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Day: 1 November 2016

Students attacked with fireworks in Fallowfield

There have been multiple reports of fireworks being used to frighten and injure University of Manchester students around Fallowfield on the evening of Halloween, at the height of the festivities.

Roma Havers, a third year English and Drama student, told The Mancunion that at around 10.30pm on the 31st of October 2016, on Moseley Road, she “heard the sound of firecrackers and looked round and could see the smoke from across the road very close to the ground”, and that a firecracker had been thrown from a car. Almost immediately after this, another one came “flying past”, and it was “really loud, smoky and bright”.

Many reports described three men dressed in white masks as the perpetrators of the attacks. Fuse FM’s Head of Drama, third year student Will Vincent, said that these men came to his home in the Ladybarn area and proceeded to throw a firework into his hallway, which scorched the stairs.

Writing on Facebook, Will said that himself and his housemates were “shaken… up a bit” by the incident, and encouraged all those staying in for Halloween to “stay safe”.

Will told The Mancunion that initially, the three men told him that they were trick or treaters. His housemate wanted to give them the sweets, but  when she went back to the front door, she said that they refused them, and at that point, “one of them produced a lighter and started pointing a firework inside”. They all ran for cover, and Will said all he could see was “white light and smoke”. They were all very disturbed by the ordeal, especially as one housemate had thought that one of the men had had a gun.

Ethan Davies, a second year PPE student, told The Mancunion that what appeared to be the same three men attacked him and his friends on their way to a club. “They stared us down,” said Ethan, after which “out of nowhere literally this firework came toward” them. It hit his friend Sam, who said it stung but left no permanent damage.

Marina Jenkins and her friend were also approached by the same three men on the street. They were walking down Egerton Road at about 9pm yesterday evening. She described four men rather than three, all still in white masks, who were cycling up and down the road and shouting at her and her friend, and to each other.

Marina said she “saw one of the boys holding something in his hand, to begin with I thought it was a knife from the way he was holding it”. The boys apparently then started throwing the fireworks, unperturbed by the fact the road was busy, according to Marina, and that lots of people had seen them do it. Marina did try to phone Greater Manchester Police on 101 three times, but received no answer. She said that the events of last night had left her feeling “unsafe”.

Greater Manchester Police have said this morning: “We received a call yesterday at 9.20pm to report that a firework had been set off in doorway of a home on Edgeworth Drive. We are now investigating and we’re asking anyone with information to call us on 101.”

Enter the student philanthropy survey

The University of Manchester is looking to get your views on giving to charity — all you have to do is fill in this five minute survey. All students who complete the survey are entered into a prize draw.

The Student Philanthropy Survey is being conducted by The University of Manchester’s Division of Development and Alumni Relations department.

The survey seeks to assess students’ views on charitable giving, and awareness and attitude towards the University’s charitable priorities.

Everyone who completes the survey is entered into a prize draw. Winners could receive  a £10 voucher to spend on food or drinks in the Union Bar at the Students’ Union, five ‘I love UoM’ canvas bags for carrying your library books or shopping, or the top prize of a summer term Stagecoach UniRider bus pass (RRP £55).

The survey will close on Sunday 13th November 2016, and winners of the prizes will be notified before Friday 18th November 2016.

Squid Ink

Northern Quarter. Two words I have written a thousand times. At its end is Great Ancoats Street. Across this gaping chasm of a road lies Ancoats. Accept, it is not such a huge divide. Why does Ancoats then not share the NQ’s footfall? Why this fear of crossing the road? It was an illuminating conversation with a man named Anthony Barnes, the chef owner of Squid Ink that gave me some understanding as to the why. He went on to explain what Ancoats used to be, and ultimately what it could become.

He actually grew up in Ancoats. He remembers it as a place that, if you weren’t local, you just didn’t go. Kids would hurl abuse and sling stones at outsiders. I had to ask was he one of those kids? He laughed, and said he was probably off reading a book somewhere. Now Anthony is a David, hurling stones at the Goliath of American comfort food that currently rules the Northern Quarter, consuming all food outlets with a banal wave of similarity.

He is part of an unofficial collective of restaurants, Japanese tea shops and boutique corner stores that are breathing unprecedented cultural life into not just Ancoats, but Manchester as a whole. The thing that struck me the most about Anthony was that he had never worked as a chef in a restaurant kitchen before, he has always been front of house. But after he described it as one part of the journey that lead him to create Squid Ink, it completely made sense. Much has been made of fusion or hybrid cuisines, but what of hybridised roles within restaurant? Anthony is first and foremost a host. He knows how to create an atmosphere, one of sterilisation intermingled with the work of local artists showing on his walls. The attention to detail on the custom carved cutlery boxes that adorn the naked wooden tables does not go unnoticed and creates a clean, clear platform upon which he presents his food. And the presentation is something in itself, there is no menu, just him and his description of the plate of food in front of you.

There are probably restaurants that operate like this in the London’s of the world, but not in Manchester, and especially not at £25 for four courses of proper cooking.

It is a menu that changes every month with accordance to the whimsy and availability of produce for the chef. You get the impression he wakes up in the middle of the night with the unexplainable impulse to put elderberries somewhere on his menu. It is also influenced by his travels, that Wednesday evening Mr Billy Baldwin and I were eating Scandinavian. Copenhagen evidently holds a special place in the heart of Anthony. He served a smorgasbord of rye bread and cultured butter, topped with apples, walnut, and blue cheese. Then came gravlax, a gently cooked salmon accompanied by beetroot and dill. If Copenhagen has a place in Anthony’s heart, Anthony’s pork belly has a place in mine, the product of five days labour, a generous portion enhanced by the presence of a deeply rich caramelised apple sauce.

The pudding was called Kladkaka, something I’d never heard of and the waiter couldn’t pronounce. None of that particularly matters, but I didn’t fall in love with the brownie-esque traditional Swedish dessert.
I thought his starter simple but clean, the fish course increasing the drive of the menu before arriving at its zenith the pork, before being let down by the dessert.

What I write about this menu may be entirely superfluous, for what I ate there may not be on the menu when you eat there. I implore you to try Squid Ink, because what he does in cooking by himself and employing no other chefs, is drive the price down of a kind of food that a student would not normally be able to buy.

It has a pretty serious wine list as well, try the rosé.

Remain voters need to scrutinise Brexiteers like me

If, unlike me, you voted Remain on June the 23rd, you might have encountered some hostility since the referendum. The Brexiteers have come up with a new line: anyone who voted to remain and stands by their opinion is an effete, moaning, unpatriotic, metropolitan liberal, to whom we should pay no notice. This is ridiculous. Many prominent Leave voters, including Nigel Farage, said that they would not be content in accepting the result if Britain voted to remain. You can be sure that if we had voted to remain, there would be cries of an establishment stitch-up and calls for a second referendum (as was the case after the Scottish Referendum).

One of the main arguments that convinced me to vote to Leave was the lack of democracy in the European Union. Jean-Claude Juncker (President of the European Commission) and his cronies, it seemed to me, were and are completely unaccountable to the British (or indeed European) electorate. There is no vote in which we can remove him, and he gives little thought to what the people he governs think of him.

The reason why the Westminster system is so much better than the EU system is that its politicians are scared of the people they represent. If your Local MP is an expenses cheat or does not turn up to parliament, they will likely be removed by their constituents in a General Election. When newspapers such as The Daily Mail make jibes at anyone who is still angry about the vote to Leave, they undermine a key reason for why so many people voted to leave — it is important that decisions taken by politicians can be criticised by the British people.

Democracy does not work if the opposition are expected to not oppose the government. As Ken Clarke (a Conservative MP for Rushcliffe, who supported Remain) said on Question Time: “When a party loses an election, they do not go to parliament and accept that the winning party was right about everything. I don’t think many Labour voters would be happy if, after having lost the election in 2015, Ed Miliband had gone into parliament and accepted that the Tories were right about austerity, tuition fees, and zero-hour contracts”.

Those making the foolish argument that Remainers should keep their traps shut about the dangers of leaving the European Union set a dangerous precedent. They think it would be better if those who hold the majority view remain immune from criticism. Think the weakening of the pound is a bad thing? Be quiet. Think that Brexit will lead to workers’ rights being eroded? Shut up.

I voted Leave with the understanding that if Brexit was a complete disaster — though I do not think it will be — I would have to shoulder a portion of the blame. Likewise, if we had voted to remain in the European Union I would have been first to criticise Remainers if, as I suspect it will, the EU continues in its ways, such as the forcing of austerity upon the poorest people on the block, or retaining protectionist barriers that are detrimental to farmers and workers in Africa.

The people who voted Remain, who are still firm in their belief that Britain should stay inside the European Union, or the single-market, or whatever it is, must not shut up. Liam Fox, Boris Johnson, and David Davis might well make a mess of Brexit. If they do, you ought to be the first to say so, because a functioning and healthy democracy is reliant on the fact that the electorate will be able to sniff out a dodgy deal, or a promise that has not been delivered on.

The public voted to Leave and now that the referendum is over that is what we must do. But, as Remain-voting MPs have become fond of saying, we did not vote on what kind of Brexit we wanted. Contrary to what some people think, we did not vote for the official Vote Leave campaign. We did not vote for Boris Johnson or Michael Gove. We simply voted to leave. And many of those who voted to leave, me included, certainly do not have much sympathy with some of the plans of the current government.

I rely on Remain voters to keep the Conservative government in check and to ensure that Brexit is not a disaster. If it is, ordinary British people will suffer. More importantly, I will have egg on my face.

Pro-EU intellectuals must speak out

I am sure that Theresa May was far too busy creating “a country that works for everyone” to have a Halloween party this year. However, on the off chance that May decided to throw a Halloween bash, I hope that one of the guests attended dressed as an embodiment of the pro-European faction of the British Intelligentsia. After all, it would have truly terrified the knickers off our dear Prime Minister, and they would certainly be in with a shot of winning the prize for the most creative costume.

Theresa May and many of those in support of hard Brexit have tried everything to shut out the voice of those opposed to it, many of whom are students or a part of the Intelligentsia, calling them “unpatriotic”, “bad losers” or “anti-democratic.”

They even started a petition declaring that criticism of Brexit should be considered treason after Article 50 is triggered. Surely if these individuals are as in favour of democracy as they claim to be, they should recognise the importance of democratic freedom of expression that allows the political system to be questioned and, therefore, would not try so incessantly to squash those questioning the conduct and outcome of the referendum.

A likely explanation is that pro-European intellectuals are a terrifyingly rational opposition to a chaotic Brexit and, for that reason, pose a significant threat to Theresa May and the Brexit politicians and supporters (if one can even say that Theresa May “supports” Brexit).

Taking Brexit out of the equation entirely, more generally speaking, society and the establishment’s distrust of intellectuals, thinkers and questioners, is a tale as old as time. According to the creation story from one of the world’s major religions, Christianity, the fall of human beings stems from the fact that God caught Adam and Eve eating an apple from the Tree of Knowledge. In other words, according to Genesis, mankind is condemned with mortality. Us ladies are cursed with feeling that our bodies are ripped in half during childbirth, all because they were tempted into wanting to possess knowledge. Perhaps this is a misinterpretation on my part, but that does not a seem like a particularly endearing representation of intellectual curiosity.

So why would the writer of Genesis want to portray this dismissive representation of knowledge? Genesis is not the only piece of literature to present this argument — often the pursuit of knowledge is shown as something threatening, something that is associated with sly behaviour or wickedness.

One of the main characteristics that Euripides gives Medea in order to establish her as an evil character is her unique intelligence and gift for alchemy (forget the fact that she murders her own children). So why does Western literature treat intelligence, and a desire to question the world around us, with such an inherit distain? Is not thinking, and questioning the world around us, a distinct sign of freedom and democracy? Is it not a good thing?

Aside from propaganda, the arts and sciences have always been a threat to the establishment, in any country, under any leader, at any given time period. It is no coincidence that artists and intellectuals that are not openly in favour of a certain regime are usually amongst the first to be shoved in the Gulags, concentration camps or prisons.

Often, when a scientist has discovered something that goes against whichever political system they are living under, they might magically disappear or be found having tragically accidentally fallen on a knife. Luckily we live in twenty-first century Britain, where the worst that can happen to someone who speaks out against a system of any kind is a bit of innocent threatening, perhaps an online death threat or two.

Back to Brexit. The lashing out against, and threatening of, those of us who are speaking out against the United Kingdom’s leaving the European Union has increased in the aftermath of the referendum — as has the racism that has exploded in our society.

Unfortunately, this distrust of thinking, and questioning, has been in the bubbling core of our society long before June 23rd 2016. It does feel as though any attempt to criticise Brexit, or rationally discuss the various options that the United Kingdom should be exploring, is simply shot down by hate, anger and reverse snobbery.

Students who speak out are accused of being “lazy” because their age group had the lowest turnout. But chances are, if they feel strongly enough about the subject to actually write an article about it, they probably voted on June 23rd.

However, this threat, and suspicion, has not discouraged the intellectuals and students throughout history, and should not discourage them now. So, if anyone did turn up at Theresa May’s door this Halloween dressed as any 21st century intellectual, she may have slammed the door in your face but take it as a compliment, her malice is out of fear of what you can do.