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Month: December 2017

Most-feared Fallowfield streets undergo crime inspection

Written by Emefa Setranah on . Posted in News.

In what has been coined a “street MOT”, members of Greater Manchester Police (GMP) and Manchester City Council have inspected streets that students believe to be hot spots for crime.

Voted the most dangerous by students in the Facebook Fallowfield Student Group, the five streets in question were Braemar Road, Brailsford Road, Ladybarn Lane, Edgerton Road, and Old Hall Lane near Rusholme.

The inspection team of of PC Pete Baldwin, community safety specialist Adrian Hopkins, and crime reduction specialist Katifa Islam told The Mancunion that the five streets named by students do not actually correlate to crime statistics and that other places in Fallowfield appear to be at more risk.

Speaking to The Mancunion, Adrian Hopkins said, “the perception of crime isn’t actually where most of the crime is happening. What is more crippling than crime is the fear of crime.

“Over a five year period crime in Greater Manchester is lower than it has ever been. However, in Fallowfield, crime is slightly up.

“As a team, we will walk out onto those five streets and see if there is anything in particular that stands out. This is so we can do something quickly to address what students are saying.”

Housemates and student nurses Catherine Lawrence and Melissa Stephens commented on the ‘Street MOT’: “we live on Egerton road and it’s nice to see the police making an effort to keep Manchester students safe. We are looking forward to seeing improvements in the area.”

Whilst the team were working, Adrian Hopkins indicated that foliage such as branches and bushes needed to be trimmed, suggesting that they sometimes they can serve as hiding spots for criminals or obstruct street lighting.

PC Pete Baldwin is the student liaison officer for Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Manchester. He advised students to have a look at the GMP Facebook and Twitter pages for safety advice and updates.

When asked by The Mancunion about what students can do to feel safer, Pete said that, “irrespective of where students have come from, they’ve got to be aware of their own environment. This is a metropolitan 24-hour city.

“The message we are trying to send is to make sure that visually your address looks secure.”

Coming up to the Christmas period, many students will be leaving their homes vacant.”Its usually on the run up to Christmas where the majorities of burglaries happen,” Adrian Hopkins told us.

The GMP and the council are trying to tackle this by providing free personal alarms and 24 hour light timers that can be collected free of charge from Manchester Student Homes by all students.

Katifa Islam, a crime prevention specialist for the GMP, said, “the 24 hour segment timers are great because you plug them in before it starts getting dark and it looks like someone is in the house by switching lights on and off periodically.”

Student safety has become a major source of concern since the start of the 2017/18 academic year — to such a point that 10,000 people signed a petition urging authorities do to do more to protect students in South Manchester.

Though, an investigation by The Mancunion suggested that students’ growing reliance on anecdotal information from Facebook groups was helping to escalate fears about crime.

Commenting on communications, Adrian Hopkins said, “one of the things we admit we haven’t been very good at is passing out messages about what the council and police are doing to help.”

The Communities Officer of Manchester University’s Student Union, Jack Houghton, told The Mancunion that, “at the meetings I have been to so far there is an attitude of wanting to improve. The overall message is extremely positive and I have been very pleased with the response from the council and the police.”

Seeking to address student safety concerns, the Communities Officer has proposed a ‘Night Owl’ scheme, in which students volunteers would learn first aid, safeguarding, well-being training, and self-defence.

This scheme was criticised by students, with one student describing it as “almost offensive to anyone that’s been assaulted, threatened, stabbed or mugged.”

 

The fear of mediocrity and failure

Written by Jacklin Kwan on . Posted in Opinion.

The International Baccalaureate’s Further Mathematics course is notoriously difficult. High school students undertake learning units in discrete mathematics, Euclidean geometry, graph theory, set theory, linear algebra, statistics, and advanced calculus — all of which wouldn’t be out-of-place in the first few years of a STEM university degree.

To this day, I remember what our teacher said during our first class while looking through the register… “I won’t bother to remember all of your names until the third week. Half of you would have dropped out by then.”

Imposter syndrome, performance anxiety, and high-functioning depression — there are many toxic side-effects of what is an increasingly prevalent issue. It affects previously high-performing students who have encountered a wall for the first time, and in response, develop a compulsive fear of mediocrity and failure.

It is for the people who have, for their entire lives, defined themselves to be exceptional, and now are exposed to not only their own distorted self-perceptions but the real and imagined prejudices of others. In the face of these challenges, many of us choose to quit pursuits that may otherwise have contributed meaningfully to our lives.

Since the day that we are born, our lives — and by extension, our successes and failures — are made to be spectacles. We perform not only for ourselves but for other people. We may openly share our grades with our classmates after a test, we may have our parents check our semester report cards, we may post graduation pictures on Facebook.

But the concept of spectacle goes beyond a general lack of privacy; it is the constant awareness of being watched. It is about how we adjust our behaviour believing that we are always under the judgmental gaze of others and how this vulnerability never leaves us even when no one is watching. Over time, we internalise this feeling of unceasing exposure and we begin to see ourselves in the perspective of a dissociated spectator.

This means that we judge ourselves in the same way a stranger may judge us, we value ourselves in the same superficial and un-intimate ways a stranger might. And worst of all, this effect is arguably much worse for gender and racial minorities.

The performance of racial minorities and women is always necessarily made a spectacle at a young age. We are told throughout our lives that people judge us for what we cannot control and that the peak of our liberation comes when we prove them wrong. Our private lives are made into socio-political issues.

Herein lies the paradox — our idealised perceptions of our own capacities to break out of external limitations is itself a crippling handicap. When we learn to look at our successes as triumphs against systematic disadvantage, the inverse is also true. Our failures no longer belong to solely us; they reflect upon our gender and race.

When women struggle in STEM, they do not have the privilege of just being imperfect people, but rather, their shortcomings are used as proof of female incompetence. Women are more likely to be punished more harshly for their mistakes which overshadow any potential improvement they may have.

Female surgeons are statistically much less likely to get referrals from other doctors after a failed procedure than their male counterparts under almost identical scenarios. The fear of failure for many people is therefore not only an issue of narcissism and internalised self-consciousness but also of very real external judgement.

When preceded by a long history of high-performance, mediocrity often causes a significant amount of self-delusion. In a bid to protect our self-esteem and identity, we drop the pursuits that make us feel bad about ourselves or we abandon all ownership of our failures, i.e. we blame others for our own flaws.

But feeling bad about ourselves is part of the journey. In a culture that fetishes the feeling of perpetual happiness and absence of pain, we aren’t taught that pain can be a natural and healthy part of personal development. Anything that is worth doing will be painfully difficult and pushing ourselves to rise to challenges will, at times, lead to crushing disappointment. We often trivialise or romanticise this hardship, ignoring the fact that it is often gruelling, unsatisfying, and sometimes meaningless.

But in the end, this pain naturally accompanies ambition. Trying to avoid pain by quitting or treating our ambition with frivolity and detachment stunts our ability to commit in any profound way to improvement. We should stop attempting to insulate others and ourselves from pain.

Though we should recognize when it reaches damaging levels, we should affirm that gruelling hardship is often a healthy sign of ambition and commitment. Instead of teaching people how to avoid pain entirely, teaching them how to cope with stress and disappointment is probably more helpful while ensuring that we support them throughout their journey. This by no means justifies toxic practices like overworking and unhealthy obsession — of course, there needs to be a balance.

In order to overcome this oppressive dread of our own growth, we should work harder to normalise failure. Those who succeed should make it clearer that the path to the top is paved with determination, hard work, and many, many missteps.

 

People’s History Museum to celebrate suffragette centenary

Written by Elizabeth Rushton on . Posted in News.

Manchester’s People’s History Museum (PHM) has unveiled a programme of events running throughout 2018 to mark the centenary of the Representation of the People Act, a landmark piece of legislation which extended the right to vote to all men and some women.

In a statement, the museum said that it hopes that the forthcoming projects will prompt visitors to “discuss, discover and reflect upon one of the great milestones for equality.”

As the home city of the firebrand suffragette and leader of the WSPU, Emmeline Pankhurst, Manchester itself was the birthplace of the campaigns of the early 20th century for women’s suffrage in Britain.

This history will be celebrated in March with the fifth annual Wonder Women festival, which will see the PHM collaborate with other cultural hubs around the city including Manchester Art Gallery and the Working Class Movement Library stage a variety of events exploring issues of equality.

A new headline exhibition, ‘Represent! Voices 100 Years On’ will also feature the voices of present day campaigns including Manchester Women’s March and the Proud Trust, a Manchester based charity for LGBT+ youth, to consider how the concept of representation has changed over the past century .

This will run from June of 2018 to February of 2019 and will be in the form of a feminist zine documenting the activists’ responses to items in the museum’s main collection, including sashes, brooches and cartoons from the campaign for women’s suffrage.

The 1918 electoral reforms granted the right to vote to women aged over 30 and who had also graduated university, or were either property owners or married to one. This step granted suffrage to 8.4 million women, and paved the way for the act which would also allow them to stand for election to Parliament.

The first Representation of the People Act, introduced in 1832, had already granted voting rights to men who owned property and earned more than £10 a year (almost £800 in today’s money), discounting the largely poor populations of industrial cities such as Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham.

This legislation itself succeeded the 1831 Peterloo Massacre, where crowds peacefully demonstrating for greater representation were charged by cavalry at St Peter’s Field in Manchester, now St Peter’s Square, as a result of which 15 were killed. The 1918 act extended these rights to all men aged 21 or over.

It would take another ten years for women to be granted equal suffrage with men with the introduction of the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) act, allowing anyone aged 21 or above to vote. A successive act of the same name in 1969 lowered the voting age to 18, as we know it today.

The PHM’s recently announced projects were made possible by a grant of £82,100 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), which recently was among charities to offer financial support to the museum’s campaign to buy back an iconic and unique banner used during the suffragette movement.

The banner was discovered in a Leeds charity shop in June and was successfully purchased by the museum in September after a fund of more than £20,000 (to which HLF contributed £5,000) was raised to finance its purchase as well as future maintenance and care.

Dating from 1908 and bearing the words “Manchester First In The Fight – Founded By Mrs Pankhurst”, the banner was carried at a march held in Heaton Park by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the suffragette campaign group infamous for their militant demonstrations. It will be among the museum’s collection of banners and placards, the largest in the UK, which will be rotated throughout 2018 to reflect the significance of this centenary year.

Fittingly for the centenary year of such a significant step forward for British women, the PHM will also play host in March to the third annual Women in Media conference, organised by Manchester Media Group and supported by Amnesty International, media agency Gorkana, and the NUS.

The two-day event on the 3rd and 4th of March will give students from Manchester and other universities, as well as from local schools and colleges, the chance to hear speeches from and network with leading women figures from across a range of media fields from journalism to marketing.

Editor-in-Chief of The Mancunion, Head of Manchester Media Group, and chair of the Women in Media conference Kirstie O’Mahony, described the PHM as “the perfect venue” for the event.

Kirstie said: “It celebrates people who have made a real difference in Britain and in the world. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do with the conference – the women that speak on it have such an impact on our delegates year on year, and there’s such a motivation to make a difference when we hear from women we admire.”

She added that the upcoming centenary should remind us that “lots of women at the time were still completely marginalised, and even though things have drastically changed between now and then, there’s still so much work to be done  not only in the world of media but also in the political realm.”

Texts from student who took her own life released as part of domestic violence campaign

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in News.

Following the death of Emily Drouet, a law student at Aberdeen University, text messages have been released across campus in an attempt to eliminate domestic violence amongst young people.

Emily was 18 years old at the time of her death in March 2016. She was caught in the midst of a seemingly abusive relationship with Angus Milligan, a fellow student at Aberdeen. The recently released text messages illustrated the apparent extent of her physically and emotionally violent relationship with Milligan, in which she described to friends the abuse as “my fault,” insisting that “I made him so angry…I deserve it.”

Spearheaded by Emily’s mother, Fiona, the campaign explicitly calls for both young women and university staff to be aware of the signs and symptoms of abusive relationships. In partnership with NUS Scotland, Emily will strikingly feature on posters and help cards, encouraging student associations across the whole of the UK to lobby their institutions to improve the awareness and availability of on-campus services and advice for both students and staff.

Milligan, a 21-year-old psychology student at Aberdeen, was both expelled from university and sentenced to 180 hours of unpaid work in July after the court found him guilty of both assault and threatening behaviour.

Described by fellow students as the “alpha male on the campus,” the court heard how Milligan seized Emily by the neck, choked and slapped her just eight days before she took her life. He also admitted to sending disparaging and invective messages to Emily over a six-week period, in which she was referred to as a “slut” and “bitch,” amongst a series of other insults and threatening messages.

Five other charges, including an alleged attempt to choke Emily minutes before her death, were dropped as a result of a lack of evidence.

In the wake of the revelation that Emily approached a student resident assistant in Aberdeen before she died, central to the campaign is the call for mandatory training of higher education staff. When Emily was asked if the difficulties discussed included physical violence, she denied it to ensure Milligan did not get in trouble. No further action was taken.

Whilst Aberdeen described the action taken as “appropriate,” Fiona stated that she “would like to see mandatory training for university staff rolled out across Scotland, and then into England and Wales. Part of that training is the bystander awareness [encouraging non-professionals to find safe ways to intervene and interrupt abusive behaviour].

“It’s not just listening to what people are saying but also observing behavioural changes. Emily’s friends are heartbroken that they didn’t recognise the gravity of [Milligan’s] actions. If you suspect someone is being abused and speak up, you can save a life.”

To raise awareness of domestic violence, The University of Manchester are participating in the nation-wide 16 Days of Action Against Domestic Violence campaign, which takes place from the 25th of November to the 10th of December.

If you are the victim of sexual or domestic assault, the Students’ Union offers a year-round confidential advice service. St Mary’s Centre also offers constant support for both women and men in the Greater Manchester area who have become the victim of sexual or domestic abuse. They can be contacted on 0161 276 6515.

Alternatively, Women’s Domestic Violence helpline can be contacted on 0161 636 7525. For men, the helpline can be found at 0808 801 0327.

Pharmaceutical company to bring 800 jobs to Manchester

Written by Shivani Kaura on . Posted in News, Science & Tech.

Pharmaceutics company Qiagen is expanding its research into a genomics and diagnostics centre in partnership with the Health Innovation in Manchester, and is expected to create 800 new jobs.

The ‘big pharma’ deal, expected to be a vote of confidence for the government, will be an opportunity to promote the UK’s biotechnology industry and outline its industrial strategy. The first investment was made in London by Merck & Co. from North America, expected to create 950 jobs, which was followed by the plans for investment in Manchester.

Qiagen already employs approximately 270 staff members at a base located at Skelton House near Manchester University. It is uncertain whether the location will expand or move elsewhere.

The deal is not planned to be completed until the first half of 2018 and, if successful, will form a collaboration between Qiagen, NHS Trust, and the UK government.

Speaking to the BBC, the chief executive of Qiagen, Peer Schatz stated that this collaboration was “essential” to the partnership they are investing in.

Developing relationships like this could mean that scientists are more comfortable working in the UK and, following a sudden decline of job applications after Brexit, could encourage international researchers and academics to work in the UK.

Dr Thomas Theuringer, Director of PR for Qiagen, stated that, the company is “considering investing in Manchester because [they] have a very good experience of the skill set available and the people there.

“With an office already in Manchester the city is contributing very much to the success of our business and the growth of personalised healthcare is going to be the future.

“We are developing ways to see whether people are eligible for certain courses of drugs and personalised healthcare and that is why the government wants to invest. We are an absolute leader in this field and we have a great knowledge of the sector.”

Manchester, now considered the centre of the ‘Northern Powerhouse’, has established a foundation for financial development because of relatively low start-up up costs. Theuringer proposed that, “the government and other companies see the north as an engaging and important site in life sciences.”

Amid post-Brexit regrets, EU negotiations, and the government’s ‘Industrial Strategy’, this scheme will boost confidence in Theresa May’s leadership.

The industrial strategy outlines how the government will support more research and development and encourage firms to work on new technologies.

The factors which have been discussed and agreed on in parliament have included: making sector deals to encourage scientific growth, a challenge fund which supports innovation and robotics technology, and research and development tax credit — which has already risen to 12 per cent.

This investment, though a long-term negotiation, may have promising effects for students, academics, and local communities.

16 days of activism at Manchester University Students’ Union

Written by Nicole Wootton-Cane on . Posted in News.

From the 25th of November to the 10th of December, the University of Manchester Students’ Union will take part in sixteen days of activism against gender-based violence.

The international United Nations campaign takes place annually and aims to raise awareness about violence against women and girls by ‘oranging’  campuses across the globe and raising money for relevant charities.

This year’s theme is ‘Leave No One Behind: End Violence against Women and Girls’.

The campaign at Manchester Students’ Union is headed by women’s officer Sara Heddi, who told The Mancunion: “I thought it was so important to run this campaign because with issues such as sexual harassment being so prominent in the media, I think it is really important to raise awareness about other forms of violence that people may not be aware of.

“For example, we are running days where we focus on violence towards people with hidden disabilities such as mental illnesses. Campaigns like this are so important in making people aware of the different forms that violence can take.”

The campaign encourages supporters to cover their campuses in orange banners and posters to raise awareness. The colour is used by all participants of the global campaign, including Manchester Students’ Union, to symbolise a brighter future, free from violence against girls and women.

The idea originated from the first Women’s Global Leadership Institute, coordinated by the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership in 1991.

This year, the Students’ Union have selected Manchester Rape Crisis as their chosen charity. Based on Nelson street, Manchester Rape Crisis is a confidential service run by women and girls who have suffered rape and sexual abuse.

It offers support, counselling, and group work to women experiencing these difficulties. It can also offer signposting support to male victims and advice for friends and family of victims.

Sara Heddi said: “the work that they do is absolutely fantastic, I am so inspired by them. They’re a small organisation, but the amount of work they do is incredible. This is a great way to support a home grown charity.”

The focus of the Students’ Union campaign will be different on each of the 16 days. Students get involved by going into the Students’ Union, picking up a flyer and speaking to campaigners.

Students can also follow the hashtags #16DAYSATUOM and #orangetheworld and share photos, ideas and videos via Twitter and Facebook.

The 16 days of activism will take place on nine working days. Here is the itinerary for the campaign:

  • Day 1: Orange the campus: raising awareness of the campaign by making the campus orange. Volunteers will be handing out ‘why is my campus orange’ leaflets;
  • Day 2: Domestic Violence: volunteers will be handing out stickers to raise awareness of victims;
  • Day 3: Sexual Violence: covering the Students’ Union building in paper dolls to raise awareness of how serious sexual violence affects women;
  • Day 4: Honour Based Violence: covering the campus in ‘Why Cant I Speak’ posters which pull up to reveal the impact of victim silencing;
  • Day 5: Violence towards women of colour: covering the Students’ Union building in different shades of brown paper dolls with a large board explaining violence towards women of colour in education, media, and employment;
  • Day 6: Violence towards LGBQ+: case studies around campus about the subgegation of LGBQ+ people around the world;
  • Day 7: 1st of December: Community Fair charities in the Students’ Union as a signposting day, including Manchester Rape Crisis, The Pankhursts Centre, Independent Choices, and more to be confirmed;
  • Day 8:  Violence against Trans People: handing out pronoun stickers to raise awareness of trans visibility;
  • Day 9: Balloon Release: release a balloon in exchange for a donation. On the bottom of each balloon there will be a card with a list of services in Manchester, the idea being when the balloon lands someone somewhere will find the card and it’ll help raise awareness of services if anyone out there should need them.

Manchester’s Hinterland: Christmas in a hot-tub

Written by Sophia Macpherson on . Posted in Lifestyle.

With Christmas comes all sorts of fun activities and events that pop up all across the city! Manchester is well supplied with a list of places to go for a drink and with Christmas nearing us, there are even more places to do just this. There is nothing better than finding somewhere to cosy up with your mates and scoff down a deliciously Christmas meal and some drinks.

With this in mind, Hinterland comes forth. Just 10 minutes away from the city centre by car, in Stretford, Hinterland takes you to a world far away from Manchester. Priding itself on being an immersive arctic experience, it involves a giant tipi village in which you can enjoy a two-course Christmas dinner at your table next to an open crackling fire. To top it off, welcome drinks are offered whilst you arrive under the starry night.

For £30.50, you can get a shared dining experience which involves a welcome drink, a table in a shared tipi, two-course Christmas dinner, access to the whole site including the bars and other entertainment, live bands/DJs, and arctic activities.

For £15, you get a non-dining entry which includes a welcome drink, access to the whole site, live bands/DJs, and arctic activities.

Now to get to the most important bit — the hot-tubs! Hinterland offers wood-fired hot-tubs in the open, crisp air. For £20, you get a free drink, a towel, and thirty minutes to soak in the hot-tub.

Arctic activities include interacting with the ‘wildlings’ of Hinterland as they teach you the sporting traditions of the arctic world. The two-course meal includes a mouth-watering slow-cooked meat, confit potatoes, roasted vegetables with stuffing and gravy, and some festive pudding to top it off. Entertainment also includes an aurora light show!

Make sure you grab your tickets as soon as possible as this is a 3 night-only experience from the 6th to the 9th of December. Tickets are issued for use between 6pm-12.30am. More information and ticket prices can be found here.

Australia cruise to victory at the Gabbatoir

Written by Arthur Salisbury on . Posted in Sport.

For three and a bit days and at an important stage in my studies, this test kept me up. The slowest scoring Ashes test match since 1994, the cautious optimism of Thursday through Saturday gave way to a crushing if faintly nostalgic Sunday. Strange, strange Englishmen who turned up at the Gabba on Monday morning to see Bancroft and Warner knock off the remaining 66 runs for an Australian victory.

You could tell England’s position in the match by the varying ferocity of Mitchell Starc’s moustache. Two and a half overs in when Cook edged to Handscomb at first slip, it was ostentatiously reminiscent of Dennis Lillee. By Friday, with David Malan and Moeen Ali looking set, Starc was kicking the dirt with all the frustrated petulance of Yosemite Sam.

This was when England ought to have pushed on and made 400. Cook’s early dismissal aside, it had been a positive opening day for England, in one sense of the word only. To open an Ashes series at the Gabba in only your fourth test is a big ask, but Stoneman stonewalled for nearly four hours, offering nothing to the new ball bowlers nor the BT Sport highlights team, scoring at two an over for his 53. James Vince was more generous at the other end, driving outside the off stump in a way that suggested another death in the 20s but achieving his as-yet highest Test score before setting off on an unrealistic single on 83.

83 is a typical Ian Bell score, a decent knock but not a match-winner, and anyone else and one might have pointed this out. But it was such a relief to see Stoneman, Vince and Malan, who looked reasonably comfortable for his 56, stand up to the much-vaunted Australian pace trio that perhaps we turned a blind eye to what was, in fact, a par position at best.

The slow scoring implied a stability that was subsequently revealed to be an illusion. Geoffrey Boycott is fond of reminding us to mentally add two wickets to the score because two so often fall in quick succession. Two might have been salvageable, but when England fell from 246-4 with the partnership between Malan and Ali nearing a hundred, to 250-7 — with a notoriously weak tail to follow —, this looked like the moment when the match had been lost.

It’s always nice to see Stuart Broad get stuck in at the end of the innings — what a poignant surprise it is every time the on-screen graphic reminds us of his wonderful 169 against the Pakistanis seven years ago —, but a first-innings score of 302 all out, on an unusually slow pitch in Brisbane, did not seem enough.

Still, England would not let me sleep. Broad had Bancroft caught behind, bringing Khawaja to the crease, who was soon trapped LBW by Moeen Ali. Ali bowled poorly all match, failing to extract the turn and bounce of Nathan Lyon, but Khawaja has now been dismissed 12 times in 39 innings from off-spin, and Moeen could have bowled him with an orange.

The big positive for England was Jake Ball’s dismissal of David Warner, who scooped the ball to Malan at short midwicket. When Anderson reduced Australia to 76/4, successfully reviewing a ball shown to be hitting Handscomb’s leg stump, England had a second chance in the match to push on and assume an unbeatable position.

There was, however, the small matter of on Steve Smith to contend with. From memory, Smith mistimed one pull shot, but otherwise gave England nothing. An initial plan to bowl wide of the off-stump and tempt him to waft at it was eventually shelved when it became clear that he wasn’t going to — although anything dropped a tad short was dispatched to the boundary.

England should learn an important lesson here: when your strike bowlers are bowling around 85mph, short bowling will not work. Australia’s quicks get it up around 90 and it can be intimidating, but Anderson and Broad are craftsmen more than enforcers and they will not do the Aussies for pace.

When three wickets fell in quick succession on Saturday morning, again England might have clinched it. Marsh spooned Broad to Anderson at mid-off, then Anderson had Paine caught behind with a new ball beauty. Broad’s caught and bowled to dismiss Starc brought Cummins to the crease with the score 209-7, trailing England by 93.

The difference in this series will be the difference between the qualities of the tails; Cummins alone faced more deliveries than England’s 8, 9, 10 and 11 across both innings. Joe Root’s decision not to keep Anderson bowling at this point was crucial and catastrophic.

Cummins hung around for two hours, providing back-up for Smith as he steadily compiled an unbeaten 141. When Australia crept past the England total at tea-time, you sensed the game was lost. A difficult 16 overs under the lights at the end of the day, in which Cook and Vince departed for 7 and 2 respectively, more or less confirmed it.

Hazlewood and Lyon did the initial damage and Starc finished off the tail, 195 all out setting Australia’s target at 170. Andy Zaltzman is correct to point out that cricketicians are far too obsessed with highest fourth-innings chase statistics — the record would have indicated some potential trouble for the Aussies. The reality was quite different.

The next test is a pink ball day-nighter at the Adelaide Oval, in what are likely going to be the best conditions the English attack can hope for. The Australian strategy at the moment will be to see off Anderson and Broad and cash in on poor bowling with an old Kookaburra from Woakes, Ball and Moeen.

We do not yet know for sure how the pink ball will age but England must have a contingency plan for the possibility that it doesn’t reverse. As the seniors, one of Root and Cook must make a big Smith-style knock. It doesn’t look like there’ll be a draw in this series – if England win in Adelaide, it’s game on, but it will require taking twenty wickets and scoring 400 in the first innings. If Australia go 2-0 up — whitewash.

The creative space: CCM music EP

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in Features.

Manchester is a city rich with musical talent and history. Making an impression on the Christian music scene is Christ church Manchester (CCM).  Located between the Curry mile and Fallowfield, CCM is a church abundant with students who are a massive part of every aspect of the church, from how it runs, to its mission. Recently CCM: Music launched an EP that will shake up people perceptions of church music. I went along to the launch night in the Northern Quarter to check it out.

Photo: Christ Church Manchester Music

The atmosphere was amazing, you could tell a lot of hard work and consideration had gone into the music and it was amazing to see such an array of people there, it definitely felt more like a gig than the normal perceptions of a church. Despite not being in a church building there was still the essence of church and worship, with a body of people coming together and having a good time and recognising God, all with a pint in hand and surrounded by good music. It was really exciting to see a church take bold steps in this direction.

“Manchester has a rich history of creativity, artistic innovation and noise making! So we thought it would be fun for the church to become part of that” Tim Simmons, the church leader told me.

Many current students and alumni of the University of Manchester were involved in the process of producing the EP. There were a series of songwriting workshops with many different people and talents involved, there has been a series of music videos produced by graduated University of Manchester student Rachel Hattam, and many hours of practice went into rehearsing for the big launch. The EP took approximately a year of hard work to produce.

Photo: Christ Church Manchester Music

I spoke to Mike Lawetto about the song ‘Keep to the Point’ which he wrote and is personally one of my favorites.

Mike tells me that the inspiration for the song came from a devotional by Oswald Chambers, the words and imagery were just so powerful that he sat with a guitar and created the melody in about 10-15 minutes, a really fast and organic process. One of the really interesting things about this particular song on the EP is that it doesn’t mention God by name, which I didn’t notice until it was pointed out to me.

“I really love that it doesn’t directly mention God or Jesus, I have never been a massive fan of corporate worship songs, whilst it doesn’t mention Jesus or God, the relationship is obvious and talks strongly of love.”

Mike also explains that this particular song also had a lot of work put into it and when Rachel recorded the vocals for it, it was actually to a completely different track that was much more mellow and upbeat. the mix of Rachel’s hopeful lyrics and the dark melody create something really provoking together.

Photo: Christ Church Manchester Music

As well as Mike I also spoke to Jake Woodward about the songs he wrote, including ‘I’ll Run’ and ‘Home’.

“For all the songs I wrote on the Ep, they all have a shared quality in that they were written with passion and desperation to see God glorified. There are songs that speak of the intimacy and relationship you can have with God and his and our role in that. There are songs that declare his worthiness of our attention.

At Christ Church Manchester we’re driven to make music that’s exciting with real lyrics close to our heart.”

Photo: Christ Church Manchester Music

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are just two of the many people who where involved in creating the EP. In terms of the music style I would compare the style and sound to bands such as Arcane Roots and Fickle Friends, with alternative rock and Indie pop vibes.  This music isn’t just ‘good for Christian Music’, but its actually good music that is enjoyable to listen to if you are religious or not.

The EP is worth a listen and will be like no church music you have heard before. If you are interested in listening to the EP yourself, you can find it here.

 

 

He who shouts loudest: the danger of echo chambers

Written by James Gill on . Posted in Opinion.

The dominance of social media in our lives is creating a new divide in our society. One that isolates us from diversity of opinion, an absolute necessity for functioning democracy, as it encourages open-minded discussion and ensures we constantly challenge our pre-existing worldviews.

Let’s use Facebook and politics as an example. Say you have 500 ‘friends’, 200 Conservative, 200 Labour, and 100 distributed among the minor parties.

Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm promotes the type of posts that you engage most with and hides those that you largely ignore.

So if you hold a conservative viewpoint and thus interact with those posts and articles more, you’ll see the alternative ideologies disappear.

Without you realising it you’ll be surrounding yourself with only those views that you already agree with, the influx of new media outlets and people that appear on your feed will just reaffirm those beliefs.

This is called an ‘echo-chamber’ and it is more dangerous then you think.

Journalism has been forced to evolve in this new technological era to rely on views and shares. The easiest way to achieve this is to confirm what you already think.

As a result, there has been a staggering increase in the number of websites that thrust sensationalist or biased headlines upon us.

This kind of extreme journalism works because it provokes a reaction from those that share the same viewpoint. A conservative will always like or share an article condemning or satirising Labour and Jeremy Corbyn and vice-versa.

An unfortunate consequence of this is that the values of the person consuming these articles become more and more extreme too.

The political divide doesn’t start at a gaping chasm, it moves a millimetre at a time, so slow you don’t notice until suddenly you realise you can’t see the other side.

The real world implications of this are astonishing. When two people or groups from opposite sides of the spectrum are forced to face each other, whether that be politically or on social issues such as feminism, there can often be quite heated conflict.

Both sides see the other as radical and the disparity in ideologies leads to an unwillingness to listen or attempt to understand.

The inability to hold a level-headed discussion on such a subject and the resultant retreat further into so-called ‘safe spaces’ and ‘echo chambers’ causes such ludicrous words as ‘feminazi’ to come into existence.

Like any issue, the opinions they receive form a spectrum and those who are most passionate, and thus most vocal, find themselves either strongly agreeing or disagreeing.

In a survey done by the Washington Post regarding feminism in the USA, 17% of women considered themselves to be strong feminists and 2% strongly antifeminist.

The remaining 80% did not hold a strong opinion. and for men in the same poll, 85% didn’t hold a strong opinion.

But what does this mean? It means that the women that ardently support modern-day feminism make up just one in seven women. A small minority, yet their voices shout louder than the other six purely because of their passion.

Likewise the subset of men who make it their lives work to oppose them only account for 1 in 20 men, and that isn’t representative either.

The remainder may feel alienated by both sides, or frankly just not care, as if it doesn’t affect their day-to-day lives then why should they get involved? This imbalance is present in all issues.

For example for politics in the UK, a poll by Opinium Research showed that 6% of people were very left wing and 3% very right wing with almost two-thirds of people laying centrally with their political beliefs.

That said, I don’t see a divide between the left and the right, the pro-feminist and the anti-feminist. The division I see is between those of us who are open to having our values changed and those of us who aren’t.

Saying you’re entitled to or have a right to an opinion is a logical fallacy, and those who say such things often do so to escape facing the fact their viewpoint is morally or factually indefensible.

The right to an opinion is trivial when you are so steadfast in your position that you aren’t open to reason. Be vocal and be passionate, but also be respectful, be understanding, and most of all, realise that changing your beliefs isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of growth.

Mark Hill’s team take Manchester

Written by Talia Lee-Skudder on . Posted in Fashion & Beauty.

The Mark Hill hair team will be at the Manchester Market Street Boots store on Thursday 8th – Saturday 10th December. All you have to do is buy just one product from the fabulous Mark Hill range available in-store and claim your free blow dry on the spot. The team will be on hand ready to transform your locks into a luscious and bouncy blow dry, just in time for the weekend festivities!

For those of you who can’t make it down to the store, Mark has revealed his best tips for achieving that salon professional blow dry at home.

  1. Don’t go too heavy with conditioner, you want your hair to feel silky, but not flat. Use conditioner on mid-lengths and ends only and rinse really well.
  2. Towel dry before adding product. If you apply product to dripping wet hair, it will dilute its styling power.
  3. Choose the right styling product for your hair type. Fine hair needs more volume so use a root volume spray or amplifying mousse to boost thickness. Thicker hair needs taming, use styling primer to smooth each hair apply your product correctly.
  4. Spray or apply directly to your roots when you want volume and style support.
  5. Use a wide tooth comb to distribute product evenly through mid-lengths and ends.
  6. It’s better to section. Okay, it may take a little longer, but sectioning your hair will give better results. Dry small sections of hair at a time and clip the rest out of the way.
  7. Use the right brush. A radial brush is great for volume but make sure you choose the right size for your hair length. The bigger the brush, the smoother the result. A paddle or vented brush is perfect for smoothing and straightening.
  8. It’s all in the wrist action. Rotate your radial brush through each section as you dry to create movement, volume and waves. Angle a paddle brush to create shape on straighter styles.
  9. Directional drying. For maximum root lift, dry each section in the opposite direction to where you eventually want it to fall, and always point the hairdryer down the hair from root to tip for frizz-free super shiny hair.

Don’t miss out on having your tresses tamed by Charlotte Crosby’s favourite hair stylist team, so make sure you head down to Boots this weekend to shop your favourite Mark Hill products and claim your free blow dry!

 

Review: Northern Soul’s Xmas menu

Written by Kirstie O'Mahony on . Posted in Food & Drink.

It’s that time of year when all the food vendors in the land jump on the festive bandwagon and release a Christmas range of goods. They inevitably vary in quality, from your sad Boots own brand Christmas meal deal, to the more lavish holiday season spreads provided by the likes of Tariff and Dale and The Wharf.

One of these many places is Northern Soul, the cheese toastie site of holy worship that’s nestled just behind the Arndale. All pilgrims that have ventured there know precisely how good their cheese toasties are, including Justin Bieber, who once bought 100 grilled cheeses (bloody Americans) for him and his crew when he was on tour in Manchester.

Photo: The Mancunion

All of their toasties start off with the ‘soul’, a secret three-cheese blend that the owners will take with them to the grave. After that, the menu is rife with experimentation, with additions such as mac and cheese in the ‘mac attack’, and, if that wasn’t enough for you, the ‘pig on a lead’, which combines mac and cheese with bbq pulled pork, and has been given the rubber stamp of approval by none other than Man VS Food.

I’ve been a holy disciple of Northern Soul since its opening, as there is nothing more indulgent and comforting than melted cheese and bread, and they are the best in the business. So as soon as the Christmas tunes started blaring on Market Street, I knew I had to give their new range a try.

They have a whopping five new Christmas sandwiches: ‘Brie wish you a merry Christmas’ — The ‘soul’ with ooozy brie, smoked streaky bacon and of course cranberry sauce, for £6.

Then they have the ‘festive feta’, their yuletide option for veggies, the ‘ham amazing grace’, and the ‘pig out of blanket’.

Photo: The Mancunion

Then finally, there’s the pièce de résistance: ‘The crimbo dinner’. This is the ‘soul’ with best crown of turkey, pink lady stuffing and cranberry sauce, finished with a gravy-soaked pig in blanket lollipop all for £7 (and you can add a gravy pot as a dip for £1).

I opted to try two, because I have no self-restraint.

Photo: The Mancunion

The first one I tried was the massive ‘Crimbo dinner’. Now, I’m a massive fan of salty food, and for me, this was bang on. As my boyfriend, who stole half of it, said: “It’s a typical chain chicken’n’stuffing sandwich, amplified by ten!” However, the price is amplified too — £7 for toastie seems a bit mental. But given its mouth-watering description, I wanted to see if it was worth it.

The cranberry sauce cut through the richness and salty-ness of the meat and the cheese, providing a really nice balance to the sandwich. Unfortunately, the turkey was slightly dry, which was disappointing. I opted to give them the benefit of the doubt, however, as it was the end of the day, and it may have been less so if I’d gotten one when they first opened.

My main qualm with the toastie was that the stuffing, usually the main event of any Christmas dinner, was completely and utterly lost in the strong flavours of the rest of the sandwich. The pink lady stuffing should have had a distinct taste of apple, but it was difficult to locate when everything else was so overwhelming.

I then moved on to the ‘brie wish you a merry Christmas’. Now, this was a toastie I could get down with. The flavours were a match made in heaven (apt given the aforementioned pilgrimage status of the vendor). It was simpler than the ‘crimbo dinner’ but ultimately the flavours were so complementary and delicious that it could only be the better of the two.

Now, these sandwiches had to be washed down with one of their festive milkshakes. I had the gingerbread milkshake — other than the marshmallows being so stale that I almost chipped my teeth, it was perfect. It was as though someone had put Christmas in a cup, as the cinnamon and ginger were in perfect harmony, and surprisingly it wasn’t sickeningly sweet. However, at £5 a pop, it’s difficult to justify at any other time than Christmas.

Photo: The Mancunion

My overall verdict? I think the quality of the majority of their ingredients are insanely good and whatever you do to a cheese toastie it’s likely to be comforting, but on a student budget, £7 for a sandwich you could basically get in Sainsbury’s is a bit steep. But maybe I’d be more convinced if I tried the other three…

Traps to watch out for in the AAA space

Written by Jeremy Bijl on . Posted in Games.

Whilst it is EA who have made the headlines in recent weeks, the controversy surrounding Star Wars: Battlefront II is only the latest in a ceaseless merry-go-round of anti-consumer practices from the ‘AAA’ games industry.

EA may well be the worse, but what should we watch out for in the major European publishers?

EA

The company voted “the worst company in America” by The Consumerist in 2012, EA have been painstakingly building their games around monetizing their player base for years. EA’s love affair with microtransactions began back in 2009 with the release of FIFA’s ‘ultimate team’ — a game mode which showed EA the true potential of an online marketplace backed by a virtual currency. EA will do almost anything — including compromising the quality of their games — to get into your wallet, with a full range of microtransactions, season passes, loot boxes, pre-order bonuses and over-priced DLC.

You’ll also want to watch out for EA acquiring, ruining and eventually shutting down accomplished studios. Their latest victims, Visceral Studios (developers of Dead Space) are the most recent in a long line of thirteen studios to be killed off. Don’t hold your breath for Skate 4 – EA shut down the studio behind the series (Black Box) in 2013.

Activision

Activision are somewhat harder to pin down, as they really innovate when it comes to new ways to irritate their customers. Like other publishers, they have wholeheartedly embraced microtransactions and loot boxes, but their true magnus opus was the decision to tie the remaster of the hugely popular Call of Duty: Modern Warfare to the hugely unpopular Call of Duty: Infinite War in an attempt to strongarm consumers into buying it.

Activision have enjoyed a successful year, with Call and Duty and Destiny 2 both selling and reviewing well, and have mainly avoided controversy. Thanks for this are due in part to other companies stealing the limelight by doing slightly worse things — see the Shadow of War controversy that took the heat off Destiny 2 and the Battlefront II controversy that has seen Call of Duty’s loot boxes slip under the radar.

However, the evidence suggests that Activision will continue to be on the vanguard of anti-consumerism. They had two patents revealed earlier this month, both with the phrase “system and method for driving microtransactions” in the title.

Ubisoft

Ubisoft are perhaps the least clandestine amongst the major publishers, and tend to advertise very aggressively. Ubisoft’s lack of subtlety often manifests itself in the form of hugely expensive trailers, complete with cinematic gameplay representations (nicknamed the ‘bullshot’ by the internet), and fabricated voice overs (Tom Clancy’s The Division) which ultimately turn out to be exaggerated and makes the games look far deeper and more nuanced than they actually are.

They are also particularly fond of making vastly expensive pre-order editions and filling them with useless tat (Assassin’s Creed: Dawn of the Creed edition, Watch Dogs). Again, promotion for these pre-orders is often aggressive, so be wary of the tactics Ubisoft employ to pedal them.

Ubisoft feel strongly that open-world games are the future to the extent that many of their games feature sprawling open worlds with little to do in them – a method of world design that critic Jim Sterling described as “big empty sandboxes.” To address this, Ubisoft tend to fill their open worlds with repetitive and monotonous side-quests that serve as filler rather than killer.

TakeTwo Interactive

TakeTwo publish a wide variety of critically acclaimed games (such as Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto V) across a huge number of platforms. They are, however, one of the market’s most persistent pedallers of microtransaction. As of April 2016, GTA V had generated half a billion dollars in microtransactions, emboldening TakeTwo to taketwo them to the next level.

NBA 2K18 thusly released with the whole game, single player and all, built around building the playable character stats through microtransactions. A month or so later, the release of WWE 2K18 saw microtransactions hugely reduced, with the virtual currency replaced by an even greater evil – loot boxes.

With Read Dead Redemption 2 coming in 2018 and promising an online mode, you will want to be wary of a gradual shift towards a ‘game-as-service’ type model which promises plenty of content, but increased strain on the wallet. CEO Strauss Zelnick said in a conference not so long ago that, “[TakeTwo] are convinced that we are probably, from an industry view, under-monetising on a per-user basis”. We might reasonably expect, then, TakeTwo’s monetization of video games to only get worse.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment hit the headlines recently in the spate of pre-Battlefront II controversies. Indeed, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War was criticised for many of the same things (excessive and intrusive loot boxes and microtransactions) as Battlefront II, but was fortunate to be the straw before the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Warner Bros. has been turning wildly successful film franchises into games for many years. One of the primary issues with their games is their exploitation of the season-pass, which transpires to include a laughably low amount of content, as in Batman: Arkham Knight.

Warner Bros. will generally jump on the bandwagon when it comes to anti-consumer practices and try and push it that little bit further. I suspect they see videogames primarily as another way to monetize superheroes.

Bethesda

A few years ago, Bethesda were industry darlings, generally steering clear of the practices of the rest of the industry and producing a low number of high quality games such as Skyrim and Dishonoured.

Bethesda, however, have recently been courting controversy. First up, they started to refuse to give out review copies shortly before the release of the exceedingly buggy and astoundingly mediocre Prey, and some have speculated that this was to capitalise on the company’s good reputation and not damage pre-orders of the game.

Their current policy — to send out review copies one day before release — is purportedly to ensure “everyone, including those in the media, experience our games at the same time,” but remain wary of this policy safeguarding against a fallout of sales resulting from issues on launch, especially with regard to PC games. We have already seen this with Dishonored 2.

They have also unveiled plans to start monetizing mods, even though this is a phrase they steadfastly refuse to use. This was widely seen as an attempt to profit off the hard work of others, and has seen Bethesda’s status of the last bastion of AAA integrity widely redacted.

Conclusion

Despite appearances, this list is not intended as an embittered and nihilistic rant about the perceived sins of the gaming industry, simply a guide for what kind of practices to watch out for in the future. Most of these companies have at least one major title on the horizon, and, after the controversies of 2017 and the subsequent mainstream attention given to loot boxes, it is likely that publishers will become more secretive in their methods, and we will need to remain more vigilant than ever before.

Review: Nativity! The Musical

Written by Izzy Lewis on . Posted in Theatre.

What is the best Christmas film? Sorry, that was a rhetorical question, because as we all know, the best Christmas film is Nativity! (and I’m willing to fight anyone who disagrees).

Following the Christmas nativity play at a primary school in Coventry, the film is a whole load of wholesome family fun and when they announced that a musical adaptation was coming out, I couldn’t contain my excitement.

In many ways, going to see Nativity! The Musical felt like watching a big budget panto and the writers had catered for this, packing the piece with jokes for everyone. The show was full of well-executed physical comedy, with credit going to Simon Lipkin for his portrayal of childlike teaching assistant Mr Poppy that made that incredibly annoying character likeable. Jokes for kids were cleverly intercut with adult humour; these gags landed well with the parents in the audience, safe in the knowledge that they would’ve gone straight over their kids’ heads.

The production was laden with contemporary references to bring the piece up to 2017, with jokes about Game of Thrones and 50 Shades of Grey sure to elicit easy laughs from the audience. Whilst well received, they were perhaps laid on a little thick, bordering on cringeworthy where they weren’t always needed.

The kids themselves were the real stars of the show; despite obvious nerves when performing to a huge crowd, the singing, acting and dancing was of a very high standard. The rivalry between St. Bernadette’s and Oakmoor Private School was played out effectively by both casts of children — although, loyalty to St. Bernadette’s aside, I do have to admit that the Jesus Christ Superstar inspired ‘King Herod: A Rock Opera’ was potentially my favourite original song.

As the title suggests, Nativity! The Musical is not a radical or new show; anyone who has seen the movie will recognise the original plot and script, the latter of which was deviated from minimally. As a result, I felt I was pre-empting a lot of the jokes before they were delivered, but this may not be an issue for someone who has watched the film slightly fewer times…

They say ‘never work with animals or children’ and Nativity! The Musical did both, with this ambition causing a few hiccups along the way. However, the forgotten lines and giggles on stage added to the authentic feel of the show, leaving the audience like parents watching their kids in a nativity play. The show was surprisingly emotional festive fun and the sheer enthusiasm of the cast meant that this diamond of a musical ultimately sparkled and shined.

Why FIFA is the root of the lootbox infection

Written by Jeremy Bijl on . Posted in Games.

When EA hit the headlines for the controversy surrounding the pay-to-win mechanics, loot boxes, and microtransactions in Star Wars: Battlefront II, I have to admit I was not as struck by it as many people were. Partly — as someone who has been talking about microtransactions for years, and more recently writing about it — I simply wasn’t surprised. But I think there is a deeper, more worrying reason: I have been anaesthetised to it by playing FIFA’s ‘Ultimate Team’ for years.

FIFA has quietly gone under the microtransaction and loot box radar in critical discourse for years (perhaps because it is relatively niche in America) but it is arguably the most relevant game in the whole debate.

For a start, the sheer longevity that FIFA has been employing the same tactics that have attracted so much derision in Battlefront II is astounding. An article on Gamer Professionals named Dead Space 3 (2013) as the earliest ‘AAA’ title to start pedalling microtransactions. FIFA was doing it as early as 2008 in FIFA 09.

But does it feature similar gambling and pay-to-win mechanics to Battlefront II?

The loot boxes (called ‘packs’) in FIFA may look different to those in Battlefront II and Call of Duty: WWII, but they are there just the same. Like other, heavily criticised loot boxes, they contain a mix of essential items (players and managers), cosmetic items (kits, balls, stadiums) and boosters and modifiers (coaches, training cards).

EA’s FIFA Ultimate team cards are one example of a controlled, card-based economy. photo:EAsports

With the exception of cosmetic items, these cards give you tangible in-game advantages, and, they can be bought. As in Battlefront II — whose star cards are not so unlike FIFA’s cards — they cannot be bought directly, and you are forced to open packs to get items that can be sold for coins which, in turn, can be used to buy players.

In my book, using real money to buy in-game advantages is the definition of pay-to-win.

I envisage a couple of main defences for FIFA in this argument: that you can earn coins by playing matches, and that the ingame trading market allows players to avoid spending real cash.

The first of these is true, to an extent. But let’s have a look at the figures behind this. One of the main criticisms of Battlefront II was that you had to play for 40 hours to unlock Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker, figures that many would regard as poster boys for the game.

EA’s own poster boy, Cristiano Ronaldo, makes a mockery of this figure. To buy Ronaldo, you would need 1,7000,000 coins (FIFA’s virtual currency). Earning an average of 500 coins a game with an average divisional bonus of 7000 coins per division win every 10 games, it would take you 1360 games to amass the required amount. At an average of 15 minutes per game, this amounts to 340 hours of continuous playing. And that’s just for one player in a squad of eighteen.

This figure is also compounded by the constant maintenance required to keep your team functional. Ultimate team requires constant purchases to maintain players’ contracts, fitness, and injury status, which chips away at any virtual savings you might have. The simplest solution? Buy a couple of packs with real money to ease the process.

Photo:EASports

Admittedly, this figure ignores the other defence: that you can enter the online marketplace and trade your way to the top.

However, I know how hard it is to do this, especially without buying any packs to get you going. I would argue, too, that forcing the player into the virtual marketplace is tantamount to saying that entering a casino for the buffet does not encourage gambling. The marketplace still coerces you into the arena where virtual currency rules supreme, and exposes you to such huge figures that the thought of trading your way up to 100,000, let alone 1.7 million, seems a distant dream.

Regardless of how you play, how much you spend, and how good you are, the fact is you will end up opening at least a couple of packs – if only the two EA give you for free at the start. I won’t lie – the packs are extremely addictive. Fun, even.

But they are still underlined by a gambling mechanics, encouraging you to spend money, both real and virtual, on spinning the wheel for randomised rewards. And, as someone who has opened more packs than they’d care to admit, I can assure you the house always wins.

In a game rated 3+ by PEGI, this seems downright predatory. One of PEGI’s flags are ‘games that encourage or teach gambling’ – a criteria I would argue that Ultimate Team meets.

I’m not necessarily saying that FIFA is any more tasteless than Battlefront II, and I will concede that the card system in FIFA is much more nuanced than the one in Battlefront II.

However, I would argue that if games like Star Wars: Battlefront II are a symptom of the success of the lootbox, then FIFA is patient zero.

Indeed, if FIFA is tied to the growth of microtransactions and loot boxes, then it is telling that it wasn’t until the former head of EA Sports, Andrew Wilson, was promoted to the position of CEO of EA in 2013 that we saw microtransactions in their mainstream games.

In a conference in 2016, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen added credence to this argument, saying regarding Ultimate Team that, “Battlefield or Battlefront, our Star Wars game, which are very similar in the depth of play – we can possibly add a similar mechanic to that. We spend a lot of time thinking about it,” he said. “Not for tomorrow, but over the next couple of years you’re going to see a lot more of that in our portfolio.” In other words, he outlined a desire to integrate an the model of Ultimate Team into other EA games. His words have turned out to be true.

With games from Battlefront II to Need for Speed: Payback to NBA 2K18 attracting widespread criticism across the media, it’s time for FIFA to be brought into the debate. It has gone unnoticed for too long.

In defence of toxic behaviour in online gaming

Written by chrisglover on . Posted in Games.

When is multiplayer gaming at its most fun? Undoubtedly, there’s something beautiful about working together with friends to complete an objective; of knowing that you’re part of something greater than yourself. But I truly believe that nothing — not even the warm, fuzzy feeling of teamwork — compares to the satisfaction you earn from violating the trust of your fellow players and ruining the game for everyone with your childish, toxic behaviour.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not like this all the time. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I’m a model teammate; I call out enemy positions, I play the objective, and I dish out revives like they’re going out of fashion. But every so often, you get the kind of itch that only wiping out every member of your own team with an expertly-timed rocket launcher can scratch.

Of course, such behaviour is more than a little frowned upon. Team killing and ‘griefing’ are offences that will see you banned in many games, and rightfully so. It’s never funny when you’re on the receiving end — a fact which, unfortunately, only serves to make it funnier when you’re not.

Having said that, I don’t think transgressions like this reflect as badly on the gaming community as many would have you believe. On the contrary, I think it speaks volumes about the creativity and motivation of many gamers that they can work outside of the system to get what they want. Take Call of Duty, for example. The multiplayer is based entirely on a destructive concept: the killing of other people. Dying because of another player in CoD is already infuriating — it’s specifically designed to be.

Why, then, do I feel the need to innovate new, unintended ways to infuriate and humiliate other players? Because I’m a bad person? Absolutely. But more importantly, it’s because sanctioned activities will always grow dull eventually.

A good example of this actually comes from a time I was not the perpetrator, but a witness. When playing Search and Destroy, my team were tied 3-3 with the enemy and we were on the final, deciding round. Our team had all been killed save for one of my friends, leaving him alone in a 1 vs. 4 situation. Displaying uncharacteristic finesse and skill, he quickly dispatched the four enemies, leaving only a bomb needing to be defused standing between our team and a hard-earned victory. A bomb which he walked calmly over to, began to defuse, and then summarily dropped and allowed to explode.

His reasoning was simple: he thought it would be funny. And it was funny. But if I were to theorise about the deeper reasoning behind his actions, I’d say that he had already achieved the maximum amount of enjoyment from playing by the rules; he’d proven that he was better than the other team. All that was left, then, was what I’m sure you’ll agree was an obvious choice: to gain further enjoyment by stealing it from others, by denying our victory and invalidating the enemy’s. He lost the game for everyone that day, but won my eternal respect.

The point is, the intended multiplayer experience — the teamwork, the winning, the losing — isn’t always enough. When you’ve seen all a game has to offer, it’s time to make your own fun. There are all kinds of positive outcomes from going against the creator’s vision for the game. Just ask modders who fundamentally alter how a game is played, or speedrunners who practise for hundreds of hours so they can race through levels at a pace never intended by developers.

Speedrunner, modder, or wind-up merchant. the results are the same: a bold vision for a new way to play your favourite games. The only (minor) difference is that instead of skill or dedication, my vision is built on the misplaced trust of my fellow players.

Virtual reality in the classroom

Written by Aliya Ismangil on . Posted in News, Science & Tech.

On Wednesday 30th November, the VR company Eventual announced their expansion of the platform, adding support for classrooms. The platform allows users from around the globe to connect through the cloud and share the same virtual reality experience.

Virtual classrooms on the Eventual VR Platform enables users to create and customise learning environments, which they can then share with others. Teachers and students will be able to communicate and interact with each other as if physically present in the same room, allowing users from anywhere in the world to connect.

 

Photo: Eventual

Eventual hope that the blend of real world and e-learning and use of VR classrooms will make lessons more engaging and accessible. Anyone with a VR headset and internet connection is able to make use of the tool.

“At Eventual we have already sent young people to classes in a virtual International Space Station and the Colosseum in Rome, we are incredibly excited by the potential of education in VR and to see the kinds of learning experiences our clients create next,” says Stephen Walsh, founder of Eventual VR.

The UK based company was founded in August 2016 in Glasgow. Since then, Eventual and their clients have held hundreds of events in virtual reality including a VR shopping trip, a company board meeting, a VR Comic-Con, training seminars, investment pitching, a medical lecture and a Game Of Thrones fan meetup.

The use of VR in education is growing as the technology becomes more available and affordable, however, usage is often still limited to single user experiences. With the new addition to the platform, Eventual hope to not only improve and advance the classroom experience, but also the virtual reality in education landscape.

Battle royale mode coming to Call of Duty

Written by chrisglover on . Posted in Games.

Two current phenomenons in gaming, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) and Fortnite: Battle Royale have proven one thing beyond all doubt: people just can’t get enough of the large-scale, every-man-for-himself battle royale formula.

PC’s PUBG has experienced explosive success since it entered Early Access in March earlier this year, and has broken seven Guinness World Records without breaking a sweat. These include becoming the fastest Steam Early Access game to sell one million units, and the first videogame to reach two million concurrent players on steam.

Whilst Fortnite: Battle Royale, with its concurrent player count of around 800,000, has yet to break any records, the game recently surpassed PUBG in overall downloads with an incredible 20 million unique players, despite being released six months after its competitor. It’s official: both games are a resounding success.

It comes as no surprise, then, to see other developers throw their hat in the battle-royale ring — Call of Duty Online, a free to play CoD game available only in mainland China, is adding a ‘survival mode’ in December. Featuring a game show theme, the mode will see 18 players battle it out to be the last man standing, spawning with nothing and picking up perks and weapons to help outlive the competition.

It’s currently anyone’s guess as to whether we’ll see this survival mode make its way over to Call of Duty: WWII. Such a move certainly wouldn’t be surprising for the series – back in March this year Raven Software debuted new game mode Prop Hunt on Modern Warfare: Remastered as a temporary weekend event. The mode was so popular with fans that it returned in 3 more weekend events until finally being made a permanent game mode in August.

Clearly, Call of Duty has no problems with adding new game modes if they create a buzz around current title. And with the battle royale format taking the games industry by storm this year, no-one should be writing off a move to WWII if Call of Duty Online’s new survival mode proves a hit with players.

Students’ Union General Secretary defends manifesto

Written by Cameron Broome on . Posted in News.

The General Secretary of the Students’ Union, Alex Tayler, has defended his ambitious manifesto despite having yet to realise many of his key pledges.

During his campaign, titled “Alex Tayler #1 for Gen Sec“, Tayler stated that his “key goals” included “increasing the bursary fund for Masters students” and “negotiating with TFGM, First, and Stagecoach to produce an affordable bus pass valid on all services.”

Having initially told The Mancunion that the affordable bus pass could not happen until at least April of 2018, Alex Tayler later stated that it would take at least “three years to implement.”

Alex Tayler also stated that another key goal was “building a strong relationship with the new mayor” but has yet to meet the elected Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham.

Alex Tayler added: “a manifesto is things that I want to achieve and things that I see as being reasonable to achieve. I’d argue that pretty much every manifesto will be full of things that are not 100 per cent guaranteed.”

Kitty Bartlett, Students’ Union Activities Officer who has the largest mandate of any of the current Students’ Union Executive Officers, told The Mancunion that “if you’re not ambitious, you won’t get elected.”

She added: “when you’re doing your manifesto, you probably wouldn’t realise all of the process of getting it done so you might put something down on your manifesto that, actually, might not be necessarily realistic that you could do in that year but then say whoever gets the role next can pick up and continue their work.”

Commenting on his promise to increase the bursary fund for master students, Alex Tayler said that had spoken to his predecessor, Naa Acquah, when putting together his manifesto and said that “she did believe that increase the bursary for masters students would be possible.”

Alex added: “I really don’t know how it will go at this stage… ultimately it’s a collective decision, so if the majority of people in the room don’t think it was a good idea, it wouldn’t happen so its all about.”

Decision on policies such as increasing the bursary fund for masters students have to be passed at meetings held by the Directorate of Planning , of which Alex Tayler is a member of in his role as General Secretary.

Tayler conceded that “ultimately, its a collective decision” on whether or not policies get passed, adding that “if the majority of people in the room don’t think it was a good idea, it wouldn’t happen.”

One of Alex Tayler’s key goals was also to “meet weekly with students”, which the General Secretary started to do as part of his “Gen Sec on Tour” campaign, which began in the week of the 13th of November.

Following the turnout of only 1.3 per cent in the recently held Students’ Union All Student Vote on the composition of the academic year 2018/2019, Tayler stated that more “face-to-face engagement” with students was required.

Students’ Union Executive Officers can run for two terms of offices in the Executive Officer elections which will take place in March of 2019.

Emma Atkins, Students’ Union Education Officer, is already in her second term of office so cannot stand again for re-election but is the only member of the Executive Officer team in this position.

A student life: ‘the University of Gyalchester’ clothing brand

Written by Pierre-Leo Rouat on . Posted in Features.

Yassine is a University of Manchester student studying Arabic and Middle Eastern studies. He is one of a group of three undergrad Manchester students who started up their own clothing brand. I met with Yassine to speak about his new entrepreneurial adventure.

Yassine and his collaborators “thought we could make a good use” of their spare time with a “personal project”, which turned out to be the University of Gyalchester brand.

“Drake’s album “More Life” came out, the album was inspired a lot by grime music with songs featuring Skepta and Giggs. One of the song was called ‘Gyalchester'” Yassine explains, delving into the story behind the brand concept. But what does being a part of the University of Gyalchester mean?

“It’s a state of mind for students who are getting a degree but also let loose when motives are present. I think that the term fits the spirit in the context of uni. We are all here to have good grades to please the family to maybe get a job later on but when it’s time to party we are more than ready.

“With some friends it made us laugh and we felt that it matched our spirit so that’s why we came out with the ‘University of Gyalchester’ merch idea.”

The idea began over drunken conversation at a party. “With a relatively blurred mind I introduced to my two partners my idea. They were immediately hooked on it!”

Luckily for Yassine, he picked the right people to spill his ideas to, “one of them works a freelance designer in his free-time and the other is more or less around when we need him, so it was the A-team really”.

“This project is particularly important to me as I have nurtured it for a long time. I couldn’t have done anything alone though. My team gave me the help and support that ‘the University of Gyalchester’ needed to at least be created, I don’t have the graphic design skills or the chill attitude of my mates!”

It wasn’t easy, however. The trio had little to no knowledge of what to do to start the venture, “we kind of improvised on everything’, Yassine admits. “To make the designs, to find a photographer – props to the amazingly talented Lewis Briggs by the way – it was all new to us.”

“Creating the website was a special pain since we are charged a high percentage out of every order but it’s up and running at least.”

So what’s the future for the University of Gyalchester? For Yassine, everything that comes from the idea is a success in itself. “We started this adventure out of a joke and we committed to it, so it’s becoming a bit more serious for us since we put money on the table. But, it’s our little baby! So either it will grow well or die quickly but we are basically just happy to have created something.”

If you would like to become a student of the University of Gyalchester and purchase a tee or hoodie, you can find the brand here.

Co-written by Pierre-Leo Rouat and Youssef Bouri