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Day: 23 April 2012

Iain Dale: ‘I can see there being a gay Prime Minister and people just not caring’

Written by Andrew Williams on . Posted in Opinion.

For Iain Dale, my arrival at his Westminster office on a typically hectic Tuesday lunchtime is, bluntly, something of an inconvenience – though perfectly understandable, given his hectic schedule. Having achieved notoriety as the man behind one of the most prominent Conservative blogs on the internet, Iain Dale’s Diary, he now heads Britain’s leading political publishing company by day, and hosts a talk show on London radio station LBC by night – somehow finding the time to ply his trade as an in-demand political commentator when he is off air.

Apologetic, and slightly flustered, he directs me towards his office where I wait with his engaging assistant, Grant Tucker, for the best part of an hour. “Iain is great for lazy journalists,” Grant explains. “They know that they can phone him up about any given issue and he will tell them exactly what he thinks.” My fears that this will be a rushed, guarded interview are well and truly allayed.

Dale’s philosophy was formed against the backdrop of economic turmoil bearing comparison with the dire straits of the present day. “My teenage years were in the late 1970s when this country was more or less bankrupt… there were lots of public sector strikes, our reputation in Europe was trashed… I remember going to Germany when I was 14 on a school exchange, and they just treated us like a joke. It was embarrassing to say you were British”. Though Dale recalls “going into my parents’ bedroom and explaining to them why they should vote Labour” as his earliest political memory, he would soon change his tune; by the time he enrolled as a student at the University of East Anglia, he identified himself as a dyed-in-the-wool Conservative.

As with so many budding politicos, university was the making of Iain Dale. Being a Conservative student in Thatcher’s Britain was hardly fashionable, and he quickly found student politics to be dominated by the left. He vividly recalls his indignation at the one-sidedness of what he characterises as “a debate between the hard left and the soft left” over the Falklands War. “I remember sitting there becoming increasingly irritated by this, and in the end I couldn’t stand it any longer and I got up and I said “this is outrageous, this is some kind of lefty wank-athon” – well I didn’t say that, but that’s what it was”.

Having been astonished to discover that there was no Conservative Society at UEA, he and a friend promptly formed one at the start of their second year. “We got more members than the Labour Party had and we started doing Students’ Union debates, we’d get Cabinet ministers coming down to do speeches, and I absolutely had the time of my life. I became a bit of a ‘personality’ at university – everyone knew who I was. It was probably then that I thought, yeah, I’d quite like to go into politics”.

Young, charismatic and ambitious, Dale was determined that he wanted to go into Parliament, but was concerned that he might be hindered by his sexuality. “My problem was at that point, when I decided that I would like to be an MP, and I was gay in the 1980s… that wasn’t exactly a good thing to be if you wanted to go into politics, whether you were on the left or the right. So I decided that really that couldn’t really happen”. It was not until 2002, when he was 40, that Dale finally decided the time was right for him to make his bid for Westminster – becoming the first openly gay Conservative Parliamentary candidate.

“That really proved to be my undoing in many ways, because if you’re the first to do anything you get a certain degree of notoriety and press coverage… so I was never described as ‘Iain Dale, the Conservative candidate for North Norfolk’, I was described as ‘Iain Dale, the openly gay candidate for North Norfolk’”. Dale’s result at the 2005 general election was, by his own admission, “pretty horrendous”, as his Liberal Democrat opponent secured a majority of over 10,000.

Undeterred, Dale sought a second bite at the cherry, and began his search for a constituency to stand in at the 2010 general election. Once again, he was thwarted. “Bracknell was the one that I thought I really could get, and I nearly did, but obviously that Mail article didn’t really help”. (In 2009, Dale took the Daily Mail to the Press Complaints Commission over an article which described him as “overtly gay”, commenting, “isn’t it charming how homosexuals rally like-minded chaps to their cause”. Remarkably, he lost the case.) “I went for a couple of others – one of them I completely fluffed the speech, so it was my own fault – but when it came down to it I thought, call it quits here… don’t spend the next five years of your life hankering after something that isn’t going to happen”.

Despite the Prime Minister personally contacting him to try to persuade him otherwise, at 49 Iain Dale has let go of his almost lifelong ambition to become a Member of Parliament, but not for the want of trying. At times, his sexuality might have held him back, but in truth a whole range of factors conspired against him; nonetheless, he believes he still made an impact.

“Looking back I do think it was an achievement that I was able to make a bit of a landmark… the Tory Party has I think almost eradicated [homophobia] as an issue… I mean I can see there being a gay Prime Minister and people just not sort of caring. There will always be people who are homophobic, there will always be people who are bigoted, but it changes as the generations change”.

And so to the current government, of which Dale says he is “a great supporter”. Having championed the Coalition from the outset, “any criticism I make of the Coalition now is through the prism of having been a complete cheerleader for it right from the beginning”, he explains. “I’ve always taken the view that Lib Dems have more in common with the Conservatives than they do with Labour, even if they don’t realise it sometimes”.

Indeed, Dale backed Andrew Lansley’s controversial NHS reforms. “It’s quite clear to me that the Health Service needs radical reform. Unfortunately it’s got to the point in this country where if you utter one word of criticism against it, you’re accused of trying to privatise it. We’re the only country where private medicine is considered to be a dangerously subversive thing… when you see statistics that 21% of GPs wouldn’t send their own families to the local hospital, 16% won’t even send their patients to the hospital, you have to think that there is something wrong with the system.”

Ultimately, though, Dale is unequivocal that the sole priority for this government must be the economy. “Absolutely, it’s the economy, stupid… if Ed Miliband believes that he can win an election on the NHS, he’s delusional. In the end, people at the next election are going to… look ahead and say, what is this government going to do for me over the next five years, and how much money have I got in my pocket?”

As for the beleaguered Labour leader, Dale is at first reluctant to put the boot in. “In some ways I’m quite a fan of Ed Miliband. I interviewed him four years ago and in one of the few predictions I’ve ever got right – I interviewed him and his brother in a feature for GQ comparing the two – the conclusion was that Ed had what it took to be leader and maybe David didn’t. At that point I got slightly derided for it, so when Ed won I thought well, fuck you!”

Why is he failing so abjectly to connect with the public, then? “His problem is that he looks twelve. I won’t say it’s purely an appearance thing, but I always give politicians the Number 10 doorstep test – can you imagine them on the doorstep of Number 10 after an election, waving to the crowds, doing their ‘where there is discord, may we bring harmony’ speech, and the answer is with Ed Miliband I can’t – people can’t imagine him as Prime Minister in the same way that people couldn’t imagine Neil Kinnock as Prime Minister”.

On the whole, Dale is quite satisfied with the course that the Prime Minister is taking, almost two years into his time in office. Whilst he is somewhat dismissive of David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ – seemingly his pet project, yet “frankly, just a reflection of what society has done for donkey’s years” – he is convinced that there are fundamental, endemic problems at the very root of British society. “When there are council estates with 80% unemployment, where you have successive generations without a job, where you have successive generations of families going to prison, clearly that part of society is broken. Now at least this government is actually trying to do something about it”.

As our time together draws to a close, I return to the subject of Dale’s own career. Just as his breathtaking Westminster workplace is political at every turn – his office is plastered with monuments to Thatcher, from the imposing ten-foot-high portrait of The Iron Lady that adorns one wall, to the framed letter from her thanking him for hosting a dinner – Iain Dale is, unashamedly, political to his fingertips. Despite everything he has achieved, does he not harbour some regret about his failure to achieve the political ambitions he harboured for so long?

On the one hand, he is malcontent. “I can’t actually affect change doing what I do, or very rarely…. you can have a bit of influence at the margins, but I’m not sure how you can quantify that”. However, he reflects that his lifestyle is far preferable to that of the politician. “As I sit here today, I’ve got a radio show where I can speak to several hundred thousand people a day, I’ve got a business which I enjoy running, I look at the lives that my friends who are MPs lead – most of them hate it, they feel they have no influence at all, they’re just used as lobby fodder. I mean, I don’t know what influence I have but I can certainly talk to more people about what I think about something doing what I do now than I ever could if I were a politician”.

UK to tap into Iceland’s volcanic energy in European Supergrid

Written by Aryan Safavi on . Posted in News, Science & Tech.

A monumental energy project which uses green power from across the continent, could develop between the UK and Iceland. The two countries are set for talks over receiving energy from Iceland’s geothermal ‘volcano-power’.

The country, famous for its volcanoes and geysers, has used heat from the Earth’s core to become a world leader in geothermal energy and could soon supply the UK through a planned North Atlantic cable. The project would power UK homes as part of a European Supergrid, connecting green energy sources from across the continent: wind, wave and hydro-electric from North Europe; solar power from Southern Europe and North Africa; and geothermal energy from Iceland.

The UK government is searching for economic and carbon friendly solutions to replace British reliance on the dwindling North Sea oil production and, recently banned, polluting coal power plants. The energy minister Charles Hendry is “very keen” on the idea and will visit Iceland in May to discuss the UK tapping into the abundance of geothermal energy that the country boasts. He claims that “we will be dependent on imported energy” in the future and that the cables “are an absolutely critical part of energy security and for low carbon energy”.

Interconnector cables are high voltage power cables that link electricity grids, in this case Iceland with the UK’s National Grid. At around 1,500km long and at a depth of 3km, passing through a North Atlantic split in the Earth crust, the project would be the longest and one of the most ambitious interconnectors in the world.

The UK currently has access to two of these interconnectors, with France and Holland, and a further nine more currently in planning for the next decade. This could meet a third of annual UK energy demand and link into a Europe-wide Supergrid.

In autumn 2012 a Wales-Ireland interconnector is due to be completed, to exploit the green energy from the wind-battered west Ireland coast for the UK energy market.

Furthermore, a 900km interconnector to access Norway’s lakes is expected in 2019. Excess wind energy produced in the UK could be stored for later use, by pumping water up to storage lakes above the Scandinavian fjords during times of low demand. Thus providing hydro-electric power when the water is allowed to fall and spin a turbine during peak demand times, losing minimal energy in the high-voltage cable and pump. However, Hendry is “keen we should be first” as Germany are also in competition for the sought after Scandinavian capacity to store energy.

The European Supergrid would address the key problem of intermittency for wind power, the UK’s major renewable energy source. When there is insufficient wind energy and high demand, we can tap into green energy from sources such as Spain, Iceland or Norway. Then any wind energy surplus can be sold to European countries suffering from excessive demand.

Initial high investment is needed as the UK-Holland interconnector cost £500m. Favourably, the construction can be as fast as 30km a day, using 800 tonnes of copper per kilometre of cable. No irksome subsidy is needed as the running costs of such interconnector projects are taken from a cut of electricity profits.

The key benefit championed by proponents of such a project is the variety it offers. This is said to ensure that carbon emission goals can be met, as green energy from some source will be readily available. Also the variety of the energy sources from Europe is expected to keep prices competitive as the cheapest option available at any time can be chosen. Moreover energy security can be bolstered, seeing the tentative relationship between Europe and Russia’s gas hegemony become less critical and dangerous.

But however economic, green and secure this attractive and slowly growing Supergrid is, at an estimated €100m, current European austerity suggests we can’t abandon the fossil fuels just yet.

Mac attack

Written by Leah Wong on . Posted in News, Science & Tech.

Malware has infected an estimated 600,000 Apple computers. The software is unknowingly installed when computer users visit malicious websites and can give hackers control of the computer.

Apple computers have traditionally been seen as more resilient when it comes to viruses but this claim has been challenged by the recent attacks on Mac systems.

Apple has released a security update that will remove “the most common variants” of the malware. The company is also working with internet providers to remove the websites which infect users’ computers with the malicious software.

Some experts believe the Apple response to the malware infection has been too slow. The security update was released a whole eight weeks after Java producers Oracle released their own solution to the malware problem. Other software development companies had also released their own solutions before Apple’s security update.

Rik Ferguson, head of security research and communication at internet security company Trend Micro, said: “Security updates issued by Apple are issued too slowly and not on any regular schedule”. He believes that because Mac computers are being increasingly targeted by hackers, Apple should be more aware of this and respond accordingly.

The malware, known as Flashback, can be used to steal passwords and other sensitive information when users browse the internet. On 6th April 2012, Dr. Web from Russian based anti-virus producers Norton believed that there were 600,000 Mac computers affected by Flashback. Norton thinks this has now more than halved to 270,000.

Another Russian anti-virus firm, Kaspersky Lab, had problems with their update to tackle Flashback. Users could have been left with deleted settings, which controlled things like configurations and file sharing. This problematic software has since been pulled with the intention of re-release when the bug is fixed.

New funding award for Manchester nuclear power

Written by Leah Wong on . Posted in News, Science & Tech.

The Universities of Manchester and Sheffield have been awarded £4m by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for nuclear research. The joint venture will investigate future possibilities for nuclear power in the UK.

The New Nuclear Build and Manufacturing (NNUMAN) programme was proposed in response to a House of Lord’s Science Committee report, which found that the UK is at risk of not being able to produce energy from nuclear sources. This is due to what the report claimed was insufficient research and development in this country.

The programme looks to develop a nuclear power supply to provide energy, not only to the UK but abroad too, using a new generation of power stations.  Once designed, the prototype power stations will be tested at the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (Nuclear AMRC) and the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) to investigate their potential for widespread use.

NNUMAN also aims to further the expertise of scientists and engineers in this country using the most advanced research technologies and by keeping close ties to industry. By doing this they hope to fill the expected need for highly skilled employees in the next generation of industry.

The focus of the scheme is advancing the manufacturing technology in the UK, both through research and development and through educating the best scientists and engineers from around the world to use the new nuclear technology.

Programme director Mike Burke said: ”This programme grant is a foresighted investment that will enable the pursuit of new and more efficient manufacturing technologies while maintaining the standards of reliability and safety that are expected in the nuclear industry”.

“It also represents an exciting opportunity for our next generation of scientists and engineers to develop state-of-the-art understanding of new processes and product performance.”

Professor Andrew Sherry, the director of the university’s Dalton Nuclear Institute, believes the programme is beneficial for the future of nuclear research in the UK: “Innovation in manufacturing technology for new nuclear builds offers the UK a real growth opportunity. We are delighted that NNUMAN will now be the research engine that drives this forward”.

Manchester student starts up music video production company

Written by Scott McEwan on . Posted in News.

A student studying at the University of Manchester has set up her own music video production company. Kati Jägel, reading Film studies at Manchester, decided to launch Kati Jägel productions, making music videos for local artists in the North West, in response to the difficult and overly competitive jobs market in the media and entertainment industry.

“I was trying to find a job and work experience last year and it was really hard to find even unpaid work experience in film and TV and in the arts in general…it’s really difficult unless you know somebody” Kati said.

“So I thought if they don’t want to employ me then I’ll go it alone and do what I want to do.”

Kati swiftly registered her company and by the start of 2011 had taken on her first commission for a local band.

“I was terrified for my first music video. It was new years eve 2010 and I was celebrating in a hotel and there was a band playing downstairs and I thought it was the best time to start the rest of my life so I offered to shoot a video of the band performing live.”

“By that point I hadn’t filmed any videos, though I told the band I had, but since I didn’t have any previous work to show them I offered to film them for free. They agreed and it went well.”

Kati has created the business from very little initial investment whilst taking on a lot of the work herself, thus limiting her exposure to any major risk of financial loss. She also relies heavily on cost-free word of mouth, networking and social media advertising to drum up work.

“People think it costs you something to start a company, but it actually doesn’t especially if your selling a service and don’t need an office space.”

“I use social media such as Facebook for advertising as well as a lot of websites that focus on free advertising like Gumtree and also with anybody I work with, I promote them and they promote me…making as many contacts as possible is important.”

Currently in her third year of her undergraduate degree, Kati believes that while her degree is appropriate for her line of work she finds it only partially applicable to the practical nature of her craft, relying on the work experiences she’s gained in the past.

“Screen studies is more theoretical which I can apply to making videos by way of shot composition but before I made my first film I’d only held a camera maybe once or twice. I’ve only had one practical module…and I didn’t even film that much because I was afraid of the camera.”

“However, I worked as a runner on an independent film production where I learned everything about lighting and directing because I was stood next to the director the whole time.”

With increasing interest in her services, Kati has invested in her own cameras and lights to use in production. She has ambitions for the company to become her living by building expertise and reputation whilst studying for her post-graduate degree in 2013. You can take a look at her work at www.manchester-video-production.co.uk.

 

Invisible Children – a visible business?

Written by stefan zone on . Posted in News.

Kony 2012 and Cover the Night, a chance for students to fulfill a desire to get involved in a campaign for justice. Spurred on by thoughts of the uprisings in the Arab Spring, the coming together of individuals with a common cause and purpose to make a difference and change the world. With what was to be considered the historic night of activism on April 20th, last Friday, the Business and Finance page of The Mancunion decided to look further into the funding of this charity, which has come under so much scrutiny over the past weeks.

Students across the world have made considerable donations to the cause. With the pricing schemes for the various forms of donations including $10 for a bracelet, $30 for an action kit box and $30 for a t-shirt, all excluding shipping costs. But will students see results from their donations?

As a charitable organization, Invisible Children (creator of the campaign) publishes its accounts publicly. Increasing skepticism has mounted however, as the funds generated from the Kony 2012 campaign are currently unpublished, causing further controversy. What allocation are people on the ground receiving towards the capture of Kony? How is the money being used, to enable the devastated children and families affected to recover? Will the funds be spent on further advertising, lobbying and media? Is this charitable model acceptable?

Previous expenses were published at almost $9m and these funds were spent on a variety of aspects within the group, of which much is criticised, particularly the high percentage on wages.

This ambiguity behind supposedly public financial reports led to many questions and doubts; not only regarding the efficiency, but also whether this is a sufficient business model through which to combat the problem. In this regard only time and much needed transparency will tell.

Blind date: Alex and Rosa

Written by Lily Howes on . Posted in Lifestyle.

Alex, Medicine, Fourth year

 

What were your expectations for the evening?

I was determined to fall head over heels in love with the girl of my dreams! Sick of constantly choosing the wrong girl, I decided to let the forces of fate do a better job…

 

First impressions?

Well hello there 😉 Fate 1 – 0 Alex

 

What did you talk about?

Rosa’s undying passion for mathematics, her ambition to become a firewoman (?!?), Rosa’s hometown (Newcastle), school days (Rosa is a muscical prodigy, but very modest about it), my love-hate relationship with medicine, jobs, hobbies, student life, future plans… All beautifully accompanied by a side order of my lame jokes which mostly dropped like a lead balloon, oops! But it was lovely chatting with Rosa.

 

Best thing about them?

She wants to play dress up as a firefighter, slide down a pole and is fantastic with a hose. What more does a man want?

 

What did you eat?

Given that Rosa is Vegetarian (Or pescatarian so I was corrected) I naturally opted for the steak with sweet potato chips (The food was actually well above

par). We had sticky toffee pudding and a cocktail afterwards – I offered to seductively spoon feed a blackberry into her mouth, which didn’t go down particularly well. Oh well, points for effort?

 

Any awkwardness?

When sipping on her cocktail Rosa commented that the straw was too small to suck on. I desperately held back the urge to throw in a crude joke… She also seemed to walk reeeeally fast and didn’t look at me on the way home… Perhaps I was stalking her :S

 

How did you part ways? (Mouth-to-mouth action/heavy petting/friendly hug?)

I got the impression she was in a hurry to leave *sob, sob*. I walked her back towards her friend’s house (Safety measure in case I turned out to be a serial killer perhaps?). We parted at the train station with a friendly hug and a little peck (I was aiming for the lips of course, but miscalculated and landed it somewhere between her ear and hair. Must work on my aim).

 

Out of 10?

Approximately 7.111111 recurring. Rosa is a pretty girl, lovely company, I just didn’t feel enough “spark”. I’m still searching for love sadly.

 

Would you see them again?

Certainly – as friends. Which is a shame as I had the engagement ring, floral display (Which I’d already given her at the beginning of the date), and horse & carriage already booked – I spent the whole of the next day cancelling it. She added me on Facebook, so that’s a good result.

 

 

 

Rosa, Maths, Fourth year

 

What were your expectations for the evening?

Good conversation, a bit of a laugh and a tasty free meal.

 

First impressions?

OMG he bought flowers!

 

What did you talk about?

Cities, long words, unusual career ambitions, student stereotypes, nightmare housemates, emigrating, music and making music, lots of stuff.

Best thing about them?

Really easy to talk to.

 

What did you eat?

I had a falafel burger with a couple of glasses of wine, then sticky toffee pudding and finished with a lush cocktail (milked the whole free food and drinks thing). He had steak which he kept worrying would offend me since I’m veggie…..it didn’t.

 

Any awkwardness?

Not much apart from the whole ‘sorry about the steak’ thing. We managed to keep the conversation going throughout the evening with minimal awkward silences I think

How did you part ways? (Mouth-to-mouth action/heavy petting/friendly hug?)

We walked into town together where he got the tram and I went to meet a friend

Out of 10?

6

Would you see them again?

I think it’s unlikely seeing as he lives a bit outside manchester and doesn’t come in that often, also we didn’t have much in common and didn’t swap numbers.

 

 

Alex and Rosa ate at The Deaf Institute, Grosvenor Street, Manchester. Thanks to the guys down at Grosvenor Street for getting involved. To check out their menu, gig listings and have a look at what club nights are coming up visit their website www.thedeafinstitute.co.uk

To sign up for blind date please e mail your name, year of study and course [email protected] with ‘blind date’ as the subject

‘The Dread of the Vagina in King Lear’ & other bonkers book titles

Written by Lily Howes on . Posted in Lifestyle.

We come to university because of our desire for knowledge, to educate and culture ourselves – it has nothing to do with wanting to escape our parents and drink away our futures, obviously – but in all the prospectus’ and on all the open days, a vital piece of information is kept from us: most of what we learn is bloody boring. Instead of being honest with us, professors and scholars alike sugar coat mind numbingly dull topics with “witty” and often bizarre book, chapter and module titles to trick us into choosing them. Granted, this technique manifests more frequently in humanities subjects. But all it comes down to is the addition of a poor pun, a bit of alliteration or the dramatic use of a semi colon. Here’s a pick of the best:

Bone Voyage: a journey in forensic anthropology – ancient historians can be funny, who knew?

Excitable cells – first year life sciences module about cells that are activated by different stimuli. Exciting by name, but certainly not by nature (well, technically it is nature but yeah)

Getting the Scoop from the Poop of T. Rex – Science News journal on the digestive habits of the Tyrannosaurus Rex

From Jamestown to James Brown – American Studies classic

Hip Hop and Hollywood – another American Studies module, not a documentary on MTV

Pagans, Priests and Power – enthralling

From Blitz to Big Society – what started as ‘Blitz to Blair’ was amended to ‘Blitz to Brown’ and has now reached ‘Blitz to Big Society’, that’s dedication to alliteration

Falstaff and Gandalf go to the movies – that’s an unexpected date night

Sex, drugs and shopping – based on inter-war Britain it’s not as exciting as it sounds

Stage fright, animals and other theatrical problems – a book actually found in my loan history

The trouble with men – says it all

Her husband was a woman: women’s gender-crossing in modern British popular culture – prime example of the irrelevant and dramatic use of the semi colon

And finally… “The Dark and Vicious Place”: The Dread of the Vagina in King Lear

Ask Keir: Hangovers

Written by Keir Stone-Brown on . Posted in Lifestyle.

Ask Keir is a column aiming to answer all your health questions. If you want to know about that funny looking lump that won’t go away, why that student doctor keeps poking you or anything at all to do with health get in touch at: [email protected]

All questions will of course be kept confidential and anonymous.

 

Question of the Week

After a heavy night out I get unbelievably bad hangovers and my housemates always end up moaning about me moaning about them. Do any of these hangover remedies like raw eggs and sugary drinks work?

Hangovers are the bane of many a students life and when you’ve got a lecture at 9am and you’re trying to rise yourself against the copious amounts of alcohol you consumed the night before they can be positively rotten. But what are they?

Well like lots of things in life we are not entirely sure but there are a few certainties. Alcohol is a diuretic and what we mean by that is it causes your body to expel water faster than normal thus why many of us need to go to the toilet more regularly on a night out. That in turn causes us to become dehydrated giving you that dry mouth and banging headache when you wake up in the morning. The nausea and vomiting are most likely caused by alcohol irritating the lining of your stomach. Then to top it off getting in at 4am and having four hours sleep gives rise to a morning in hell.

Not drinking is the best form of preventing hangovers… but let’s be realistic. Here’s my three step plan to making mornings after the night before that little bit more bearable.

  1. Eat Toast – After a night out binging blood sugar levels are low and replacing can help restore them to normal levels. So get a piece of toast down you before you go to bed.
  2. Drink Water – As I said above dehydration is one of the main culprits so alleviate it by drinking a pint of water when walking through the door.
  3. Take Paracetamol – Wake up and take one with some water and it will help you through the toughest part of the day. Avoid ibuprofen and aspirin as these will irritate your stomach lining that has already been abused.

Other than that most other remedies have limited use or are only psychosomatic (don’t underestimate this though, if it makes you feel better it’s worth using). Interestingly there is some science to that old adage ‘hair of the dog’ as your body starts prioritising breaking down the fresh alcohol rather than the toxic metabolites that cause some of the problems.

If you are tempted to try this out Hemingway reportedly swore by tomato juice mixed with beer… yuck! But of course if or when you do stop drinking the hangover will kick in and the long road to recovery will begin.

Black youth unemployment in the UK higher than in the US

Written by Solomon Radley on . Posted in News.

Unemployment among black young people in Britain is significantly higher than in America, research from the University of Manchester has found.

Professor Yaojun Li, who analysed responses from 4.7 million people to the most authoritative social surveys in the two countries, found that during the last three recessions unemployment among black British men was up to 19 percentage points higher than in America.

Unemployment among black women was also found to be consistently higher in Britain than in America.

He said, “Overall, there is greater ethnic inequality in Britain than in the USA for both sexes.

“This gives a fairly strong indication that the flexible labour market policies adopted in Britain in the last few decades did not protect the minority ethnic groups against the repercussions of recessions.”

He claimed that America’s affirmative action programme and federal procurement policy, requiring public institutions to have staff compositions representative of the population, had helped reduce the unemployment rate among black people there.

Professor Li also found that Great Britain was a more unequal society than the US. The gap in employment between men and women, and between old and young, is greater in Britain than in America.

“This may be due to the fact that in Britain the mid 1980s and the early 1990s recessions were accompanied and exacerbated by a process of deindustrialization and restructuring of the economy, and by the retrenchment of the state, which happened much more abruptly in Britain than in the USA,” he said.

“The much-vaunted flexible labour market does not seem to have solved the problem of stimulating economic activity and unleashing human creativity. As amply shown in the analysis, the so-called flexible labour market in Britain was not actually all that good at evening out the peaks and troughs, let alone in protecting the most vulnerable social groups.

“The overall smaller social inequalities in the USA, with particular regard to gender and ethnicity, suggest that the affirmative action programme in the USA did play a positive role in protecting the vulnerable groups, in comparison with the British data.”

Professor Li spoke about his fears for the future, and about how the planned government cuts may affect social equality in the UK.

“The current recession has already taken its toll with nearly three million being unemployed and a similar number being inactive. Yet, worse is still to come. As a large proportion of the disadvantaged group, particularly black people, tend to find employment in the public sector, if they can find a job at all, the current Coalition Government’s stringency plan to cut public sector employment is most likely to hit the most vulnerable groups even harder,” he said.

“Economic cycles are largely beyond the control of individuals, families and even national governments. The three recessions in the last 40 years in the two archetypical liberal economies have all claimed victims by penalising the most vulnerable groups, in both countries and those just entering the labour market.

“The overall disadvantages were more salient in Britain than in the USA, suggesting that the flexible labour market policies adopted by the British government failed to protect the most vulnerable groups and that the affirmative action programmes helped reduce minority ethnic disadvantages in the USA.”

 

Late Manchester peace activist has journals published

Written by Rachel Heward on . Posted in News.

A peace activist and photographer who was killed by an Israeli soldier in the Gaza Strip eight years ago has had a collection of his photos, poems and journal entries published.

Tom Hurndall, who studied photojournalism at Manchester Metropolitan University, last month had his work published in a book titled ‘The Only House Left Standing: The Middle East Journals of Tom Hurndall’.

The book contains a foreword by well-regarded veteran journalist Robert Fisk.

James Powell from publisher Trolley Books said, “the personal writings, poems and photography which survive him are an intimate and inspirational window into his efforts to make sense of the conflicts around him”.

Sean O’Hagan, a journalist for the Guardian, has described the journals as “a mixture of reportage and citizen journalism of the most intense kind; a visual record of struggle and conflict left by someone who comes across as extraordinarily committed and fearless.”

Wednesday 11th April marked the 8th anniversary of Hurndall’s shooting. His ties to Manchester remain strong and he is commemorated by an annual lecture hosted by MMU.