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Month: February 2014

Pakistan and Islamic societies hold week to ‘tackle misconceptions’

In a bid to challenge stereotypes of the Pakistani community and culture, the University of Manchester’s Pakistan society have launched ‘Pakistan Week’, this week.

According to Emad Hanif, current president of the society, the week aims to “tackle misconceptions”.

Pakistan Week will have various activities, ranging from a live concert, debate on government policy to a football tournament.

A member of the society said, “The Pakistan society have so many negative misconceptions, from poverty, extremism, corruption that it makes this week necessary.

“We want to show we are as welcoming as anyone else. We have a live music concert on Monday for free which will showcase Pakistani culture and will also host performances from other societies.”

Next week, the Islamic society will also launch ‘Community Week’ to raise money for a Children’s Oncology Unit and to promote what Islam has to offer to the community.

Organisers of Community Week,  Zubair Ahmad and Roheen Khan,  said: “The Islamic society launched Community Week to promote ISoc activities on campus and to promote integration in the wider Manchester community.”

The event will have a marquee set up outside university place all week to give people a chance to talk to ISoc members and raise money for charity. The money raise will go to cancer research and treatment.

They believed this event was necessary to address misconceptions about Muslim students on campus and around the UK. They hope people will integrate in ISoc better after this event and has been described as a “long term project” to tackle problems that society members face.

Pakistan Week and Community come at a time when there has been an unprecedented rise in xenophobia and Islamophobia (anti-Muslim prejudice) within the UK. Tell Mama, a group which monitors anti-Muslim incidents, has reported that the number of anti-Muslim incidents are expected to rise to 1,000 by the end of March.

The full agenda of both Pakistan Week and Community Week can be found on the societies’ official Facebook pages.

Three women injured in Baa Bar assault

Two women have been left with broken jaws and one with a broken nose after an attack outside Baa Bar.

One of the women was also knocked unconscious during the attack.

A group of women and men were assaulted in a taxi outside the bar in Fallowfield, at around 3a.m. on Saturday 22nd February.

The men allegedly attempted to get into the taxi with the group, and became violent when they refused to let them in. The men had previously been refused entry to Baa Bar.

An offender assaulted one of the women inside the taxi, leaving her unconscious. When other members of the group tried to intervene, they too were attacked by the men.

Of the five people who were assaulted, one woman was left with a broken jaw and extensive face swelling, while another suffered a suspected broken jaw. A third woman suffered a broken nose and the two men were left with cuts.

The offenders then left the scene and started up Wilbraham road, where one member smashed a window with a metal pole.

Detective Sergeant Gareth Davies, said, “Grown men attacking women with such violence and in such an unprovoked manner is particularly unpalatable and a completely cowardly act and we are working hard to identify the men responsible.

“Three of them – all women – have suffered particularly nasty injuries.

“I want to reassure the public that we are following a number of lines of enquiry but if anyone has any information that can help our investigation we would be keen to hear from you.”

Anyone who witnessed the attack, or has any other information are urged to call the police on 0161 856 4423, or Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111

 

Facebook: the new King Maker

At the beginning of this month Facebook celebrated its 10th anniversary, but while celebrations where in order for Mark Zuckerberg and co, human rights activists and political journalists alike had other concerns regarding the social media behemoth. They attempted, in vain, to raise awareness of the site’s role and responsibilities as a modern day history maker. Rather than congratulations, the occasion was met instead with a resurgence of criticisms volleyed at the social media site for its deletion of pages and posts associated with human rights groups.

Such criticisms originally peaked in 2012, when Facebook was forced to apologise for the deletion of a post discussing human rights breaches in Syria. The deletion was justified as being in line with Facebook’s cyber-bullying policies, after their complaints centre was bombarded by objections labelling the post as offensive. In fact, the post was a link to the Human Rights Watch website which had just exposed the use of torture centres by Syrian Intelligence Services.

Despite the controversy, this year has seen the deletion of entire human rights pages, such as the Kafranbel Media Centre, the Daraa al-Mahata Local Coordination Committee and the London-based Syrian Network for Human Rights. Besides documenting the conflict in Syria, such pages are a crucial means for human rights activists to catalogue evidence for war crime trials in a theoretical post-Assad Syria. In a heavily censored country, they provide some of the most truthful depictions of the Syrian conflict.

Yet many such pages are deleted overnight without warning. Where warning is given, only a short time limit is provided to remove or edit the posts, which, in a country without reliable broadband connection, usually means information will be lost forever.

Of course this is no grand conspiracy by Facebook; the pro-Assad Syrian Electronic Army has claimed ‘credit’ for the latest in what is an on-going series of cyber-war tactics. Such tactics also include the hacking and destruction of human rights pages, typically through viral software and the flooding of comment sections of prominent media websites. The Guardian, CNN and the Atlantic, to name but a few, have all recently seen their comments pages flooded with pro-Assad support, preventing criticisms from being expressed or highlighted. Where the Internet was once the strongest tool of dissidence for activists, it too has become a point of territorial dispute.

Today then, Facebook is playing the same role as the printing press of bygone times. But despite the insistence that with the help of social media anyone’s voice can be heard, providing the potential for history to be written by the victims as opposed to the victors, the Facebook scandal has demonstrated that this is not as simple as we presume. Even when an individual or a group can create pages, it appears that thanks to the deletion of content we don’t always get the intended picture. In this respect it seems more accurate to describe Facebook as the unintended editors of history, deleting parts of the truth and in some instances preventing entire stories from ever being heard.

Facebook, therefore, finds itself in a surprising position of power, arguably one which is a far stretch for a company which started its humble origins as the appearance rating website, Facemash.

But perhaps this is not an entirely unpredictable outcome. Facebook creator and CEO Zuckerberg has always said the dream of Facebook was to be far more than just a company. In a personal letter to potential investors, Zuckerberg suggested that his ambition was to give people a voice through Facebook, in doing so transforming society and encouraging progress.

Through this liberal disposition, Facebook is now both a modern warzone and a modern history maker. Yet the cyber-bullying policies in place are proving woefully inadequate to deal with the responsibility of effectively policing a complex arena of debate.

Although most would argue that this is an unfair pressure to place on the shoulders of a social media site, even a goliath like Facebook, ultimately this is a self-inflicted responsibility. A better claim then perhaps is that it is unfair for Facebook not to make good on its promise to provide a voice to the oppressed. The quote from Spiderman’s uncle Ben springs to mind that “with great power comes great responsibility”.

Either way, the question of whether or not it is right or wrong for Facebook, or any social media site, to have such a responsibility is now irrelevant. The invitation of a haven for free speech has already been extended to and accepted by activists and individuals all over the world. And despite the warnings of charitable NGOs such as the Canadian SecDev Foundation as to the dangers of relying on Facebook, it is obvious to see why people still choose to do so. After all, few human rights websites have captivated a global audience estimated at over 600 million users.

Perhaps then it is time for Facebook to step up and to start working more closely with human rights groups and official institutions, such as the UN, to ensure that such precious information and pieces of history cannot be lost. For although Facebook now has the power to make history, no institution or company should ever have the power to edit history, least of all at the click of a button.

I experienced Twitter abuse first hand

Last week I was subject to twitter abuse, or trolling as it is also known, for standing up against something that I believe is wrong – street harassment. I’m an avid supporter of the feminist campaign The Everyday Sexism Project, which started out as a blog and Twitter account where men and women could post their experiences of everyday sexism, from things such as people buying only pink or blue toys for new-born babies, to being sexually assaulted. What sparked the storm of twitter abuse I received was a tweet to the project discussing how I hate being beeped and whistled at when walking down the street.

Recently, trolling seems to be becoming a far too normal part of our society, particularly surrounding feminist campaigns. Two years ago, British diver Tom Daley was abused on Twitter after he lost out in a diving event. Last year saw Labour MP Stella Creasy and campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez become victims of rape and death threats due to their fight to keep inspirational women on bank notes.

The abuse I received wasn’t as horrific or violent as that received by others – but it still was an experience that made me feel uncomfortable and unhappy. When I received the first unpleasant tweet, my reaction was to just ignore it, thinking it will go away, and so that’s what I did. Unfortunately I was wrong, and the tweets got worse throughout the day. Each time my phone buzzed with a notification from Twitter I felt sick, and started to think about deleting my account even though I knew that wasn’t really the solution. I left my account as it was, and didn’t delete the tweet that had attracted the trolling, but by the end of the day I was emotionally exhausted.

I think Twitter is a brilliant platform for engaging in discussions in an intelligent way with others about issues. You may or may not agree with others’ perspectives, but I am often happy to engage in such things. If the trolls had sent tweets questioning how I feel about street harassment, I would have been keen to discuss – but I’m not willing to engage with abuse.
Social media, and Twitter, have become a crucial part of our everyday lives but, like everything, there are always going to be people who abuse them, and use them to abuse others, and this is something we can’t ignore. Ignoring the problem does not solve it, and so as I was being trolled on Twitter, I continued to retweet the many messages of support I got from others who agreed that street harassment isn’t acceptable, and that criticizing it is certainly not something worthy of abuse.

Ignoring sexism doesn’t solve the problem of it either, and this is why campaigns such as the Everyday Sexism Project and No More Page 3 are so important. If you haven’t already, have a read of the Everyday Sexism Project blog, and I dare you to tell me feminism isn’t important after that. Slowly but surely, feminism is being taken seriously again.
However, for many it still has negative connotations of bra burning and man hating, and what makes me particularly sad is that many women still see feminism in a negative light. Feminism is like any movement; the people who support it never have exactly the same ideas about it, but they’re fighting for the same united cause.

The blog scousebirdproblems.com doesn’t seem to think the same. The writer of this blog wrote a post last week entitled ‘Modern Feminism vs Everyday Sexism’, in which she decided to make an example of me by print screening and posting my tweet to the Everyday Sexism Project about street harassment – “this is another example of feminism gone wrong.”
One of the things my experience has taught me is that we need to focus on changing women’s attitudes towards other women in terms of feminism. The Scouse Bird Problems blog is a perfect example of how detrimental women’s attitudes can be for other women. Claiming to be a feminist and yet insulting other women based on their looks and the things that they do – or complain about – is itself anti-feminist.

As feminists, we should fight for women to be valued for more than just their appearance, and to be viewed as more than just objects, and I personally think that the writer devalues other women by focusing on these things too much. So next time you disagree with another feminist’s views, think about how to be critical in a constructive way, and understand that without solidarity, it will be even more difficult to reach the end goal we all aspire to: equality.

My Political Villain: Tony Blair

We might not remember it, beyond Mini Milks and the Teletubbies, but for the generation before ours the spring of ’97 heralded the end of a long, dark Tory winter that had lasted for almost two decades. Out of the shadows had sprung a bright-eyed Labour leader. The youngest Prime Minister since 1812 – his hair was still brown – and in touch with the people, Tony Blair promised a bright future for a population whose discomfort with the declining state had reached boiling point. Promising a minimum wage, human rights and a new, honest, people’s government, the possibilities seemed endless for Britain.

It all started off so well. In his first term, Tony signed the Good Friday agreement, ending decades of violence in Northern Ireland, equalised the age of consent for homosexual sex, introduced the Human Rights Act as promised and, thankfully, steered us away from the Euro. Tony seemed to be the purveyor of liberal sense that he had promised in his campaign.
It wasn’t all peachy, though. It was in this term that Blair granted independence for the Bank of England, to much praise from the financial leadership in London, who the party had courted much support from during the 1990s. While accompanied by the maintenance of Conservative expenditure estimates for two years, this seemed to be an indicator of fiscal prudence. However, it was the first in a long line of fiscal policies and deregulation that culminated in one of the deepest recessions the country has ever faced. Conveniently, this occurred after Tony left office.

It was in his second term that things rapidly started spiralling downwards for this particular right hon. True, we should have seen what was coming. While in opposition, Labour had heavily criticised the Conservatives’ slow movement over Bosnia. In his first term, Blair had given the speech that established the now-infamous ‘Blair doctrine’ for international intervention, which explained his rapid and award-winning movement into the civil wars of both Kosovo and Sierra Leone.

However, it was his involvement in the ‘War on Terror’ that has come to define Blair as a Prime Minister and a political villain. Despite being faced with one of the largest protests in British history, attended by up to 400,000 people, Blair decided to join the US in invading Iraq in 2003 on the basis of questionable evidence of WMDs. This, coupled with his earlier entry into Afghanistan, led to Blair becoming known as George W. Bush’s ‘poodle’, which is a deep insult to poodles the world over. The relationship was so appreciated in the US that Blair one several national awards.

This unpopular action, alongside the somewhat shadowy behaviour that accompanied it, came to define Blair’s governmental tactics over his remaining years in office. Since resigning, Blair has raked in funds from speaking engagements and has become an apparent expert on the Middle East.

Just this week, however, the legacies of his time in office have hit the headlines again. It was Blair’s government that instigated the kind of cosy relationship between government and press that Leveson blew apart. In light of this, his offer to provide advice to Rebekah Brooks over phone hacking in 2011 seems unsurprising. His suggestion that she launch a ‘Hutton style’ inquiry into it is more worrying, given that it again raises questions about the veracity of the inquiry that cleared his government of wrongdoing over the Iraq evidence, with tragic consequences.

It is because Tony Blair could be the blueprint for good intentions corrupted by power that he is my political villain. It’s not all doom and gloom though; the Americans still absolutely adore our Mr Blair and given his new found love of a good tan, I’m sure the feelings are mutual.

Our prison system is corrupt and that should worry us all

The UK prison system is ludicrous. There are more drugs in Pentonville than the gnarliest TEED concert and a higher level of corruption than a Somalian diamond mine.  Thanks to an archaic focus on retribution, rather than rehabilitation, we have constructed a system which has reached record levels of re-offence, with 90 per cent of those sentenced in England and Wales having offended before and almost a third linked to 15 or more crimes, up from one in five a decade ago. The system is defective.

A recent example of just how farcical the implementation of rules in many UK prisons can be, is the story of Curtis Warren, sentenced for a £1 million cannabis plot and Teresa Rodrigues, a senior manager at his prison’s drug and alcohol unit, whose star-crossed love transcended the steel bars and was consummated twice a day in his bed. Warren – nicknamed Cocky – because of a bizarre disdain for the same authority which has bestowed on him a more than, was once Interpol’s Target One, the most wanted international criminal, sought for violence, armed robbery, drugs importation and smuggling hand guns and grenades.

However, Warren did not only enjoy the company of Rodrigues while supposedly under the close watch of guards but, as a court heard, also managed to find time to mastermind a £300 million drug empire built on heroin importation using seven mobile phones smuggled into La Moye, a purportedly ‘medium security’ prison – presumably a ‘low security’ prison is something akin to a scene out of a Michael Bay movie.

Corruption statistics in prisons are startling to say the least; Transparency International – the leading non-governmental anti-corruption agency – estimates that in the UK there are around 1000 prison officers involved in corruption, a further 600 involved in an inappropriate relationship with a prisoner and that the drug trade inside prisons is worth approximately £100 million a year.

Furthermore, the suggestion that an anti-corruption authority could check on staff and ensure that prisons themselves don’t become a hotbed of crime has largely been ignored by policy makers. Despite a recent report that suggest the budget of the CPU (Corruption Prevention Unit) be increased by £5 million to tackle such things, the CPU has had its budget and employees cut and its Chief Executive has retired, without being replaced.

Corruption runs rampant and unchallenged because prisons are too focused on punishment and too broad in their mandate. Punishing a heroin addict like a murderer and vice versa is downright daft. We should be rehabilitating those who can be and punishing those who must be. There is no need for a benevolent drug councillor in Warren Curtis’ deservedly long stay in prison and no heroin addict has ever put the needle down after being reminded that what he’s doing is against the law.

Now, you’re probably thinking, “hang on a minute, how does any of this affect me?” Why does it matter if they’re snorting cocaine in Wandsworth or banging their guard in a room full of Che Guevara posters? As long as they’re not doing it on Oxford Road, I’m happy.  But prisons should not be a place where petty criminals turn into hardline gangsters; their vices shouldn’t be perpetuated – they should be alleviated.

The reason for this is the cost, both social and economic, which at the moment is extraordinarily high – and rising. The initial cost of having your freedom taken away is about £65,000 and £40,000 a year from then on. We are already housing 80,000 inmates in a system designed for 50,000 which means more prisons will need to be built, costing more money still. In a democracy, spending such large amounts on restricting peoples’ freedom seems counter-intuitive, even more so when you accept that the majority of prisoners are released skill-less, contact-less and hopeless into an economic climate that is notoriously difficult. It is no wonder that re-offence is so common. We are spending vast amounts of money on a system that only perpetuates its own failings.

One change would be to implement a wide-ranging residential drug treatment program for appropriate offenses, which have shown to actually offer a £200,000 net benefit to society over the lifetime of someone who would have been a prisoner in other circumstances. This approach delivers a much lower re-offense rate and is much cheaper to run; at the moment less than three per cent of prisoners identified with a drug problem have access to appropriate rehabilitation programs in prison.

Prisons are not deterrents for serious criminals who know how to use them to their own advantage and do no good for petty criminals who only leave with a renewed sense of animosity towards a society they have no place in. What we need is a prison system inclined towards compassion not incarceration; we need a clear divide between petty offenders who deserve empathy and serious offenders who deserve punishment. This current inbalance means that those who should be punished get excessively catered to and those who should be rehabilitated get excessively punished.

We need to recognise that the system is flawed and acknowledge that change is necessary. It is crucial for our long-term success as a society, both economically and socially, that we learn to differentiate between those for whom crime was a product of misfortune, who should be dealt with compassionately, and those for whom crime was a choice, who we should deal with voraciously.

Live: Cage The Elephant

7th February

Apollo

6/10

Playing a support slot isn’t always easy, unreceptive crowds waiting only for the headline act of the night are a common occurrence. Yet thanks largely to lead singer Matt Shultz, Cage The Elephant excellently excite the packed Apollo with a rip-roaring show.

Throughout much of the set Shultz leaps, writhes and dances around the stage with a ferocious energy. Tracks like ‘It’s Just Forever’ flash past in a blur as flailing limbs and growled vocals emerge across the stage amidst frantic strobe lighting.  The rest of the members remain rooted to their positions whilst Schultz flails around, it is clear he is the vibrant heart of the band.

Yet Shultz’s charisma extends beyond this wild stage manner. When things slow down with ‘Cigarette Daydreams’ he also takes a stationary position, bathed in a purple light, and still keeps the crowd interested in his performance, with eyes fixed on the centre stage rather than wandering to the bar.

As the band launch into ‘Teeth’ Shultz descends into the now riving pit of a crowd, and lifted on their hands manages to walk a good few metres deep into the stalls area, shouting “Promise that you’ll never leave me”. It’s fitting that with the band’s Christian upbringing he cuts an almost Christlike figure walking on the waves of arms provided by the audience.

So Cage The Elephant have the performance side down, yet the quality of their songs doesn’t quite match up to this. The musicianship of headline act Foals later in the night further emphasises how plain Cage The Elephant’s songs were. They’re certainly a good live band to see, but only if you’re prepared to be caught up in the sweaty mess of euphoria they instigate.

Should we allow a return to standing in English football stadia?

YES- Thomas Turner

I’m going to start this with a little game of Andrew Georgeson bingo. Get the full house, and the Mancunion Sport  will pay for you to have a pint with the man himself. Here are the words: ‘Hillsborough’, ‘crush’, ‘unsafe’, ‘hooligan’ and ‘German football hispters’. Each will – as they have been relentlessly – be used to argue against the proposal for safe standing in UK stadia. And crucially, not a single one of them provides a decisive point.

Let me start with Hillsborough; a watershed moment for English football, and an atrocity of the type which we should never allow to occur in this country again. 96 people lost their lives – but did any of them die directly as a result of being able to stand at a football match? Hindsight says not.

The paddock in the Leppings Lane end was overcrowded due to the incompetence of the police. The crush was caused, ultimately, by a steel fence at the front of the paddock, and a lack of crush barriers to separate supporters. The number of fatalities was largely a result of the negligent manner in which clubs for years had treated safety standards and procedures – indeed there had been incidents in the Leppings Lane end in the years before the disaster which had indicated the danger.

Yet none of these factors are integral to standing at football matches – which leads me on to the prospect of ‘safe-standing’, based on the German ‘rail seating’ model. Just as with current seated stands, there is no requirement for large fences to be erected at the front. Each single row has a crush barrier in front of it. Seats (and therefore seat numbers) are still provided, meaning that clubs can prevent capacity being exceeded by monitoring the number of tickets sold. In short, as the large German stadia prove, there need not be anything inherently unsafe about standing.

In spite of this, many still associate the potential return of standing with a similar return to the ‘bad old days’, where outbreaks of violence amongst the crowds became commonplace. The advocates of this argument seem to be clutching at straws.

Huge progress has been made in recent decades with regards to the problem of football hooliganism, and the proof of this is no more evident than in the family friendly environment which typifies most modern day stadia.

Are we really suggesting that by allowing people to stand (which many still do, unsafely, in seated areas), we will flick a switch which transports us back to the heyday of the 1970s, where mobs of fans running amok along the terraces are a perpetual distraction from the ongoings on the pitch? This is nothing more than scaremongering.

But why, you may ask, do we want a return to standing at football matches anyway? There are two reasons which I can think of.

First of all, the change to all seated stadia has undoubtedly coincided with a drop in the atmosphere within stadiums. Anybody who has ever been to a football match will tell you that the atmosphere is greater in areas where people predominantly stand. I think the link between atmosphere and on-pitch performance is too often overstated, but to some, the ability to stand and sing at a football match is a valuable part of English football culture, which for nearly  twenty years now has been prohibited.

This coincides with the fact that if people can safely stand, and do stand in seated areas currently, we are also hindering the enjoyment of those who actively choose to sit. Some away fixtures in particular must be torrid experiences for those physically prevented from standing for long periods. If we can safely harness the preferences of both the sitters and the standers, why aren’t we?

Secondly, a switch to safe standing areas may also enable us to cure another ill of modern football – that of high ticket prices. Due to increased capacity, prices for standing tickets will undoubtedly be lower, enabling clubs to again attract the young and less wealthy supporters they have lost in recent years.

While the Taylor report specified that seated tickets ought not to be more expensive after the switch to all seated stadia, what we have seen is the direct opposite. The Bundesliga is renowned for its affordable tickets, so call me a ‘hispter’ if you wish – if it means cheaper tickets, you can call me what you like.

The aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster changed football in many ways – and many were for the better. But along with the behemoth that is the Premier League, it has also to an extent allowed football to be taken away from those who were for so long the life-blood of the game. Safe-standing would be a valuable embodiment of a return to the ‘people’s game’.

So to the powers that be, please, stand and deliver.

NO– Andrew Georgeson

‘Safe’ Standing in football in the top two tiers of English football should, quite simply, never be allowed.

I am stunned that it is even being considered in a country which had its footballing tradition changed from a stadium disaster. Hillsborough and Valley Parade should be enough evidence for this, but let me dismantle any other nonsensical ideas all the Against Modern Football and German Football hipsters have.

My overwhelming problem is how police would control a standing section. Despite the argument that every stadium will have allocated standing sections defined by tickets, Hillsborough was supposed to only have an allocated number of people inside. The fact is, police couldn’t control what was happening at Hillsborough. The Taylor report concluded that ‘the main reason for the disaster was the failure of police control.’ The introduction of standing sections could lead to people sneaking in, the overcrowding occurring, then who knows what could happen.

The other contentious issue is the German Football Hipster conundrum. Borussia Dortmund has an amazing atmosphere with their 25,000 strong walls of Yellow and Black flags. But this won’t transfer to England for several reasons. Firstly, the standing section in England will become a section for the die-hards, the ones who give themselves a name like the ‘ultras’ or the ‘unit’, the guys who are at Weatherspoons ahead of opening time every Saturday, have 3 team-based tattoos and watch Green Street religiously. These stands will harbour hostility, not in a Fenebarche way, but in an aggressive pissed-up bloke from Leeds way which kills the atmosphere. One has to remember that the hostile atmosphere in Borussia Dortmund’s stadium nearly got all away fans banned from the match against Shalke due to police fears over atmosphere, so it’s not as rosy as everyone makes it out to be. You could never take your 10-year-old to the section as if your team scores and the crowd celebrate by pushing/shoving/crushing each other. The removal of standing sections from many grounds has clearly reduced football hooliganism. That is a fact. Some teams still harbour tinges of hooliganism, just look at Millwall last year at Wembley in the FA Cup final. Are we really going to let these people stand?

Unlike most of the Against Modern Football crew who have probably never been to a match outside of the Premier League, let’s turn our attention to lower league football. I followed my village team, Dunston UTS, from their 500 capacity all standing stadium in the North-East, all over the country as far as Norwich for a match in all standing stadiums, to the FA Vase final in Wembley Stadium. At Wembley Stadium, despite nearly 85,000 empty red seats, there was an incredible atmosphere because everyone was enjoying themselves; everyone was living up to the occasion, and actually enjoying football instead of the politics surrounding it.

Atmospheres in some stadiums are poor because of inflated ticket prices, manic owners, over-paid footballers, you name it. That’s fine, be disgruntled about that, but protesting for cheaper ticket prices won’t ever cost anyone their lives. If people actually stepped back and enjoyed the match instead of becoming pundits or getting so pissed up beforehand that they don’t know what day it is, the atmosphere would be fine.

I honestly can’t see how it could be cheaper either. Borussia Dortmund’s season ticket cost 190 Euros for their giant terraced stand. But at the same time, the owner of the club refused a beer increase from 3.70 to 3.80 saying ‘’that extra 10 cents doesn’t make the difference, why should we increase it? It doesn’t satisfy our people.” The ‘50 plus 1’ rule also ensures no foreign owner can take majority control so the club remains in German hands. The differences don’t translate to England, so the idea that tickets will be cheaper is based on nothing. If we want to return to tradition, I suggest a return to gentleman wearing bowler hats, suits with ribbons on and carrying clackers. Return to the days when the FA Cup coverage wasn’t one of the trials of Hercules to get through, and instead was just a nice occasion where we interviewed fans beforehand wearing half and half scarves.

Sadly tragedy will strike again, but let Bristol City trial it – a team with an average attendance of 11,500 this season – not even the largest in League 1 and who will not return to the Championship anytime soon. Let Aston Villa lobby for the campaign to try and win back their heritage as one of the classic English grounds after losing all their reputation in the league and having their FA Cup semi-final rights stripped off them.

It is nothing more than the FA trying to make up for the real problems they can’t do anything about. Football has an absolutely shocking past. If we don’t learn from our history, we are bound to repeat it.

Trial by Twitter is harmful to justice

In recent months, the internet has become an arena of public shaming. Hundreds of thousands of social media users with no legal training and possessing no knowledge of the cases in question are in danger of becoming online vigilantes. Armed only with 140 characters and a hashtag, many are taking to the web to denounce those accused of unsubstantiated allegations. The internet has become a town’s square, only now large enough to put all the worlds accused sinners in the stocks.

Examples of speculative justice expressed on social media have clearly occurred in Manchester itself this year. The acquittal of William Roache on all charges as of the 6th February, has highlighted the damage that can be done to an individual’s integrity and reputation if assumptions are made regarding the charges against them on social media as well as in the courts.

Nowhere has this issue been more true than at our very own university, where last summer a student of the University was indicted in an accusation of rape. An image of the student released by the police appeared on several websites and news programmes, starting with the Manchester Student Safety page, rapidly spreading through Facebook and Twitter. Users were quick to vilify the student in question. By late afternoon the image was being circulated by the Manchester Evening News and ITV Granada and was trending on Twitter.

With users instantly lending a guilty verdict to the case in question, without knowledge of the evidence, the incident must beg the question of whether people should be more considerate in what they post. Eight months later, the student has been cleared of all charges. However, the incident has done perhaps permanent damage to the student’s reputation. The pain this student was forced to endure would have been confounded doubly by the hatred received online. By hopping on the trending bandwagon, we see users jumping to their own conclusions without seeing the full facts. This is not only unfair to the victims and the accused but it is certainly not in keeping with the principles of due process and fair justice.

We must also consider the longer-term consequences for those charged on public forums like Twitter and Facebook. It may attach a stigma to a potentially innocent individual, regardless of the eventual trial and outcome.

Of course it is of paramount importance that victims of abuse can come forward with confidence, fully in the knowledge that justice will be delivered but it is not for the glare of the public eye to determine the outcomes. It is counter productive to the cause of justice for victims if unproven allegations are allowed to circulate.
In the case of Bill Roache, the actor’s personal life was brought to the fore by social media and damning accusations made about his character, accusations from which it can be difficult to recover. A further example is the case of Lord McAlpine and the ‘witch hunt’ that ensued after false allegations were made regarding sexual abuse claims last year.

Of course the increasing prevalence of smartphones and Twitter is becoming an aid in some cases, notable the Steubenville rape case in 2012, where the use of social media accounts such as Twitter, Flickr and Instagram were paramount in building a successful case against two high school football players. Images uploaded to Twitter, depicting scenes of a gratuitous nature regarding the rape of a student at a party featured heavily as evidence brought against the two young men. But as the images were in the public domain it became very much a public trial, with threats being issued to the men prior to their eventual conviction.

Lord Leveson, speaking at a conference in 2012, claimed that new laws are needed to stop this ‘trial by Twitter’. He argued that the web has become a global megaphone for gossip and that governments will need to consider introducing laws to regulate it. Also at issue, is the perception that online actions do not have legal consequences, something many users can forget when spouting vile abuse from behind the safety of the keyboard.

Earlier this week the alleged molestation of Dylan Farrow by her actor/director former stepfather Woody Allen was once again brought to the fore, following Dylan’s open letter to the New York Times. Many people (in excess of 3000) were quick to take to the comments section in order to either condemn Woody Allen or direct abuse at Dylan, accusing her of lying. At the moment, the case looks unlikely to be brought before a court but far too many people are taking to the internet to voice an brash opinion based on ill-founded beliefs.

The trial by Twitter and other social media platforms is a worrying trend. We are seeing the presumption of innocence, the very cornerstone of our legal justice system, ignored, in order for ill-informed ‘trolls’ to wreak havoc on people’s names. I must assert once again that I believe all those who have been abused should come forward in all cases. But, until substantiated evidence has been brought forward in a court of all law, let’s for now try and keep our personal judgements off the Twitter-sphere to avoid doing more harm than good.

Man in serious condition after car overturns on Oxford Road

A man is in a serious condition and another remains in hospital for treatment after a car crash on Oxford Road.

The collision, between a red Lexus and a silver Toyota Avensis taxi, saw the Lexus completely overturned with two people trapped inside.

The Lexus passengers were both cut free from the wreckage by fire services, and the 24-year-old driver was taken to the Manchester Royal Infirmary where he continues to receive treatment and is said to be in a serious condition.

The driver of the taxi, 48, suffered fractured ribs and also remains in hospital for treatment.

The incident happened at around 10.35am outside the Kilburn building, and police are appealing for witnesses.

Police Constable Pete Cunningham, from GMP’s Serious Collision Investigation Unit, said, “We are investigating the circumstances leading up to this collision and are appealing for anyone who witnessed the incident to call us as soon as possible.”

New York Fashion Week Round Up

February may be month of love for some but for many it is the month of fashion. Fashion weeks take place in New York, London, Milan and Paris showcasing the designer collections for the Autumn/Winter 2014-2015 season.  Fashions elite braved the snow and chilly weather in New York from the 6th to 13th February, home to some of the most famous designers, including Victoria Beckham, Alexander Wang, DKNY, Ralph Lauren and Michael Kors.

Here are some of the top catwalk looks:

 

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Victoria Beckham
This WAG showed off her fashion credentials to the max with her monochrome, sleek collection. In colours of only red, black and white it was left to a gold chain to decorate her minimalistic looks. As opposed to the fitted style Victoria usually opts for, the collection was oversized, pleated and ruffled and even included some floaty full length maxi summer dresses in crisp creams. Along with this, by adding fur to mini dresses and promoting an array of cowl neck jumpers she reminds us not to forget the trappings of a  winter wardrobe.

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Donna Karan
The over the knee boot was big this winter and it seems like it is here to stay.  Donna Karan’s collection was inspired by erotica with a predominately black colour palette, sheer cut outs and plunging necklines. The show immediately grabbed our attention with a wrap around tuxedo mini dress and a deep, protruding neckline. Like VB the collection was accessorised with fur and splashes of red kept it current and exciting. The finale was a bit more demure, keeping it classy with camel wrap coats and full length dresses.

Alexander Wang
In his showcase of the modern soldier, Wang’s models, such as Victoria Secret model Candice Swanepoel, were unrecognisable with slicked back hair and white washed faces. The collection included slick grey military coats and colourful textured jumpers and bombers. Many of the looks were styled with the Wang over the knee boot, which has been suitably named the ‘Mule boot’. The futuristic show even included some heat activated looks that changed colour before the eyes of guests.

It seems too early to be looking at Spring/Summer let alone the next Winter season. But from the shows, we predict monochrome, red, military and tall boots are going to be ruling our wardrobes come winter.

Images: Instagrams @Lukastheastronaut;@danielpstylist

 

 

Manchester ranked worst for student crime

Shut your windows and lock your doors – Manchester has been ranked as having the highest numbers of robberies, burglaries, and violent crime outside London.

According to statistics published by the Complete University Guide Manchester has the highest levels of student-relevant crime in a city with two or more universities.

In an investigation into the levels of crime for individual institutions, The University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University were among those ranked as having the highest number of reported crimes within three miles of the main campus.

The guide states that Manchester has the highest rates of robberies and burglaries, while Nottingham has the highest rates of violent crime.

The guide’s crime map shows that Fallowfield, the most popular accommodation area with students, has one of the highest crime rates outside the city centre. There were 671 reported crimes in Fallowfield and the surrounding areas last December alone, according to figures obtained from police.uk.

The Complete University Guide, which uses official police data to calculate its report, claims to provide “the clearest picture possible” of crime rates in cities outside London.

It uses figures for what it believes to be the three crimes most relevant to students; robberies; burglaries; and violent crimes, including sexual offences, given that data for crimes affecting only students is not available.

Bernard Kingston, founder of the Complete University Guide, said, “While these crimes are the three most commonly perpetrated against students, the figures relate to all victims, not just students. And they relate to the areas surrounding universities, not solely to university premises.

While universities, especially those in high crime areas, do much to advise students on precautions, many students, particularly those from overseas attracted by formidable academic reputations, are often not aware of the risks in the areas around their chosen institutions.”

The guide estimates that around one-third of students will become victims of crime while at university, with 20 per cent of robberies occurring within six weeks after the start of the academic year.

Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Manchester took 21st and 22nd place respectively in a table to find the most reported crimes, with MMU having 2.55 reported robberies, burglaries and violent crimes per thousand residents, closely followed by Manchester with 2.51.

The top nineteen places were all taken by universities in London, with King’s College having the highest correlation between crime and population, at 3.59 crimes per thousand.

Mr Kingston said that crime figures should be taken into consideration when deciding where to study, “While the quality of tuition and the prospects for employment after graduation are key elements in choosing a university course, it is important not to overlook other aspects of the environment in which the student will be living for three or more years.

“Regrettably, our university cities are not immune from the pressures on society and crime is a constant presence.”

Bristol, Nottingham and Birmingham joined Manchester among cities with the highest crime levels, while York, Canterbury and Bath were found to have the lowest. Among individual institutions, only Hull University had a higher incidence of crime than Manchester and MMU, with Aberystwyth, Durham, and Winchester having the fewest reported crimes.

Withholding graduation due to library fines “breach of consumer law”

Universities have been warned by the Office of Fair Trading that withholding students from graduation due to unpaid library, parking or damage fines is “unfair” and may be a breach of consumer law.

The practice of academic sanctions for non-academic debt has also been dismissed as “almost laughable” by Colum McGuire, NUS vice president for welfare.

The University of Manchester, however, had still not made a decision about amending their rules as The Mancunion went to print.

Currently, the rules state that “the assessment result for any student may be withheld if he or she, on completion of his or her programme of study, fails to return all items borrowed from the Library, or fails to pay all outstanding charges or fines”.

The library receives over £200,000 every year in income from fines, and figures released in 2012 by The Guardian named Manchester as second only to Leeds University in money taken in from fines – taking almost £1.3 million from library fines over the course of five academic years.

A spokesperson for the University said: “The University is reviewing the OFT Report and will decide in due course how we should respond to its recommendations.”

The investigation of this practice by the OFT came as a result of compaints from the National Union of Students.

A July investigation then revealed that about 75% of Universities withhold graduation due to unpaid fines in this way.

Arrears for accommodation or childcare services are also mentioned in the report as non-academic debt it is “unfair” for universities to penalise in this way.

The OFT is now ‘recommending that universities employing these terms and conditions should review their rules and make any necessary amendments’.

Colum McGuire, NUS vice president for welfare, said: “I’m delighted to see that the OFT has responded to our complaints and confirmed that this practice is incredibly unfair, which is what NUS has been saying all along.

“Students who owe money for accommodation, overdue library books or other non-academic debt should certainly pay off the money they owe, but this sanction was disproportionate, and actually made it more difficult for students to repay by restricting access to student support or making it more difficult to secure employment in an already challenging job market.”

University spends £20,000 to build a pub

London South Bank University has spent £20,000 on installing a pub in a room on campus.

Run by the psychology department, the bar is an experiment to research how and why people drink, and the effects of alcohol on behaviour.

Dr Tony Moss, head of the Psychology Department at South Bank and behind the experiment, said: “What we are trying to do is simulate, with a greater deal of control, the environment in which people find themselves drinking.

“This is somewhere in between being able to do research in the real world bar – where we have very little control over what is going on – and in a lab cubicle, which is nothing like the way people are drinking in the real world”.

Visitors to the pub are served by psychology students, and their behaviour is recorded by hidden cameras and microphones.

Part of the experiment will involve monitoring how much attention customers pay to alcohol awareness posters while they are drinking.

To make participants in the experiments believe they are a real pub, the room has been made as authentic as possible. The lighting and pre-recorded background noise is carefully controlled, and the glasses are even rubbed with ethanol to recreate the right smell.

Unlike a traditional pub, all the drinks are free. However, there is also no guarantee whether a customer will be given a real alcoholic drink or a placebo replacement.

Dr Moss said: “A lot of the work we are doing involves giving people non-alcoholic drinks, but leading them to believe they contain alcohol.

“A lot of the early work we have been doing isn’t so much interested in the effects of alcohol once people are intoxicated but trying to understand factors that motivate people to drink in certain ways”.

Government “unrealistic” about student loan repayments

The cost of student loans never to be paid back may have been seriously underestimated by the government.

A new report from the Public Accounts Committee has strongly criticised the government and Student Loans Company’s handling of student debt.

Current figures from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills calculate the present unrecoverable debt at 35 to 40 per cent, approximately £18 billion.

With the rise in tuition fees to £9,000 a year, it is estimated that by 2042 the unrecoverable debt will be between £70 billion and £80 billion.

However, the Public Accounts Committee have argued that the government consistently underestimates the amount to be paid back from student loans by around 8%, and so the size of the unrecoverable debt may be even larger than government figures suggest.

According to the report, ‘the over-forecast repayments may be due to optimistic assumptions… about future graduate earnings and earnings growth.

‘The forecasts assume, for example, that rates of wage growth seen in the last three decades will continue, despite recent evidence on gradate pay suggesting this may be unrealistic’.

The report also raised concerns over the selling of the student loan book to private companies.

Last November, the government sold £890 million worth of loans to a debt management consortium for just £160 million.

And according to the report, the Department is planning to sell more of the income-contingent loan book to fund lifting the cap on the number of students admitted to universities.

The report says: ‘The Department told us if the sale did not pass the value for money test it would not go ahead.

‘However, the Department has some way to go before it is in a position to make a convincing value for money case’.

It added: ‘The Department needs a reliable and accurate forecasting model so that it can make a sufficiently robust estimate of the loan value in the first place, which it has not yet been able to do with any confidence’.

The Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts said: “the reality is that the Department lacks a robust model to estimate the value of the loans properly.

“The Department must demonstrate that it has a firm grasp upon the real value of the student loan book and the long-term cost to the taxpayer of any early sale”.

The report also reveals that the Student Loans Company has agreed to recommendations that it scrap its premium-rate telephone numbers by April this year.

At the moment, it costs 41 pence per minute to contact the company. While the majority of the profit goes to the line provider, the Student Loan Company earn £78,000 a year from phone calls.

Margaret Hodge said: “Borrowers are still receiving a substandard service.

“They still have to use premium-rate phone lines to contact the Student Loans Company, online services are inadequate, and the IT is no longer fit for purpose”.

The Student Loans Company was also condemned for not doing more to collect loans from those who move overseas after graduation.

In March 2013, the Student Loans Company had no information on 368,000 graduates who were not repaying any of their loans, including not knowing their whereabouts.

The report says: ‘the Department and the Student Loans Company has done little to investigate this group of borrowers.

‘Over three quarters of overdue repayments from borrowers living overseas have been overdue for more than a year’.

Adding to this, Margaret Hodge said that the Student Loans Company “knows very little about British graduates who live abroad or about graduates from the EU who have since left the country.

“Will they ever pay back their loans? The Student Loans Company simply doesn’t know”.

University alumni host debate on drugs and alcohol

Local experts and University of Manchester alumni debated whether alcohol is a “greater menace than drugs”, last week.

Arguing for the motion was Alan Higgins, director of public health for Greater Manchester.

William Lees-Jones, chief executive, JW Lees – a chain of 35 pubs across the north west, argued against the motion.

Lady Rhona Bradley, chief executive of ADS, a Manchester based charity that offers drugs and alcohol treatment, chaired the debate.

In his opening speech, Higgins cited a wide range of studies and statistics which illustrated the harm of drinking on society and health.

“Alcohol related incidents and illness cost Greater Manchester alone £1.2bn a year,” he said. “In 2009 there were over 69,000 incidents of domestic abuse. Alcohol was involved in ¼.”

He also added that, “half of Greater Manchester residents avoid the town centre at night because of drunks.”

Higgins went on to use David Nutt’s much discussed study in the Lancet, which concluded that alcohol is the most lethal out of all substances. It scored 4th in harm to users and top in harm to society.

In 2002 – 2004 alone, alcohol was responsible for the deaths of 25,000 people, compared with heroin being responsible for 4,976, and MDMA causing 227 in a longer time frame. Booze causes a problem, which in Higgins’ words is “industrial” in scale.

Lees Jones responded that, on average, adults in the UK consume 7.4 litres of alcohol – which is the same as Denmark. He added that “Denmark is one of the happiest countries in the world. The abuse of alcohol is not a new problem, but drinking responsibly is good for society.

“Perhaps if drugs were regulated as much as alcohol they wouldn’t be as harmful”.

He continued further, “Obesity kills 6 times as many people in the UK as alcohol. Perhaps we should be debating whether food is greater menace than drugs, but that would be absurd”.

“The UK pub industry contributes £22 billion a year to the UK economy”, and booze is a “regulated industry. So you know what you’re getting, and by de facto anything illicit is more dangerous”.

“I won’t embarrass anyone by actually asking who has done cocaine in the last week, but the chances are the number is nowhere near as many as those who have had a drink”.

When asked by The Mancunion whether or not they would favour the legalisation, if not the total decriminalisation of drugs, the panellists were divided.

“I’m afraid none of us can give a straight answer to your question”, said Higgins.

He added that, “at no point would I say abolish alcohol, neither can I quite accept making everything legal”.

Lady Bradly responded by suggesting that a mix of legalisation and decriminalisation would not work. Having worked with many members of the criminal justice system, it would have to be “all or nothing”, and “the money saved would have to be poured into treatment”.

The final result of the vote was a 23 – 25 split against the motion that alcohol is a greater menace than drugs.

Discuss Manchester, who hosted the debate, is a ‘debating organisation’ founded by local executives Martin Carr, Michael Taylor, and Mike Emmerich. In the words of Taylor, it aims to “breathe intellectual life into our great city”.

Both Taylor and Emmerich are alumni of the University of Manchester.

Taylor read Sociology from 1985 – 1988, and served on The Mancunion. He went on to become an award winning journalist.

Emmerich is a former policy advisor to number ten, and was also Director of the Institute for Political & Economic Governance and associate dean of the faculty of humanities at the University of Manchester, from 2002 – 2006.

The debate was held at the Albert Square Chop House, a pub and function room off Albert Square.

Strikes set to affect exam results

The University and College Union has announced that it will not mark students’ examinations if universities do not offer a better pay increase.

The strike  is set to commence on the 28th of April if universities do not concede to raise pay of staff within the next two months.  The strikes will affect release of examination results and possibly cause delays  in graduation ceremonies.

UCU general secretary Sally Hunt said: “A marking boycott is the ultimate sanction, but an avoidable one if the employers would negotiate with us over pay.”

She added: “No member I have spoken to wishes to see this dispute escalate, but in the continued absence of meaningful negotiations from the employers, we are left with no alternative.”

This is the latest move in a series of six strikes that started in October last year.  The Union announced that the strike could still be avoided if universities were willing to engage in negotiations.

Staff have been offered a 1% raise in response to their demands, but are pressing for a higher figure.  Vice chancellors have received a pay-rise of 5.1% within the last year, with   average salaries numbering £235,000.

Ms Hunt remarked: “The strong support for our action so far demonstrates how angry staff are at the hypocrisy over pay in our universities. The employers cannot plead poverty when it comes to staff pay and then award enormous rises to a handful at the top.”

 

Liverpool students hospitalised after taking ‘”Geebs”

Five students from Liverpool University have been admitted to hospital in the space of a week, after taking a chemical used in the cleaning of car alloys.

According to the BBC, police were called to Liverpool University halls Bowden Court, at around 7:30 am on Sunday 16th February. Two students aged 20 and 22, and also a 16 year old girl, were immediately rushed to hospital.

The three were all eventually released after successful treatment.

A day later, police were called to student accommodation at Hatton Garden in Liverpool where they found three more students, two aged 20 and one aged 19, who also had to be rushed to hospital. All three were later discharged.

Two men have been arrested on suspicion of supplying a class C drug.

Detective Superintendent Chris Green, of Merseyside Police, said that all six individuals “had taken a product called Geebs, which is actually a chemical used to clean alloy wheels and is used as a legal high.”

“This substance is a chemical used to clean car wheels and even in small doses can kill.

“We will be working with universities in the city in the coming days to warn students about the dangers that drugs and chemicals can have when taken, particularly if mixed with alcohol, or other substances.”

Gamma-butyrolactone, otherwise known as Geebs, has previously been dubbed a ‘coma in a bottle’.

‘Geebs’ is legal when used in industry. But illegal if a person intends to consume. Possession can carry a sentence of up to two years, while supply can lead to a maximum of 14 years in prison.

According to FRANK, the drug can produce “feelings of euphoria, reduced inhibitions and drowsiness. The effects start after about 10 minutes to an hour and can last for up to seven hours or so”. But users can also experience “unconsciousness, coma and death”.

The substance first found itself in the spotlight back in 2009, when a coroner ruled that medical student Hester Stewart died after mixing Geebs with alcohol. The drug has also been linked to a number of sexual assault cases.

Review: Ballad of a Burning Star

Scrimping on cash, like a typical student, I walked from Oxford Road to The Lowry theatre to witness Theatre Ad Infinitum’s current production, Ballad of the Burning Star. An hour later, my legs burning and a yawn creeping its way onto my face every three minutes, I was ushered into the Quays Theatre where nine tables were set out in the style of a cabaret show. Sat on Table Nine I was beside several women with notebooks, presumably press, gushing about the unconventional audience placement while a lone drummer on stage filled the time with a steady beat. The stage itself was adorned merely with a microphone stand, drum kit and a chair, each decorated with a gold Star of David. That’s right; as the Director, writer and drag star of the show, Nir Paldi, states, ‘This is not a soap opera it is a serious political piece.’ Told through Paldi’s narration, as a drag queen called Star, and five dancing Starlets, the show is a daring exploration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It relays the history of the violence, alongside a heart wrenching tale of a young boy’s experiences of growing up in Israel, in the midst of a militant settlement, leading eventually to his confusion at becoming an oppressor.

There is a lot of unsettling oscillation between the humour of the cabaret and the tense enactments including a tour of Auschwitz – is it okay to laugh at something which discusses hundreds of years of oppression? Can we laugh at Star’s witticisms when she mocks the mispronunciation of a Japanese Starlet? In the denouement of the play the bald, topless man who sat before the audience no longer embodied Star, but a shameful, torn Israel, ‘In his eyes. There was hate. So much hate.’

Staged arguments between Paldi and his Starlets maintain an air of light hearted amusement throughout, and the energy of the entire cast was contagious. Much like Paldi’s bomb warning in the exposition; ‘A man with a bomb may run into the theatre in the middle of the show, shout ‘God is great!’ and press the little red button’ – the atmosphere for the entire seventy minutes is explosive. Whatever moral questions the show may raise I remained on the edge of my seat for the entirety of the show, forgetting the exhaustion from my hour long walk. Now, surely that is the definition of excellent entertainment.

‘Poo-Poo-Putin!’

On the opening weekend of the Sochi Olympic Games, British queer performers burst onto the stage, attesting to the power of theatre to politicize audiences, during this sombre moment in Russian history. The Sochi Olympic spectacle of human achievement starkly counteracts a national clamp-down on LGBT human rights.

Admittedly more adept to showing dissent through subversive cultural exposure than active protest, I fashioned myself a weekend of theatrical and critical engagement. I went to Halifax to see Art with Heart’s Secret Diaries and attended the Queer Contact festival, which played host to the panel-led discussion – Your Place or Mine – in addition to catwalk spectaculars and good old-fashioned theatre, including the shocking and moving production, To Russia with Love.

Secret Diaries documents the actual experience of a woman who grew up in 1980s England ashamed of her homosexuality. Returning to her childhood home, which is still inhabited by a closeted father, Hayley (Sarah Emmott) negotiates homophobia in her home-town. Her father has internalized this prejudice as he refuses to recognize his daughter’s marriage to a woman, nor will he support her desire to adopt and raise a family.

This coming-out drama paints a dreary picture of British attitudes towards homosexuality once you penetrate intimate spaces stripped of PC pretence. It exposes the rigid schism in society between tolerance and acceptance, warning audiences not to conflate equalizing legislation, such as same-sex marriage, with a progressive shift in attitudes.

To Russia with Love also dramatizes real human experiences. It combines four independently directed productions to illuminate the widespread impact of Russia’s anti-gay policies on Russian youths, Western LGBT Olympiads, and even on closeted gay politicians in Russia who are coerced into voting for these policies.

To Russia With Love. Photo credit: Jessie Cohen

The play’s self-conscious approach created a transparent theatrical space, which facilitated a heightened atmosphere of sensitivity towards the subject at hand. Blurring the boundaries between active actor and passive viewer, actors doubled as spectators on occasion only to launch from their seats and pitch questions at the stage. At times, actors would even talk about the verbatim theatrical approach while the performance unfolded around them. Speaking to a fellow audience member who described the play as ‘refreshingly experimental’, I imagined the political potential that could arise from this energizing mode of theatrical communication.

Throughout the production, multiple voices fire off the stage, each positing a different angle on how to respond to the situation in Russia. One comment compared Sochi 2014 to the 1936 Berlin Olympics when ‘Jesse Owens went, competed and won – exactly the philosophy we should take to Russia […] visibility is the biggest issue here’.

Rather than endorse hasty, ego-filled protests and a Russian boycott, the play seemed to suggest that we must put down our placards and listen to voices on the ground. In a powerful re-enactment of a Manchester protest interrupted by a disgruntled gay Russian visiting the city, we are aligned with the berated actor-protester who joins the audience to listen to this man’s perspective: ‘You don’t understand Russian mentality. This law was penned by the church. There’s only so much a gangster like Putin can do. Russia is very different to Britain. It is just a very homophobic country. Western pressure is only fuelling the fire.’ Instead of counteracting this shocking display of apathy and hopelessness, the play invites us to engage Russia ‘with love’ rather than anger. It teeters, however, on the problematic suggestion that we must dilute our reactions with a pacifying relativism.

During the lively discussion at Your Place or Mine, an audience member asked; ‘Can you really fight for a cause that is not your own?’ Manchester lecturer, Monica Pearl responded staunchly advocating the need for direct action, asserting that ‘protests are incredibly important even if you can’t see the impact in the moment.’ Pointing to the small-scale nature of the Canal Street protest on the eve of the opening ceremony, Pearl added that despite an inability to draw mainstream crowds, ‘even a small protest is a megaphone to society’.

Ending on a similar, though slightly contradictory, note, To Russia with Love gave an affirmative nod to direct action: ‘There are no rights without people fighting for them. We need to make a show!’

An example of audience passivity? Photo credit: Jessie Cohen

As clapping faded into an en masse shuffle for possessions and wine glasses, my sister stared at the stage in disbelief. ‘There was no standing ovation’, she said, ‘if we can’t stand up in a theatre, how are we going to show support in the streets?’ Her dismay at a socially pervasive passivity, demonstrative of the unbending apathy of the times, tainted my self-congratulatory feeling for a weekend ethically ‘well-spent’.

While I chastised myself for dropping the baton along with my fellow theatre-goers, I was reminded of the message that Secret Diaries delivers, that battling homophobia at home, including internal prejudices, is an important starting point for any activist position. Relieved, I concluded that theatre can be activistic-ish after all.