fee regime coming into
effect, the spotlight will once again return to the broken prom-ises of the Lib Dems. More-over, with the forecast of eco-nomic growth
being down-graded by many financial insti-
tutions, 2012 will prove to be a testing
year for the most un-usual of political af-fairs.
Zubair Suleman is a sec-ond-year Geography and
Economics student.
An affair to
remember: Is it over? Images
courtesy of Liberal Democrats
& Bisgovuk (via Flickr cc)
The hypocrisy of New Year’s Resolutions. Image by Angel Lambo.
QMESSENGER MONDAY JANUARY 9 2012
Comment
Why you should be vice president! Oscar WilliamsonQMSU Vice President Education and Welfare
8
Nest year is going to be a great year to be a Sabbat-ical. VP Ed-
ucation & Welfare is be-ing split into two posts, so the two Officers will have more time to concentrate on the issues in their area. It is also the first time in many years that you won’t be running against an ex-isting Sabb in any posi-tion, so it will be an en-tirely new team.
Being a Sabb is brilliant. In no other graduate job do you get such a broad and varied portfolio of ac-tivities, and so much au-tonomy to try out new projects and approach-es. As well as your port-folio, you will sit on aca-demic appeals, on inter-nal reviews into academic schools and departments, and have input in Col-lege procedures and pol-icies on everything from library hours to appeals. You have a platform for the issues you care about. You might be welcoming new International stu-dents, encouraging kids from a local school to go to university, or pressing the Principal to improve dis-ability pro-vision.
Being a Sabb is a lot of w o r k , b u t y o u also g e t t h e
support of your fellow full- and part-time officers, of the students, of Union staff, and of many people in the College. You will get a detailed two-week hand-over in which I’ll introduce you to the job and the peo-ple with whom you’ll be working. It’ll all be writ-ten down so you can refer to it throughout your year as a Sabb.
You are elected with a strong mandate to carry out your policies and do what’s right for students. If you set your mind to it, there is little you can’t do.
An effective VP Ed-ucation needs to know what’s going on. You’re going to be busy in 2012-13, as this is the first year of the new higher edu-cation policy. More money has been cut than is being added by increasing fees, and it is up to univer-sities to find out how to pay for it.
You will be in-vited to meetings about scholar-
ships and bursaries, chang-es to specific courses and modules, IT, the library, as-sessment, exam and course-
work feedback, admis-sions, and a host of oth-er aspects of the universi-ty. There will be times in these meetings when ev-eryone in the room will turn to you and ask, ‘what do the students think?’ Remember: there at six-teen thousand of them. Two main sources you can refer to are Course Reps and surveys.
Course Reps hear about specific issues with mod-ules, lecturers or depart-ments, and they can ask around and find out how many other students are affected. If you need to check something quickly
– how many hours does a second year Law student do? How many students are affected by a specif-ic timetable clash? – the Course Rep will have the answer. Regular Faculty Forums between Course Reps from different dis-ciplines help join the dots.
You will also use sur-veys. The annual Nation-al Student Survey asks fi-nal-year students about their time at universi-ty, and the College takes the results very serious-ly. The NSS, the Interna-
tional Student Ba-rometer, the
big survey of Med-ics and Dentists, and oth-er sur-v e y s the Stu-d e n t s ’ U n i o n r u n through-out the year give you the
bigger pic-ture.
Your job also involves i n v e s t i g a t -
ing, campaign-ing and lobby-ing. You will
to you to boost these links.You will also represent
students on issues such as personal safety, dis-abilities, the environ-ment, equality and diver-sity. This might be to Stu-dent Council, to the uni-versity, or to local groups, or through an awareness campaign on campus.
Finally, you will run the Mums & Dads programme. Arriving at university is a totally new experience, of-ten in a new city, country and language. The Mums & Dads scheme puts first years into little families of five or six people, paired with a Mum and a Dad in the year above them on their course who can help them out with all that is new and different about university. We started the scheme in Science and En-gineering in 2011 and you will be involved with set-ting it up in Humanities and Social Science in 2012. It’s a lot of fun and is a re-ally useful way for you to keep up with the issues affecting students in oth-er departments – almost like a Welfare equivalent of Course Reps.
I’ve kept this list de-liberately short. If you feel something is missing, then why not run? If you think that the role should focus more on housing, on international students, on women’s issues, then this is your opportunity to make that happen. Put some ideas together and let people know why you are the right person to put those ideas into action.
read leaked documents and have quiet conversa-tions about cuts, chang-es, and other reforms with teaching assistant, unions and individual staff. You will work with students, Course Reps and Student Councillors to push for or against specific poli-cies. You will ask awkward questions, and, on occa-sion, object to proposals that university staff have spent months putting to-gether. You will campaign, picket, and make undiplo-matic comments to QMes-senger. And best of all, you’ll have a lot of fun.
VP Welfare is a total-ly new role, and you will have a lot of freedom in determining what should be included. In the past, the majority of the VP Ed-ucation & Welfare’s time has been spent on Educa-tion issues, so we have a much clearer idea of what VP Education’s week will look like. Beyond what I consider to be your three core areas of responsibili-ty, the role is up to you to define.
One thing I haven’t done enough of this year is cele-brating the diversity of our student body. VP Welfare will work with part time officers, clubs and societ-ies, and local communi-ty organisations to orga-nise Black History Month, LGBT pride, and other cel-ebrations. We have links with Tower Hamlets Coun-cil, London Citizens, the NHS, nearby schools, and a host of voluntary organ-isations, and it will be up
In no other graduate job do you get such a broad and varied portfolio of ac-tivities, and so much au-tonomy to try out new projects and approach-es. As well as your port-folio, you will sit on aca-demic appeals, on inter-nal reviews into academic schools and departments, and have input in Col-lege procedures and pol-icies on everything from library hours to appeals. You have a platform for the issues you care about. You might be welcoming new International stu-dents, encouraging kids from a local school to go to university, or pressing the Principal to improve dis-ability pro-vision.
Being a Sabb is a lot of w o r k , b u t y o u also g e t t h e
If you set your mind to it, there is little you can’t do.
An effective VP Ed-ucation needs to know what’s going on. You’re going to be busy in 2012-13, as this is the first year of the new higher edu-cation policy. More money has been cut than is being added by increasing fees, and it is up to univer-sities to find out how to pay for it.
You will be in-vited to meetings about scholar-
many other students are affected. If you need to check something quickly
– how many hours does a second year Law student do? How many students are affected by a specif-ic timetable clash? – the Course Rep will have the answer. Regular Faculty Forums between Course Reps from different dis-ciplines help join the dots.
You will also use sur-veys. The annual Nation-al Student Survey asks fi-nal-year students about their time at universi-ty, and the College takes the results very serious-ly. The NSS, the Interna-
tional Student Ba-rometer, the
big survey of Med-
year give you the
bigger pic-ture.
Your job also involves i n v e s t i g a t -
ing, campaign-ing and lobby-ing. You will
In no other graduate job do you get such a broad and varied portfolio of activities.
““
“
“
VP Welfare is a totally new role, and you will have a lot of freedom in determining what should be included.
SatireQMESSENGER MONDAY DECEMBER 9 2012 9
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Please don’t mistake anything on this page for fact.
In a bold move, set to upset millions of Londoners, Boris Johnson is looking to outlaw all forms of snow from falling in the Greater London area during the winter season.
The Mayor, running for re-elec-tion in May, told reporters “The economy needs, well, a bit of a kick, and hopefully we can keep things going where in the past they’ve somewhat diminished. We’ve been lucky so far, there hasn’t been a whiff of the stuff anywhere.” In the new proposition it’s stated that the Met Office will be held respon-sible for maintaining the ban, de-spite their poor track record in predicting the weather; rumoured to be their primary purpose. He continued to state “it i s regrettable, af-ter all. Children love the snow – I love the snow –
I love a good twiddle on a snowy day, but something’s got to give – we can’t have another year of this madness.”
‘This Madness’ refers to the chaos often caused on London’s roads and the public transport system during times of snowfall, with many com-muters unable to reach their plac-es of work. “Yes, I think we’ll fig-ure something out,” said the mayor positively, “the Russians did work with ‘cloud seeding technology´ a few years back and hopefully we can press on with something like that in the future.”
Whether or not the technolo-gy will be ready in time remains a doubt. It’s looking increasing-ly likely that boisterously shout-ing to the heavens for the next few months will be the only realistic al-
ternative. Boris, howev-er, will remain confident that the future is bright and snow-free.
Boris’ best friend Stephen
is more upset than most at the Mayor’s decision
to ban snow from London.
Quote of the Week
“That awkward moment when I think you’re a dick for liking all
the awkward moment groups on Facebook.”
Leif Halverson
Timesaver of the week
Don’t bother with toast, just eat bread. Time saved 2 to 7 mins de-pending how carbonated you like
your toast.
Joke of the week
Michael Gove. Seriously, just read his wiki page.
Mark Chapell
Boris fights economic crisis by banning snow in London
Women become redundant as men become more beautiful
"No more pool parties" - Michael Barrymore
"I'm quitting charlie" - Charlie Sheen Robert Jopson
“Buy a new tin opener and have my picture taken on a beach next to a washed up whale" Elliot Angell
"One more year" - Margaret Thatcher Leif Halverson
"Keep Promises"-The Lib Dems Tahmeed Zaki
A selection of New Year’s resolutions
Warner Bros’ commission Potter sequel
More men are wearing more make up. The cosmetics industry has exhausted every possible mascara brush shape and is now targeting a new market with their esteem battering scrutiny: men. This has prompted a whole new range of butchly named products such as the ‘Biotherm Force Supreme Eyecream’ and the ‘Steel Beefcake Transformer Foundation 3000X’.
Despite the stress this adds to their lives, men are embracing this new source of admiration. Campaigners for equality are also hailing the intro-duction of male physical insecurity as a much needed and long awaited sym-bol of equality between the sexes. One gentleman commented “I think it’s great, a good complexion is not a ques-tion of gender, it’s a uni- versal is-sue”.
S o f a r ,
so harmless. But what happens when men start to look good enough to sell yogurts just by posing next to the pot?
A recent Dolce and Gabbana adver-tising campaign has certainly sent rip-ples of insecurity through thousands of women as they see the rug of beau-ty pulled out from under them. The ad-vert depicts a bewitching and shapely nude male delicately arranged to cov-er his fancy bits. For some, it seems to have over-stepped the line.
“Enough is enough” Germaine Greer whined “If men continue to usurp wom-an’s role as sexual objects then thou-sands of women will be thrown upon an employment system that depends on intelligence.” It is likely that PMS would have affected the rationality of her com-ment but Greer’s views do not seem to be isolated. Many women are beginning to fear for the reverence of their breasts.
When asked about this dangerous change in the modelling industry
David Cameron refused to comment. However, while he was absent Nick Clegg whispered that “we’re allowed to be beautiful too” before flouncing after Cameron to imi-tate his every cosmet-ic move.
Warner Bros announced last week that pre-production for a sequel to the highly successful ‘Harry Potter’ film franchise has begun; the final decision spurred by the immense box office success of “Deathly Hal-lows: Part 2.” This news comes in regardless of the fact that J.K Rowl-ing, author and mastermind behind the franchise, is yet to write any follow-up material. Although it’s thought she is desperately wanted for the script writing process.
The film, rumoured to be enti-tled “Harry Potter and the Rigor-ous Midlife Crisis,” will be set twen-ty years after the events of “Death-ly Hallows.” One man thought to be considered for the role of the aged, decrepit Harry Potter is former
“Two and a Half Men” star Charlie Sheen; exposed for extreme drug consumption and a series of en-thused public outbursts. Howev-er given his immense camera pres-ence he finds himself among the likes of Johnny Depp and Chris-tian Bale on a potential list of can-didates. Warner Bros claim the new film is set to divulge in “much darker territory, exploring themes of mental instability and severe post-traumatic stress in a magi-cal context.” Rumours are also rife that number of the original cast, in-cluding Daniel Radcliffe and Bon-nie Wright, may opt to sign on to play younger versions of the char-acters in a string of flashbacks or hallucinations, which may be wel-coming news for many fans of the original film series.
Recently appointed Executive Producer Donald Graeme supple-mented the rumours by claiming
“We’re taking a new direction with the series and it’s exciting for ev-eryone involved. Hopefully we can get somebody like [Tim] Burton or [Guillermo] Del Toro in to di-rect – that’d be amazing.” Despite still being in early stages of devel-opment, it’s thought the filmmak-ers are confident of making a win-ter 2014 release.
Caroline WalkerKeumars Afifi-Sabet
Keumars Afifi-Sabet
Men are now be-ing target-ed by cosmet-ic companies. Image by stopsign(via Flickrcc)
QMESSENGER MONDAY JANUARY 9 2012
Societies
11
Society in Spotlight: Queen Mary Philosophy SocietyPriya Soni
Helen Drew Zoe Shearing
The Queen Mary Philosophy Society provides a platform for students to dis-cuss contemporary ideas from a philo-sophical perspective. Queen Mary does not have a Philosophy department, al-though it does boast a number of philo-sophical modules in subjects ranging from the arts to the sciences. We aim to provide a platform for students from all departments and year groups to come together and engage with the so-cial, ethical, cultural and philosophical issues of our world.
The society began this September and has already attracted over 200 online members. Our QMUL member-ship base consists of members from a number of different departments and this creates a great diversity of thought and interest.
Our sessions take place fortnightly on a Monday, in Francis Bancroft 1.01.1. The society is open to all, irre-spective of academic field and philo-sophical experience, always ensuring fruitful and open-minded debates.
We are a friendly bunch and have great respect for anyone willing to en-gage in healthy discussion and debate. Our discussions, ranging from drugs,
sexuality, politics and the concepts of “truth” are continued on our lively Fa-cebook page.
Recent topics have sparked huge interest; we recently had over 170 comments on a debate centred on ‘Perceptions, Authenticity and Beauty’ in contemporary society. We also en-gaged in a heated discussion concern-ing the funeral of Kim Jong-II.
Our Facebook page is always being updated with announce-ments of talks at LSE and UCL, which are popular with our m e m -b e r s . W e a r e a l -
I don’t know about you, but I’ve got that January feeling. You know the one, where you’re deter-mined things will be different this year, where you will keep the new years resolutions. You will make sure you do all the readings this term, and you will eat less (as I write this I’m munching my way through a chocolate orange, tell-ing myself that the sooner I eat the Christmas chocolate the sooner I can be healthy again).
In short, you will become super-human. But never the less, I’m up for something new. The Christian Union are holding ‘uncover week’ in the third week of term, where there will be lots of room for you to think, question and maybe even take on something new!
From 7-9pm on Monday 23rd January we are holding a live mu-sic night in ground, then at 1pm on Wednesday 25th a lunch in drapers room 2 accompanied by a ‘menu of conversations’ where we will eat together and discuss our views on questions ranging from ‘Mac or PC?’ to ‘is religion a force for good or evil?’.
On Thursday at 3pm we are hav-ing a talk on creationism - also in drapers room 2. Come along and uncover who Jesus was, what
Christians really believe and what that could mean for you.
‘What is this Christian Union?’ I hear you ask. Well we are a group open to any student at Queen Mary, and we want everyone to hear about Christianity and decide for themselves whether to respond to it. We meet every Thursday even-ing in the chaplaincy, 6.15-7.45pm, where we talk about the Bible, wor-ship God, and spend time socialis-ing together.
We also meet throughout the week for small groups at people’s flats or in cafes, where we catch up on the week and support each other. And from time to time you might see us around campus, we have special events ranging from
‘coffee and carols’ which we held in ground before Christmas to ‘Grill a Christian’, also coming up in un-cover week, where anyone can ask a panel of Christians any questions they would like to hear answered.
We really do welcome anyone from QM, and if you want to find out more check out our facebook group QMCU - Queen Mary Chris-tian Union or email [email protected].
We hope to see lots of you at our ‘uncover week’ events! All the events are open to anyone, and we would love you to come full of questions, ideas and that January feeling.
The Christian Union invite any and all Queen Mary students to join them for a variety of upcoming events Image courtesy of QMCU
Society in Spotlight: Christian Union
Finally, the READ naked calendar ready for sale! As a lot of you will know, last term I had the pleasure (or not in some cases!) of seeing 12 of the university’s clubs and societies naked. All in the name of char-ity, of course!
So, if you want to support your fellow students and feel good about yourself by doing a little bit for charity, buy a calen-dar!
They cost £8 and are available to buy from the Students’ Union website and can be collected from The Blomeley Cen-tre.
All the proceeds of the calendar go to the charity READ International which is a university led charity that sends old and disused secondary school textbooks to Tanzania.
The charity began in 2005 and to date they have sent over 1 million books. It never costs READ more than 50p to send a book and here at Queen Mary we have a dedicated group of volunteers that help to fundraise the money that is needed.
To raise the money needed we hold events throughout the year. Small events include book sales, cake sales, and tube raids; the big events include things such as the Naked calendar, and Jailbreak, which will be taking place at the end of this term. We also sort all the books we receive from local schools and organisa-tions so that we only send the most need-ed books out to Tanzania.
Zoe Shearing
READ Naked Calendar!
ways open to suggestion and adhere to a number-attendance policy. This means that if there is an event which the majority of members will attend, we make this a calendar event for the society.
In October 2011 we affiliated with the international event ‘The Battle of Ideas’ and arranged discounted tickets
for QMUL Philosophy Society members. The event gave our members an oppor-tunity to be involved in discussions with over 300
global speakers, with over 75 talks ranging from the arts, politics, and religion. Having gained media pass-es from the organisers of
this event, we were able inter-view speakers, and hope to in-
vite selected speakers to our meetings at Queen Mary in the coming months.
To maintain our friend-ly and relaxed atmosphere,
we organised a successful Christ-mas dinner, and will also be organis-ing an annual black tie event in the final term. We also look forward to an optional participation summer charity fete where all our proceedings will be donated to several charities decided upon by our members.
QMESSENGER MONDAY JANUARY 9 2012
Sport12
Hollie Carter
Ashleigh Jay
QM Snowsports club hit the slopes
The 8,000 mile road to the London 2012 Olympics
The Queen Mary snowsports club pose for a group photograph on the slopes. Image by Hollie Carter
During the Christmas holidays Queen Mary’s Snowsports club took sixty-five eager skiers and snowboarders to the French re-sort of Tignes. A distinct lack of snowfall in the weeks leading up to the trip had the committee mem-bers and trip goers worried alike. Checking the Tignes webcam ea-gerly anticipating snowfall became a regular part of the morning rou-tine and just a week before the trip it was looking like the snowsports members were in for a week of hik-ing and mountain biking as op-posed to skiing and boarding. But then the Gods took pity on us and good news finally came our way in the form, of the biggest snow-fall Tignes has ever experienced. In the space of a week the resort had 80% of lasts winters snowfall. From a barren wasteland, Tignes had been transformed into a snow-sports enthusiast’s heaven.
With the snow set, essays com-pleted and bags packed QM snow-sports were ready to set off on the mammoth twenty hour coach jour-ney to France. The coach journey proved itself to be a great warm up for the week ahead with a few light refreshments and the introduction of the classic car game, ‘I went to the supermarket and I bought...’ to entertain the masses. As we got nearer to the mountain resort ex-citement grew as the view from the coach window became, frozen lakes and cars engulfed in moun-tains of powdery white snow – it was clear to all onboard this was going to be an amazing week.
Conditions on the first day were fantastic, the previous week many of the lifts had been close due to the epic snowfall which meant that we were some of the first to expe-rience the incredible snow lad-en slopes. The powder was unlike anything most of us had ever ex-perienced and everyone was out hitting the slopes hard. The close of the day saw the resort plunged into darkness as Val Claret experi-enced a power cut. Whilst for some of us this posed problems cooking and showering, others were less fortunate and second team foot-ball player, Richard Treadwell, was forced to use all of his army
training to survive the hour long delay on a chairlift in minus 18C. This unfortunate end to the day was soon forgotten, however, as the revellers donned their togas and hit the bar harder than the slopes.
The next few days saw the snow-fall continue and on Tuesday many of the lifts were closed due to con-cerns of avalanches. This did lit-tle to stop our hardy Snowsports members however, as they braved blizzard conditions and poor visi-bility to make the most out of ev-ery run that was open.
Wednesday saw the return of the ever competitive ‘Valley Ral-
ly’ in which Queen Mary teams competed against Hull Universi-ty in a test of endurance, creativ-ity and adaptability. QM put up a valiant fight and bared all they could, but, on the day they were outperformed by Hull who were the eventual winners. The winning QM team, ‘Team Shola’ led the de-flated troops back to base and after some consolation jelly the teams were back to their winning ways on the dance floor.
On the final few days of the trip the snowfall stopped and the sun came out to provide us with con-ditions most of us had only ever dreamt of. The last night of the trip
saw the presentation of the Tignes 2011 awards. Awards included; Most improved awarded to begin-ner snowboarder TJ Johnson for his impressive performance on a challenging red slop and his in-ventive ‘on the stomach’ boarding technique which he adopted af-ter his board broke during the val-ley rally. The Party Pooper of the week award went to Adam ‘Drap-ers’ McDaid for his uncharacteris-tic refusal to join us on a night out, opting instead for a quiet night in! Finally special mention must be made to Trooper of the week
Lucy Allman who even after dif-ficult travel conditions and frus-trating accommodation arrange-ments, still persevered to make the most of the trip. This award is made even more pertinent giv-en the fact that Lucy unwittingly skied on a broken wrist all week after she headed calls for her to, ‘man up’ following an epic domino fall on the first night!
It was with heavy hearts on Fri-day afternoon, that we returned our ski hire, packed away our sa-lopettes and boarded the coach back to England, however, we did so with the knowledge that we had all experienced one of the best weeks of skiing and socialising ever imaginable. Tignes 2011 was an amazing week, thank you to ev-eryone who came and got involved. For those unfortunate enough to miss out on the trip, the Snows-ports club runs regular trips to the Milton Keynes snow dome and are looking to establish a competitive race team this year. For more info add us on Facebook: ‘QueenMary Snowsports’
Now that the 8,000 mile route that will see the Olympic torch snake it’s way around the British Isles has been revealed, the wide array of different torch bearers will all be undergoing in-tense physical training.
The route that the Olympic torch will take has finally been unveiled,
and what a route it is. With 1,018 des-tinations and 8,000 miles to cover, it is clear that this torch will not be get-ting a lot of rest. As tradition goes, the torch will be lit in Olympia and will be flown- presumably first class- here to England where the relay will really get underway.
Starting on the 19th of May 2012, the torch will begin at Land’s End and go on to take on the British Isles where
it will begin its 70 day marathon. The torch will brave the summits of Snow-donia, pay visit to the Angel of the North and even enjoy a stay in the Tow-er of London. And don’t be surprised to see the torch travelling in some-what unconventional means of trans-port, you can see the torch on zip wire, horseback and hot air balloon.
The torch will be passing through the hands of 8,000 carefully select-
ed torchbearers. Did you notice how there are 8,000 bearers to cover 8,000 miles? The east Londoners who de-signed the torch noticed this too which is why Edward Barber and Jay Osger-by decided to perforate 8,000 circles into the torch to represent those inspi-rational torchbearers who were chosen.
Each evening the torch will be wel-comed into a different town or city where it will enjoy celebrations and be
invited to stay the night. The torch will complete its final leg down the home straight of the river Thames and reach Stratford’s Olympic stadium on the 27th of July when the real race for gold can begin.
It has been claimed that the torch will reach within 10 miles of 95% of the population which gives you no excuse to cheer on the torch on its journey, un-less of course you are that unlucky 5%.