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Day: 9 November 2015

The Go Abroad Fair

This year’s Go Abroad Fair (10th November) is gearing up to be bigger and better than ever!

The University of Manchester’s Internationalisation Strategy commits the university to “increasing the number of UK domiciled students undertaking a period studying, working or volunteering overseas by 40 per cent by 2020.” Given the already significant number of undergraduates engaging in international programmes, this target is a tall order. Therefore, the International Programmes Office is placing a greater focus than ever on this November’s ‘Go Abroad Fair’, at which the various areas of international programmes at the university gather under one roof—or one tent, to be exact!

As ever, the Fair will provide the opportunity to talk to students representing our many partner universities but in addition, this year there will also be spokespeople from working and volunteering abroad. Short-Term programmes overseas such as the University’s Summer School at Seoul National University in South Korea and the Generation UK-India programme will also be advertised at the Fair.

Advice and guidance for those travelling overseas will also be provided by the Student Money Adviser and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. With all of these excellent resources at one’s fingertips, the Go Abroad fair will surely prove to be an invaluable asset to those researching their international options during their degree and those wishing to put together a successful and well-informed application to study abroad.

The International Exchange Programme (also known as Study Abroad) is but one aspect of the university’s vast catalogue of overseas programmes. Therefore, we hope that the expanded scope of this year’s Fair will convince hundreds of students from all disciplines to get involved with the wide array of overseas opportunities available to them: working, studying, volunteering and even shorter-term cultural immersion programmes across the globe.

From Australia to Argentina, Canada to China, Italy to Israel and South Korea to Sweden, there is somewhere and something for everyone to engage with during their degree. Attending the Go Abroad Fair is the vital first step of an incredible and enriching journey. So come along and get involved!

The Fair takes place between 11am and 4pm outside University Place.

Charges dropped against Bahar Mustafa after #killallwhitemen row

Charges have been dropped against Goldsmiths student Diversity Officer, Bahar Mustafa, who was due to appear at Bromley Magistrates Court on November the 5th after online posts including the hashtag #killallwhitemen were discovered on her Twitter history.

Police reported to The Guardian on Tuesday that the case has been suspended after Mustafa received a letter by the Crown Prosecution Service on the 26th of October which stated: “There is not enough evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction.” The CPS, however, could still decide to reopen the case at a later date.

Mustafa first caused public outrage in May when she requested that white men should not be allowed to attend an event at Goldsmith’s Students’ Union, as she only intended to include ethnic minority women and non-binary attendees.

Consequently, critics dug through her social media history and found the allegedly threatening messages and hashtags which were then used to press charges again her. Criticising the CPS, Mustafa’s solicitor, Mike Schwarz, said: “The decision first to prosecute and then to climb down so soon afterwards, made by the Crown Prosecution Service headquarters, calls into question their ability to make sensible judgments on delicate issues.”

After her social media comments had been made public, the case came under scrutiny by multiple free speech groups and societies across the UK. The hashtag #istandwithbaharmustafa was consequently shared on multiple social media platforms in order to express support for Mustafa and free speech.

Mustafa, who after the row has received multiple death threats, still holds the position as Diversity Officer at Goldsmiths Students’ Union, after a motion of no confidence failed to reach the necessary three per cent threshold of Union members to prompt a new election.

In a statement to The Mancunion, a spokesperson for the University of Manchester’s Free Speech and Secular Society said: “We are pleased to hear that the chargers against Bahar Mustafa have been dropped, although we object to the sentiment she expressed. While incitement to violence is a criminal offence in this country, only the foolish would see a tweet with the hashtag #killallwhitemen as a serious incitement to violence.

“No-one was surprised that she did not take to the streets with a knife. If we were to prosecute things which naïvely could be seen as incitement to violence, then someone starting a campaign to introduce capital punishment would have to be prosecuted, as this clearly not only incites to violence but to outright killing.”

Preview: Louder Than Words

Louder Than Words is one of the UK’s pre-eminent festivals of music and writing, interrogating the importance and essential relationship between the two forms. Whether it’s Guy Garvey talking about his lyrics, Edwyn Collins playing his own music or Hugh Cornwell talking about life in The Stranglers, the festival has something for anyone with a love for music and the way that words are used to inform, create and discuss that.

Taking in Q&As, panel discussions and workshops, the festival is now in its third year, taking place over the November 13th – 15th weekend in the gorgeous Palace Hotel, Manchester. A beacon of popular culture, the festival draws music personalities from disparate places and genres to Manchester for one weekend, as well as an audience from as far afield as San Francisco and Moscow.

Here’s a brief schedule of the weekend:

Friday

The weekend kicks off with Mike Garry in conversation. Mike will also read his fantastic, chart-topping poem ‘Ode to St Anthony’ for Anthony H. Wilson and it just gets better from there, with Paolo Hewitt discussing his Oasis book and his two-and-a-half years spent on the road with the band.

Saturday

Where to start! Saturday includes interviews with Rick Buckler of The Jam, Russell Senior of Pulp, Jemima Dury (daughter of Blockhead Ian) and Paul McCartney biographer Paul du Noyer amongst many, many others. Steve Ignorant of Crass is also performing spoken word and song, with Slice of Life.

Sunday

Pauline Black of The Selecter gives proceedings more of a two-tone feel; celebrated writer Jon Savage looks back at 1966—the year the 60s exploded, and the subject of his new book. Another key change finds Paul Harries exploring his iconic images of Slipknot.

 

The full weekend programme is now available from louderthanwordsfest.com, where you can also buy tickets. We’ve been promised special student rates!

The problems of authenticity in male-dominated rock music journalism

The late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal of notorious music critic Lester Bangs in Almost Famous stands as one of his many film-stealing roles. As a kind of surrogate father figure to Cameron Crowe’s avatar, Hoffman portrays Bangs as a wise patriarch of musical knowledge—passing his understanding of authentic music to the next generation.

“Give me The Guess Who,” he says. “They got the courage to be drunken buffoons, which makes them poetic,” living in that flowery past, where being drunk was, of course, a courageous and poetic act.  Through Crowe’s rosy lens, the film showed us intoxicated idiocy disguising the authentic genius of the rock star, something which modern-day hacks like Alex Turner and Serge Pizzorno endlessly try to ape into in increasingly embarrassing ways. It’s a nice film to watch—touching, even, but it’s hardly controversial to suggest that the legacy it idealises has its fair share of problems.

Bangs, alongside publications Crawdaddy!, Creem and Rolling Stone magazine, are culprits in the construction of this rock and roll mythology. What this school of thought appears to do, is value truthfulness and authenticity in music. However, it actually creates an association between authenticity and certain aesthetic qualities preferred by the macho Lester Bangs and his California-based contemporaries. Punk rock, in its aggression and simplicity, is emotionally and artistically authentic, and was seen as a return to rock and roll’s authentic, countercultural roots. Opposing this, we have the polished, feminine and fundamentally inauthentic likes of Carole King, Jimmy Webb, and The Carpenters.

It doesn’t really make any sense and you don’t have to be particularly intelligent to see why, but it remains a strangely dominant consideration in rock music criticism. It’s a fallacy so pervasive that when Jake Bugg and his utterly shit music began a crusade against The X Factor, One Direction were made out to be bastions of musical inauthenticity, despite clearly having a better claim to authentic 21st century music. All because Bugg sang like Bob Dylan and was liked by middle-aged men, as opposed to 1D’s young and mostly female fanbase.

Such a focus on these quite patriarchal qualities in music, curated by the underground critics of the 60s and propagated to this day, understandably factors into the exclusion of women from critical acclaim, festival slots and rock music generally. Only when women like Patti Smith and Joan Jett embrace the masculine aesthetics of rawness, simplicity and aggression do they gain rockist approval and legitimacy.

Compare this, say, to Madonna, an artist who, despite her famous autonomy within the music industry, remains a controversial and allegedly inauthentic figure. Perennial sexist and racist poetaster Morrissey described her as “closer to organised prostitution than anything else,” which tells you everything you need to know about the paradigms that the authentic/inauthentic, serious/unserious categorisation actually operates within. As a woman, you can be authentic to yourself and your artistic vision, but only via male-approved standards.

A particularly interesting example of this occurred last year, at the usually sterile and boring Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony. Controversy arose not because of Nirvana’s acceptance into such a terrible institution, but rather that pop singer Lorde fronted the band for ‘All Apologies’, despite Krist Novoselic, Dave Grohl and Courtney Love’s insistence that the female-fronted lineup—which also included Kim Gordon, Joan Jett and Annie Clark—was in keeping with the legacy of passionate feminist Kurt Cobain.

Fans seemed to disagree. Guitar-wielding Annie, Joan and Kim, were seen as acceptable replacement frontwomen, but not chart-topping Lorde. Some viewers might have seen a nice reference to the timelessness and pop craft of Nirvana’s songs and their continued reverence and influence amongst teenagers. But, predictably, the sort of people who associate with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame are rigid adherents to the Rolling Stone philosophy, creating their musical worlds around the phallic symbol that is the loud ‘n’ proud electric guitar.

This sort of thing exists as one of the many branches on the rock tree—the same kind of ethos that rolls its eyes at rappers headlining rock festivals, and peddles an incredibly narrow and dated definition of what a playing a real instrument is. Cameron Crowe’s ode to his youth spent travelling with Led Zeppelin captures what might well have been a revolutionary time for popular music and youth culture, yet it is now abundantly clear that this was a cyclical revolution. The man now wields a guitar and sports long, unwashed hair.

As such, we see more and more responses to the poisonous legacy of guitar music. The idea of a Penny Lane—an object of the male songwriter’s authentic gaze, seems thankfully ludicrous, as do the tedious Claptonesque guitar solos wrought in her honour. Moreover, even publications like Pitchfork have adopted a poptimist stance, and it won’t be long before bigger printed publications do the same. This September, NME even featured Rihanna on the cover! The rockist hold is slowly loosening.

On one hand, this shift is very clearly for the best and promotes all sorts of diversity outside narrow aesthetic considerations, made to seem even more narrower by advancements and improvements in musical styles and technology. Yet it also raises the question of how far we can separate the reasons that we like certain music from our political and social contexts.

We know to dismiss the misogynistic and homophobic slurs (masquerading as musical criticism) that are flung by metalheads at artists like Justin Bieber. But what happens in the future when our own consideration of good and authentic expression is tied to an outdated political compass? Are we all doomed to become some type of prejudiced Dadrocker no matter what? Our musical conservatism tied into our political conservatism—like a cynical take on Homer Simpson in that episode with the Smashing Pumpkins and Sonic Youth?

Wake Me Up Before Your Kokoa

Hands up, I’m a food snob.

I’m that person who walks into a café and asks:

“Do you have almond milk?”

“Could I have my brownie warmed up a little bit?”

“What kind of chocolate powder do you use?”

 

Okay, maybe it’s annoying to some people. But if you deliver your question with a smile and a friendly face, the staff simply can’t help but fall for your loveable charm.

There’s a difference between asking and demanding.

If they don’t have it, no big deal, it’s not the end of the world and there are other things on the menu. If they do, great—you don’t ask, you don’t get.

For example, on one of these occasions, I was in the newly-opened vegetarian on-campus café, Greenhouse. I had already gauged the staff as friendly and accommodating, since we happily chatted away about the delights of hand-roasted fresh coffee, coconut porridge and herbal tea. I knew they wouldn’t mind me inquiring about the source of their hot chocolate.

Fortunately for my daily chocolate intake (for the next year at least), Greenhouse now stock the award-winning brand of Kokoa Collection: A real hot chocolate, delicately made with cocoa beans from around the world.

This is not powder, but little tablets of actual chocolate that are then swirled into hot milk and frothed in the machine for extra smooth whippedness.

You can even have it as a mocha for a double energy boost and serotonin release.

Actually, I recently discovered that chocolate contains the chemical ‘theobromine’, which is a natural bitter alkaloid found in the cacao plant. It’s a slow release heart stimulant that’s available in high percentage chocolate bars, which enables you to reap the pharmaceutical rewards without that sugar-anxiety low that comes from highly-processed branded chocolate.

Theodore is also a brother of mine, but that’s irrelevant to the review.

High percentage is best, with a combination of the 82% Madagascan extra dark and 70% Ecuadorian my favourite. Music student and devout chocolate enthusiast Samantha Mayes describes the Venezuelan 58% milk as ‘heaven in a teacup’. It’s also available in Ivory Coast White if you’re less concerned about the health benefits. What more do you really want?

Kokoa Collection

Available on-campus at Greenhouse Cafe, George Kenyon Hall

http://www.kokoacollection.co.uk/

The evolution of suits

James Bond, Mr Darcy, and even Justin Timberlake have been known for their suave attire. The humble suit has been a foolproof way to look dapper since the seventeenth century, and don’t these guys know it.

To some, it may seem that the suit is a dying breed of clothing replaced by the ‘drop down jean’ and skater tee. But fear not—the suit, my friend, has been around for over 400 years, and I don’t think it’s planning on fading out anytime soon.

The 1600s Suit

The 1600’s suit upheld the richness in culture and wealth. With knee-length breeches and stockings, this suit was anything but simple. Partnered with a redingote or frock coat and a frilled shirt, the 1600s look oozed elegance. Once the attire was in order, the look was completed with a wig.

The 1800s Suit

The 1800s suit was an embodiment of Charles Dickens novels and the aristocracy. The 1800s suit was always a three-piece. A fitted waistcoat, with a tailcoat and tailored trousers (black of course) was the traditional look. This fitted sensation was accompanied by a top hat and a cane for the ultra-fancy.

The 1900s Suit

The 1900’s suit underwent extreme evolution. Just as the social and economic times were moving forward, so were the looks for men. In the early 1900s, a simple loose black suit would have been acceptable with a bowler hat—a look often sported by Winston Churchill throughout the war.

As the 50s and 60s rolled around, colour was beginning to come back into fashion for men. Just with the 1600s, deep colours were desired, particularly for the rich and famous. A royal blue look wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary.

The 70s adorned angelic white, accompanied with not so angelic behaviour. Saturday Night Fever brought us white suits with big lapels, and collars matched with colourful shirts. The trousers were often tight, so footwear wouldn’t be missed. This look was often accessorised with gold chains and a little bit of chest tuft.

The 2000s Suit

The noughties weren’t particularly recognised for its great taste in suits, as far more casual fashion was coming into play. Those who did opt for a smarter appearance went for the classic blazer and trouser look, accompanied with a tie. As the decade progressed, so did the tailoring of the suit to what we know it to be today.

The 2015 Suit

The suit has become such an asset to the wardrobe that people are starting to wear them to up the ante on a casual look. The three piece is now a favourable option, with waistcoats becoming the new hoody. A smart, tailored suit with a crisp shirt is great for today’s suit look. With pocket squares making a comeback, we can only wonder when the 1600s suit will come back into fashion.

Review: Festival of the Spoken Nerd: Just For Graphs

Unapologetically geeky and corny, Festival of the Spoken Nerd: Just For Graphs brought their unique brand of irreverent comic science to The Lowry last weekend.

Comedy songwriter Helen Arney, science presenter Steve Mould, and mathematician & stand-up comic Matt Parker showcased their almost childlike excitement for maths and science to the packed-out theatre and attempted to transfer that into everyone present, whatever their level of expertise.

Considering the reaction to some of the more niche references, you could sense that the majority of the audience were well-versed in the topics covered, but at no point did the content become too complex for those in the audience who had come with only the science knowledge school had given them.

As the subtitle suggests, the show revolved almost solely around graphs—or charts, plots and diagrams to be precise. Managing to fill a two-hour show with variations on such a narrow theme takes some skill, but they managed to keep it inventive.

It is a natural sticking point to all those who try to fuse science and comedy that you risk sacrificing accuracy and complexity for humour, or vice versa, either disappointing the most knowledgeable among the audience or confusing the least knowledgeable.

Arney, Mould and Parker struck almost the right balance, if erring on the side of appealing to the novices—which is understandable. The second half was head and shoulders above the first, including a jaw-droppingly quick formulation of a 10×10 magic square using a number randomly picked from the audience, and a brilliant adaptation of Wicked’s Defying Gravity on the subject of Albert Einstein.

Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic

The stars of the show were not the hosts, however, but the tech. Not the modern, animation-filled PowerPoint projected behind them as they talked, but the antique equipment rolled out. The first was a reconstituted fax machine, to which audience-members could send messages or pictures using free smartphone apps.

The second was a slide projector that predated even the overhead projectors of my childhood, used in an almost slapstick routine between the 21st century projector and the 20th century one. Both of these old and new tech interplays were some of the best-received parts of the entire show, both inventive and funny.

Festival of the Spoken Nerd: Just For Graphs continues to tour the country until the 7th of December, calling in at Cambridge (13th of November), Southampton (15th of November), Glasgow (19th of November), Birmingham (21st of November) and London (7th of December). Check their full list of tour dates here.

Uber, Uber über alles

I love Uber taxis. I’ve been using Uber for over a year now, and it’s a thoroughly pleasant experience: The cars are clean and the drivers are polite and only too happy to engage in conversation. Payment is handled through the app and estimated in advance, so late-night detours to an ATM are no longer needed, and you can split fares with friends through the app. Heck, you can even play your own Spotify playlists through the car’s sound system.

Most crucially, using Uber is cheaper than other minicab firms, and a lot cheaper than black cabs. Using Uber has, in its own little way, improved my quality of life.

Part of Uber’s charm is that it is exceedingly simple. You open the app, tap the screen, and a car arrives to meet you, usually within a few minutes. Their drivers are contractors, who use their own car, and tend to be attracted to the flexibility this provides. Uber takes a 20 per cent commission from every fare. I am yet to meet an Uber driver who moans about the company.

As well as customers and drivers, a third group of people enthusing about Uber are investors. After a $1 billion fundraising exercise this year, the company is now valued at $50 billion—reaching this ridiculous level two years earlier than Facebook.

Uber is by no means perfect: There has been controversy concerning what some see as flouting regulations and cutting corners on background checks, and the company courted controversy during the 2014 Sydney café siege, when prices were quadrupled in the area. Perhaps most annoyingly, Uber paid only £22,000 in tax in the UK last year (though this is also a problem to do with the maladroitness of governments when trying to levy multinationals).

In short, barring a few hiccups, Uber has proved a revelation—not just changing the game of private transport, but creating a new game altogether.

However, not everyone shares the glowing positivity towards Uber that I do. The most vociferous critics of Uber and its business model are, unsurprisingly, long-established, old-fashioned taxi companies. In the UK, this has mainly taken the form of those who drive black cabs in London.

I say black cabs, but they are actually Hackney carriages, a term that, in the past, has applied to numerous variations of horse-drawn carriages. I’m sure the drivers of those were more dismayed at the arrival of motorised taxis than their modern-day successors have been by the arrival of Uber.

The primary source of the London cabbies’ opprobrium is that Uber have proved themselves to be better, cheaper and quicker than they have. Or, to couch it in their terms, Uber drivers’ use of a sat-nav, rather than learning an unfathomable number of possible routes across the capital, makes the playing field uneven for black cab drivers.

The Knowledge, as it is known, casts the cabbies in an unflattering light, where they are at once arrogant and oblivious to 21st century technological advances. In our world of sat-navs and the internet, there is absolutely no reason to learn their way around the streets of any city by heart.

Unfortunately for Uber, where tradition provides legitimacy, anything novel tends to be treated with suspicion, or outright hostility.

Transport for London (TfL) decided to respond to Uber’s market dominance and innovation by proposing to change the regulations to which car hire companies must comply. Jarringly, these proposals include a mandatory minimum five-minute wait between the customer requesting a car on a car hire app like Uber, and being allowed to get into the car. It is estimated this move could leave each London-based Uber driver up to £1,000 per year worse off.

Logically, this is dumbfounding. Surely the solution to arrest the rise of Uber would be for the black cab drivers to up their game? Maybe they could consider being more pleasant, or charging less extortionate fares.

Apply the same idea to any other business start-up, and TfL’s proposals look even more ridiculous. Say you were Paz, the Kebab King of Fallowfield. You are the undisputed top dog in the late-night takeaway game, and you’ve got the student demographic nailed down. Suddenly, a spate of new takeaways are opened, that offer nicer food and better service at a fraction of the price. You, Paz, would be forced to change your business model to make your offering more attractive to potential customers, rather than complain to municipal authorities to stifle the new guys.

Obviously, authorities need to ensure that Uber—and all other private car hire firms, for that matter—comply with regulations and provide background checks on all their drivers. However, authorities should not conjure up new, stifling regulations out of thin air to placate those who get misty-eyed about their position of archaic privilege. Just look at how well protectionism worked before the world wars.

To get serious for a moment (sorry!), one of the biggest sticks that critics have used to hit Uber with has been fears about passengers being raped by their drivers. Indeed, in October, a former Uber driver in India was convicted of raping one of his female passengers, leading to the app being banned in the country. Despite this horrific crime, Uber cars should be safer for punters since, before you get into the car, you are sent a photograph of your driver, as well as their rating by other customers and their licence plate. Surely that is a smart precaution to have in place?

In this age of increasing interconnectivity across the world, it would be folly and extremely short-sighted to deny Uber the room to revolutionise the way we transport ourselves across increasingly hectic urban landscapes because new-age Luddites insist that we stifle progress to preserve a status quo that works in their favour.

If you’ve read this and feel compelled to sign up to Uber, you can get £10 free credit by using the promo code ‘liamk61’.

Review: Melanie Manchot’s Twelve

Castlefield Gallery’s latest offering is a multi-video installation by artist Melanie Manchot called Twelve. She worked for six months with recovering addicts and taught them the basics of film-making. They then used these newly-developed skills to write, direct and star in short films about their dark moments. All of the troubled memories are deeply personal, and the artists attempt to purge the past by developing their inner auteur.

The installation was originally commissioned by Mark Prest’s Portraits of Recovery arts charity. It works with recovery centres across the country and uses art to help with the difficult recovery period. Their previous projects include I AM, a two-year partnership with cultural organisations that produced similar film portraiture, for example Cristina Nuñez’s slow-mo series of former drug/alcohol abusers expressing themselves without words, just faces of pain. The most recent one, ADDICT (2015), which resulted in Manchot’s videos, also involved letter writing and performance.

On the first floor, two screens talk over each other as a young scouser describes the temporary abandon of drink. Drink allowed him to dream and gave a brief, realistic cast to his hopes of being the next Steven Gerard. Descending into the lower gallery, the same man then features in a monologue that flicks between two personalities: One guise is a polite man asking for his football back in the park, and the other is a noxious addict who fires back foul-mouthed replies and hoards the ball. One story is a ‘romance’ between a woman and her booze. It begins with a precocious meeting on boxing day 1974. But teen romance ends badly when the ruinous dependency upon drink forces them apart for the better.

Manchot’s work is part of a wider expressionist movement in recovery circles. In 2011, a forthright manifesto, the ‘Recoverist Manifesto,’ was released, and declared—in confessional free verse—the need to move away from silent suffering into speaking out and sharing experiences. This is why Manchot has chosen video as her art form. Auteurish flair and honest storytelling can be broadcast to other recoverists up and down the UK. Especially given the fact that the exhibition is touring and always involves discussion groups about the restorative effects of art-making on former addicts. The quality of the shorts is very good and, apart from anything else, makes a fascinating case for having a full-scale Recoverist Film Festival.