Month: March 2018

TEDx University of Manchester 2018: the speakers

Written by Raine Beckford on 13th March 2018. Posted in Features.

TEDxUniversityOfManchester is back! Themed this year as “Uncharted Territories”, the conference hopes to explore the unexplored and challenge the unchallenged. With this in mind, the committee has curated a panel of speakers from a wide range of industries and backgrounds, including tech, music, entertainment, media, and psychology. Ahead of the event this Saturday, I talked to some of the speakers about what makes them tick and what they hope to bring to the event.

Bruna de Palo — Life & Career Coach

What keeps you up at night?

My TED talk! It’s such an exciting experience for me that I don’t even want to sleep anymore, I just love to keep reading, learning, writing, and practicing. Am I worried that I might mess up once on stage? Yes, I do (quite a lot, actually), but knowing I’m putting so much effort into it makes me feel better, after all the only way to succeed is keep pushing!

What do you want people to take away from your talk?

That there are cool employers out there that are craving for them, for their personality, their interests, and their vision of the world… not just their skills. When people understand that, they will be on the road to fulfilment. Did you know one on four of UK employees say they are totally disengaged from their work? I’m on a mission to change that.

What do you wish someone had told you at 20?

That I am way more than my skills, that I worthy for who I am, and how “me being me” is exactly what the world needs. Knowing that would have saved me from being stuck for 17 years in the wrong career.

I’ve learnt the lesson so well, that now I want to use it to help people and avoid they get trapped in the same golden jail of a salary that switches off your identity.

Dr Alan Watkins — Trained Physician and CEO of Complete Coherence

What keeps you up at night?

Nothing really keeps me up at night, I sleep very well as a matter of practice. But something I think about in quiet moments is whether humanity is on the brink of a sixth great species extinction if we don’t course correct in the next 50 years.

What do you want people to take away from your talk?

Hope. If people discover how to change the destiny of their lives, and decide to do what it takes to develop themselves, then they can deliver a brighter and better future.

What do you wish someone had told you at 20?

Follow your bliss.

Alastair Paterson — Founder and CEO of Digital Shadows (talk: ”Into the Shadows’: digital footprints, online exposure and the future of cyber security’)

What keeps you up at night?

Society’s increasing dependence on highly-vulnerable digital infrastructure. The Internet has gone from a hobbyist’s play area to a critical piece of infrastructure we all depend upon for our daily lives, but it was never designed with security in mind, with implications for all of us.

What do you want people to take away from your talk?

That we should not take for granted all the digital infrastructure we depend upon, or take our privacy lightly. However, it’s not all doom and gloom and there are innovations in cyber security that are going to help keep the lights on, including some great UK startups in this exciting and critical field.

What do you wish someone had told you at 20?

It will all be okay – keep working hard and do what you love. Say yes to (almost) every opportunity that presents itself and you will be lucky enough to have a fascinating, exciting, and fulfilling life ahead.

Amy Steel – Associate Director for Amoria Bond (talk: ‘The Journey to Success: how to break your stereotype and reach your goal’)

What keeps you up at night?

The fear of failure.

What do you want people to take away from your talk?

I want people to come away feeling like anything is possible. I want to encourage them to break their belief barriers as to what is achievable regardless of your background, age, or gender; that with enough hard work, passion, and ambition you can achieve any goal and create whatever life you want for yourself. I want to encourage people to take control of their own destiny & build their own empire!

What do you wish someone had told you at 20?

The importance of setting objectives and goals in order to progress in whatever walk of life. It was only when I got my job that I realised the true importance of working towards a target to better myself and realise my full potential. You forget how young you are at 20 and, whilst you do have your full life ahead of you, don’t wait to start a job before building a career. Set your goals now and fast track your life as early as you can.

Andrew Melchior — Project Manager, Third Space

What keeps you up at night?

The most pressing issues of our time are climate change and reduction in biodiversity. I think this above all else is to be feared, as we are definitely not ‘too big to fail’ as a species. It bothers me that the large deposits of methane possibly released as tundra thaws would cause a mass extinction event.

What do you want people to take away from your talk?

I’d like for the audience to feel they can explore their own relationship with technology and to not be afraid to ask questions or demand better standards from the companies who are responsible for ensuring security and privacy. Overall I’d love them to start reading the small print when they sign up for services.

What do you wish someone had told you at age 20?

Buy shares in Apple with your Student Loan.

Digital Farm Animals — Producer and DJ (talk: ‘Zero to a Billion’)

What keeps you up at night?

Coffee. I’m usually up plotting away at the next steps: annoying people with my music, jet-lagged, or DJing somewhere around the world. If not that then ticking off the list of house chores that the wife has given me.

What do you want people to take away from your talk?

I’m incredibly grateful at the opportunities I’ve had and that I’m able to make a career out of doing what I love. I spent a long time worrying about becoming a lawyer and pursuing something I was told I should be doing instead of what I really wanted to do. I believe a lot of people are in jobs they don’t love and often that’s because they don’t think there’s an alternative.

Being an entrepreneur is incredibly hard work and there’s a lot of initial investment and sacrifice of your time but I think it’s a fantastic time to be one and I’d like people to at least give thought to what they truly want to pursue. On top of that, how in my case I’ve had to use the change in technology in my songwriting and production career. Lastly, to let them see the Pigman.

What do you wish someone had told you at 20?

Following on from the above, I would caveat my point by saying that having a formal education as a back up and as a foundation will only help you both in confidence and also in business, but I wish someone had told me that although beneficial that was in no way the be all and end all and there was an industry dedicated to exactly what I wanted to do — songwriting and that doing what you really want isn’t in any way an impossibility. Basically, take a look at what you love doing, maybe it’s a career!

Dr Mark Batey PhD CPsychol AFBPsS – Leadership, Creativity and Innovation Specialist at Alliance Manchester Business School (talk: ‘Five Key Principles for Creativity & Innovation’)

What keeps you up at night?

I’m always full of ideas just before I sleep, especially if I am working on a long-running project. That definitely keeps me awake! However, those burbling thoughts are often a great source of inspiration for my creativity, so I shouldn’t complain.

What do you want people to take away from your talk?

That creativity is a capacity, a skill that can be developed. Often through some really simple lifehacks for your own brain and thinking, or how you can collaborate more effectively with others. I hope to share a little of the practical insights I’ve been lucky enough to pick up while working with different leaders, teams, organisations and governments around the world.

What do you wish someone had told you at 20?

That mistakes are normal and often to be welcomed. With an open mind and heart, we can embrace our failures and learn and grow from them. Be yourself always.

Sarah Hesz and Katie Massie-Taylor — Founders of Mush (talk: ‘The Future of Digital is Physical’)

What keeps you up at night?

A massive dose of paranoia that we are not doing enough to make Mush brilliant. Plus my new obsession with Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and my newborn.

What do you want people to take away from your talk?

I want people to think about what communities they belong to and how they can play a more active role in them.

What do you wish someone had told you at 20?

That my fears were not real.

Yasmin Evans – Radio and TV Broadcaster

What keeps you up at night?

Overthinking and worrying that I’m not representing myself in the best way. Letting my side down by not behaving the way I should.

What do you want people to take away from your talk?

I want people to be able to relieve the pressure that they may feel to be something and to feel they should know where they need to be in life. I rather them realise that the journey is more beneficial than the destination and the “ideal” and/or “dream”

What do you wish someone had told you at 20?

I wish that someone told me that one day I’d be happier than I am right now and to not put pressure on keeping my happiness. Everything else I’d keep a secret because I feel like as my life has revealed itself it has been that much more beautiful because I never expected it!

TEDxUniversityOfManchester 2018 takes place on Saturday, March 17th at the Bright Building. Tickets are on sale now.

Five Guys opening this summer in Manchester University Green

Written by Daisy Tolcher on 13th March 2018. Posted in News.

It has been announced that as part of University Green’s massive new development project, a Five Guys will be opening on campus! This branch will be the third to join our city, yet, unlike the ones situated in the Arndale or Trafford centres, this one will be right on our doorstep.

For those of you who have not been to a Five Guys before, the general concept is you can build your own burgers using a wide range of toppings and condiments. The chain prides itself on being able to serve a whopping 250,000 possible burger and hotdog combinations. All the burgers are handcrafted and made to order, and even the fries are hand cut each morning and cooked in peanut oil. Five guys do not have freezers or microwaves in any of its restaurants and only use locally sourced produce.

Aside from burgers, Five Guys are also famous for their milkshakes. The milkshakes are entirely customisable with a number of ‘mixes’ to choose from including peanut butter, chocolate, Oreo cookies, and salted caramel. You can also add interesting extras such as bacon and whipped cream. Five Guys claim there are over 1000 possible flavour combinations to try which means we will probably be visiting very often!

Five Guys CEO has said about the opening “It’s so great to see another Five Guys opening in Manchester this year. We’re gearing up to serve our fresh, handmade and fully customisable burgers, hotdogs and milkshakes to a vast number of students at our new location in Manchester University Square. The new location will create 35 new local jobs, seat 66 people, and will hopefully be the perfect spot for students to enjoy a meal, work and relax in between classes”.

This opening is therefore not just great news for students who love eating at the chain, but is also an exciting opportunity for those of you who are interested in finding a job whilst at university.

Five Guys’ rapid rise in Manchester and in the U.K. shows no sign of stopping, especially following news that they have knocked Nando’s off the top spot and are now the UK’s favourite fast food chain. And with celebrity fans such as Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith this restaurant opening is sure to be a hit amongst students.

Five Guys will be opening in Summer 2018 in Manchester University Green which will be under the Manchester Alliance Business School. For more details about the development look here.

The theatre of debate – winning the war on political correctness

Written by George Walker on 13th March 2018. Posted in Opinion.

It would not be remiss for you to think that the West is at a time of cultural catastrophe: Nazis open to march in the ‘free world’, the sustained rise in British hate crime in the wake of xenophobic nationalism under the guise of Euroscepticism, and the spread of the hard right across Europe.

The last two years of politics have quite frankly been a brick through the window of the politically correct project, and to the pessimistic among us it might be seen that the culture war is being slowly lost and we are on a winding path towards the panorama of a “Brexit Britain” or “America First”. Namely this can be reluctantly characterised in the rise of a new culture, a populist culture which decisively ignores and seeks to undo the bastion and progress of political correctness and multiculturalism. One that wants to exchange the progress of the present for traditionalist values of anti-immigration, preservation of whiteness, the nuclear family, and unrestricted freedom. One that seeks to odorously belittle Islam, Diane Abbott, and Gary Lineker all in the same breath. One that spouts crass racist, sexist, homophobic bile in the name of free speech over decency or causing offence and distress.

An indicting example of this culture would be that of Toby Jones, and the right’s soporific defence of his disablist, crassly misogynistic agenda; “he was exercising his free speech” they say, “he was hounded out by the left” they say. My rather amusing and ironic claim to those that defend Toby Young is that they don’t understand free speech. If Toby Young has the fundamental right to call children ‘troglodytes’ and indulge in eugenics programmes, then I have the right to call him an ignorant Tory mouthpiece who should be sacked and condemned into oblivion for the regressive stain on Britain that he is. Not is this only an indictment on the deliberately crassly offensive and repressive nature of this new rightist culture, but also, on its intellectual propensity. They are prepared to ignore and outrightly deny criticism from any media outlet in favour of right wingers being bigots to no rational or political end.

Gone are the days when the right could hold up propagators of considered and intellectually charged debate. Need I remind you of Thatcher’s regular disembowelling’s of Kinnock and Foot at PMQs? Or Reagan’s bombast and theatre in speaking out against the scourge of the Soviet Union? Contemporary examples of right wing greatness today include self-hating bigot and professional provocateur: Milo Yiannopoulos, who when he’s not denouncing the existence of lesbians and mocking gassed children in Syria holds great integrity and appraisal from the American right. He’s seen as an online hero and public commentator in the acidic war against political correctness. Toby and Milo are parts of a greater and much more menacing whole which threatens to give Britain one giant colonial hangover, and America to become an angry white paradise that Andrew Jackson and the Confederacy would be proud of.

Now I imagine there are many who have now moved on from this article, denouncing me as a ‘leftie-ideologue’, a ‘race-baiting liberal’, or a ‘disenchanted journalist’, but I implore you to hear me out. I exercise the opinion that the liberal left need to be bombastic, explicit, and forthright in the social debate on identity politics. The rising culture has now become so toxic and corrosive to social cohesion and individuals’ sanctity that it is time for the left to reassess itself and the way it goes about debate, or my eponymous “theatre of debate”.

How can we continue in this rising sphere of hatred and not think about how we’ve got to this point? It is therefore vital that I take aim at the conduct of debate of culture, race, gender, and sexuality in late 20th and 21st century. My point primarily being that the self-entitled and nauseating trend of “no platforming” and banning all that is deemed offensive by the omniscient student community has facilitated and even empowered a disillusioned and angry population, one that sees a haven in the fashionably belligerent diatribe of the alt-right and the Brexit brigade. This is a phenomenon galvanised by the failure of liberalism and the political correctness project; one that started in the frightening fringes of reddit threads and splinter extremist rightist groups but has now been grubbily dragged into the mainstream by those that sought to oppose it.

The solution is this: to reignite the flames of liberal opposition in the culture war by engaging by every means against the hateful culture that must be de-popularised, delegitimised, and decimated to secure a tolerant future for our children and grandchildren. I mean distancing from the culture of banning, of no-platforming, of intolerance to those we disagree with, but instead to embrace intellectual engagement. How do we have the moral or intellectual right to cry wolf at bigotry when we never explain explicitly why they’re wrong?

The theatre of debate is the crucial tool. So, next time a distasteful speaker comes to your campus, don’t sign a petition to prevent them speaking. Instead, listen to what they have to say, engross yourself with every slur, every ill-mannered joke about Muslims, every disavowal of white privilege and undermine the bigotry. The reinvigoration of debate, and the ability to acutely polemicise every aspect of the argument of the popular right is the path to victory.

Racial identity in Southeast Asia as a modern social construct

Written by Armand Azra on 13th March 2018. Posted in Opinion.

When the discussion in Malaysia (our home country) turns to racial issues and concerns, it is very hard to hold back the eye rolls. These conversations are hard to avoid in post-colonial Southeast Asia, as many still hold very strongly to their ‘racial’ identity. Though the usage of ethnicity would be more descriptively accurate than using ‘race’, the continued use of the term (alongside the connotations that follow it) creates an artificial barrier amongst the people in the region.

Scrolling through news in Southeast Asia, one would think that the construction of racial identity is an integral part of its rich history, considering the large role it plays in current day politics. But on the contrary, what makes the construction of racial identity so interesting in Southeast Asia is how recent this ideology is to the region.

To understand the proliferation of racial identity in the region, it is important to note the large role colonial legacy plays. The ideas of race became highly prominent during the nineteenth-century with the rise of scientific racism and the pseudo-science of eugenics. This ‘science’ was used to highlight the superiority of Europeans who sat at the apex of the colonial hierarchy, trickling down to the sojourner races that the colonial powers did not see as a threat, and the natives sitting at the very bottom of this hierarchy. Not only did this concept allow colonialists to feel vindicated in their European-ness, it also informed a large part of colonial policy, specifically in their holdings in Southeast Asia.

One way of expressing this ideology is through the delineation of races, where colonial masters sought to group ‘races’ in neat little categories which failed to reflect the diversity in the region. Natives, who were from various ethnicities, were confused in picking the appropriate box asking for race. In Burma, the British helpfully provided a list of 135 separate races while in British Malaya, the number of races totalled over 70.

This was jarring to a population where the separate ‘races’ developed their cultures through the process of socialisation and cross-cultural fertilisation seen clearly through the influence different cultures and ethnicities had on the development of regional antiquities like batik and the keris (i.e. Chinese and Indian influence). It is therefore unfortunate that contemporary racial identity has made many of these artefacts exclusive to a single ‘race’ and there is now an obsession with local cultural practices being cleansed of the perceived stain of foreign influences.

The division of people though their ‘races’ was not enough for the colonial government, who sought to generalise somewhat similar but distinct ethnicities under one umbrella ‘race’. The result of this led to interesting mismatches from groups, as the division forced them to exclude themselves from their cultural identities and instead identify themselves in the introduced colonial concepts of race. This situation is worsened when one considers the imposition of dress codes by colonial powers, forcing the populace to wear their customary racial dress, which perpetuated an Orientalist perception of how the ‘races’ should behave.

Mass migration from East and South Asia then resulted in another aspect of colonial policy to come to the fore, specifically the de-facto segregation of the ‘races’. Following the expertise and perceived propensities of each race, the British Strait settlements, for example, set about making sure that the ‘races’ worked to their full potential in their respective field. ‘Malays’ were put to work as farmers, ‘Chinese’ as tin-miners and later businessmen, and the ‘Indians’ in the rubber plantation. The neat arrangement conveniently separates the ‘races’, which impedes the process of socialisation and cultural assimilation that would have resulted in closer ties between these groups.

The lessons to be learned from Southeast Asia’s encounter with racial identity is illuminating because of how weak racial identity was in pre-colonial times. In contrast, most of the major issues surrounding the region today revolves mostly around racial logic. In Malaysia, there is resentment faced by the racial minorities when some question their loyalty to the country due to the differences with the racial majority. This has caused the persistence of ‘race-based’ parties as the only true representatives of a ‘racial’ group. In Myanmar, the governing powers are trying to drive out the Rohingya under the basis that they are not native and have only recently entered their borders. The irony, of course, being that the racial identities and borders are recent concepts to Southeast Asia and were both created out of the ideology and for the convenience of the colonial powers.

The point of this article, however, is not to blame the European colonisers that introduced the ideology, as they themselves were victims of their time. Rather, the lessons that should be taken is how much power racial identity can have over us. The inhabitants of Southeast Asia were introduced to the concept of race as recently as the nineteenth-century. Yet they had taken this foreign idea and embedded it into their identities to the extent that their politics now revolves around it. This does not mean that we should strip away what makes us unique, but instead should be aware of how a modern social construction can shape us. We cannot allow ourselves to be used by it.

This article was co-authored with Wan Aiman Azm

‘Not a Bystander’: Gender violence panel sheds light on sexual abuse

Written by Joe McGavin on 13th March 2018. Posted in News.

An eye-opening event organised by the Manchester Global Health Society raised awareness for gender-based violence on Monday the 5th of March.

It is estimated that one third of women worldwide will be subject to sexual abuse in their lifetime, with less than 50 per cent of incidents resulting in an arrest. This can have devastating repercussions, increasing victim’s chances of depression, and drug and alcohol abuse significantly.

The discussion begun with questions directed at three panellists: Hayley Brewer, Erica Sullivan, and Edward Murchie. They were quick to highlight the importance of tackling the root cause of abuse: coercion and manipulation.

Hayley Brewer, representing Manchester-based domestic abuse charity Independent Choices, pointed out that controlling behaviour from men can easily develop into a physically abusive dynamic between partners. Brewer claimed that the entrapment young women can feel in a relationship as a key reason for the silence of victims.

Silence was a recurring theme throughout the discussion with the panel. Erica Sullivan, who has fifteen years’ experience in women’s health clinics, explained how the negative stigma attached to domestic abuse and wanting to keep control of their lives can discourage victims from speaking out.

Sullivan emphasised the importance of society taking collective responsibility for the issue, and not viewing it as a solely a women’s problem. She talked about how the idealised image of the female body can pressure women into conforming to men’s expectations. Talking to The Mancunion afterwards, she said: “Women still feel they need to alter their bodies to what is pleasing to a guy [and] live up to the ‘Barbie doll image’ […] that to me is quite sad.”

The panel also explored men’s role in combatting this issue. Edward Murchie, a third-year medical student who has set up self-defence classes aimed at women, stressed the importance of men speaking out against misogynist attitudes in general and not just domestic violence. He emphasised just being ‘bystanders’ would not tackle the problem; men must establish themselves as allies of women.

There still remains an issue in this area, however, and Global Health Ambassador Beth Cracknell-Daniels felt men can sometimes feel attacked when sexual abuse issues are brought to light. Cracknell-Daniels stated: ‘‘Some guys are not necessarily part of the problem, but can be part of the solution.”

The 80-strong audience was well-attended by men and women alike, and Erica Sullivan was inspired by the growing exposure of these issues, saying there used to be a tendency to ‘‘brush it under the carpet. We are seeing a lot of positivity […] But there is still a long way to go.”

Cracknell-Daniels echoed these sentiments: ‘‘Something has changed.”

Left to right: Yasmin Paige (Lauren), Sian Clifford (Theresa), Anthony Ofoegbu (James), Amelia Bullmore (Marty) and Con O’Neill (Schultz) in Circle Mirror Transformation by Annie Baker, directed by Bijan Shebani, at HOME Manchester, Fri 2 - Sat 17 March 2018. (Photo by Marc Brenner)

Review: Circle Mirror Transformation

Written by Elise Gallagher on 13th March 2018. Posted in Theatre.

Circle Mirror Transformation is a play that Manchester has been craving for quite some time. Spanning across a six week period, the play is set in a scarily realistic community centre where we meet characters Marty (Amelia Bullmore), her husband James (Anthony Ofoegbu), reluctant teenager Lauren (Yasmin Paige), recently divorced Schulz (Con O’Neill), and Teresa (Sian Clifford) —who herself has also just come out of a relationship —, all taking part in an adult drama workshop.

Marty, played brilliantly by Bullmore, leads the class somewhat recklessly. Marty and James, once happily married, seem to have reached a crossroads and it seems that James has attended the class to support her and their relationship, as well as spare her the embarrassment of the fact that only three other people had originally signed up.

Marty employs the drama exercises to try and get her class to confront their own demons, as well as her own. However well intended this is of her, the little group and its internal politics quickly come to the surface revealing a very flawed, lonely, and lost ensemble.

The character of Schulz, the lonely carpenter desperate for a connection, particularly stood out for me. Con O’Neill played him with such fragility but hope it broke my heart, a standout performance.

The repetitive shopping list, the counting to ten, the moving around the room all echoed the exercises I once did at school — but I feel there may have been too much emphasis placed upon these as opposed to exploring deeper the wonderfully flawed, very much three-dimensional characters which inhabit the space.

However, the subtlety of the storytelling and the mood it casts in the theatre is remarkable. Once our group of non-sequiturs finally are able to count to the elusive ten (which they’d been attempting since week one) instead of joy and laughter of finally being able to reach it, they lie in awkward silence.

Described as “a Chekhov of our times” by Walter Meierjohann (Artistic Director of theatre at HOME), Annie Baker’s writing is incredibly delicate. What is disguised as a typical awkward drama workshop is actually a study of flawed human nature. The complexities of modern lives and emotions stand out. The quiet nature of the play gives off a European feel to the production, the minimalism of the piece amplifying its characters and their circumstances.

One aspect that must not go without note is the incredible work of lighting designer Jack Knowles and designer Samal Blak. The authenticity of the set completely blew me away. The way the overhead lights flickered and murmured to life each time the characters returned to the stage took me straight back to my own experiences in taking part in workshops such as those.

I particularly loved the fact that you could see the reflection of audience members in the mirrored walls prying into the lives of these five individuals, who don’t know they’re being watched.

Circle Mirror Transformation is a performance which is rich in character and feeling, brilliant performances and sadness. A quiet must-see.

Circle Mirror Transformation runs until March 17th at HOME. Tickets can be purchased from here.

Student to bring global anti-poverty campaign to Manchester

Written by Cameron Broome on 13th March 2018. Posted in News.

A University of Manchester student and activist is on a mission to make international campaigns resonate on a local level.

Temilola Adeoye has been picked to be a ONE Leader — a national pilot scheme that will focus on community engagement and getting local people involved in campaigning on behalf of the world’s poorest.

Temilola Adeoye, 23, said: “I’m delighted to become a ONE Leader and can’t wait to start campaigning about international development with people in Manchester. I know that my community care about issues in the world, whether they’re down the road or half-way across the world, so it’s really important that we work together to make our voices heard.”

As part of the ONE Leaders programme, Temilola attended a campaign boot-camp, where they received training in how to effect social change successfully, how to influence the political agenda — with insider tips from politicians — and how to harness the local community’s energy to fight extreme poverty.

They attended Parliament to hear several top-flight MPs speak on how to campaign to change the law, including Stephen Twigg MP and Sir Desmond Swayne MP.

Romilly Greenhill, UK Director for ONE, said: “The power of calling for change and campaigning locally cannot be underestimated. The issues surrounding global poverty can seem far away, so highlighting how important they are to people in our own areas is really important.”

ONE leaders across the country will be working to highlight the UK’s role in ending extreme poverty and helping the world’s poorest, particularly girls and women.

Referencing the Commonwealth and G7 meetings later this year, Greenhill added: “There is a lot of hope that world leaders will prioritise girls and women this in 2018.

“Let’s see how our ONE leaders can really make these global issues local.”

Review: Tzatzikis

Written by Samuel Pigott on 13th March 2018. Posted in Food & Drink.

Stumbling out of The Friendship or 256, the first thing on most people’s mind is food. Burger, kebab, we all know the sorts of things that take our fancy at that time of night. Having recently sampled, and thoroughly enjoyed, a late-night gyros — think a sort of upmarket kebab with tzatziki and chips included — I thought it was only fair to give this Greek deli a fair chance at impressing me sober.

I was greeted by a pleasantly cheap menu, with prices from just £6 for a souvlaki, flatbreads, tzatziki, and a Greek salad — something which always helps a meal go smoothly. There is a wide range of the more famous Greek dishes on offer, and those which one doesn’t have to be a connoisseur to have come across.

You can order chicken or pork souvlakis, skewers of meat marinated in garlic, oregano, and lemon juice, before being cooked on a charcoal grill, moussaka and a mixed mezze plate containing pitta bread, a selection of dips, stuffed vine leaves, halloumi, and souvlaki meat. Alternatively, should you wish to try something a little more authentic you can choose from dishes such as spanakopita, loukanikos, or biftekia (that’s a feta and spinach filo pie, traditional Greek sausages and spiced minced meat skewers.)

I ordered a mixed souvlaki and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the meat. The chicken was tender and flavoured well, carrying just the right amount of charring from the charcoal grill, and the pork, despite looking as though it might be a touch dry, was succulent and once again very good.

The hand-cut chips come coated in oregano and salt, exactly as one would expect to find in Greece, and had an excellent crisp coating.

We may all be familiar with feta, but the feta on offer somewhere like this is nothing like the feta on offer in a supermarket. It is rich and creamy and the combination of the obviously high-quality ingredients in the Greek salad combined with the excellent souvlaki and delicious chips and flatbreads makes for a delightful meal, again washed down fantastically with the memory of parting with just £6.

Perhaps the star of the show, however, is the tzatziki. Countless times I have strived to make something that even slightly resembles the yoghurt-based dip I have sampled abroad, and yet it always falls short. It must be said that Tzatzikis’ namesake isn’t quite at that level, but it is certainly up there with the best I have had in this country.

All in all, given the variety on the menu, and the associated prices, I would wholeheartedly recommend checking out this deli-come-takeaway, be it just for a late-night gyros or a delectable dinner, I cannot imagine you will be disappointed.

Women in Media Conference hugely sucessful

Written by Cliona Linehan on 13th March 2018. Posted in News.

The third annual Women in Media conference took place at The People’s History Museum in Manchester at the start of March, attended by hundreds of guests and raising thousands of pounds for charity.

The conference is run each year by an all-female team organised and run by the Manchester Media Group of the University of Manchester’s Students’ Union. The two-day event featured a variety of topics and speakers including radio workshops, tackling sexual harassment in the media industry and reporting on the Winter Olympics.

The conference worked to celebrate women in the media industry, passing on knowledge from one generation to the next.

One of the first talks on the Saturday, ‘Northern PowerWomen’, highlighted the under-representation of women in the media industry. Keynote speaker Kirsty Styles noted that despite some advances there are “still things that have yet to come out in the wash”.

The panel went on to advise fellow female journalists on how to rectify or combat this gender disparity. Despite battling a poor Skype connection, Emma Houlton, founder of her own company ‘Art of Podcast’, gave the advice that aspiring journalists should “be tenacious with people”. She argued that aspiring women in media should not “sit there stagnating, waiting for the next thing” and as the other key speakers reiterated, Emma advocated that women start their own works and use their initiative.

Although the conference is primarily aimed at women, there were multiple males in attendance, and several speakers addressed the ways in which men are also negatively affected by gender issues in the workplace. MP for Wigan, Lisa Nandy, discussed how in many ways men’s “right to family life was not respected” in the workplace, as men are often expected to work later hours preventing them from participating in family life, as it is assumed there is a woman to look after the children. “It does none of us any favours to let this situation persist”, Nandy said.

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, and the Westminster sexual harassment scandal, dealing with harassment within the media industry was a prominent topic of discussion.

One smaller workshop focused on raising awareness of what constitutes sexual harassment, and how to best deal with it in the workplace. With specific problems in the world of journalism such as informal meetings in other people’s houses and the high percentage of men in senior posts, advice such as making a paper trail when harassment does occur, and reporting harassers to unions if nothing is done by the company were discussed.

The smaller talk also advertised ‘The Second Source’, a group of women in journalism who provide advice and offer support to other female journalists facing sexual harassment in the industry.

The ‘Women in Media’ conference 2018 saw all profits donated to MASH (Manchester Action on Street Health), a charity offering advice and support to women in the sex work industry. The charity offers help to women sex working in any capacity, offering free advice and confidential support as well as a ‘drop-in’ centre where women can visit a sexual health nurse and receive support on issues such as mental health and reporting crimes.

The smaller sexual harassment talk was very informative as one Salford graduate told The Mancunion that in regards to interviewing in someone else’s home she “wouldn’t have thought of that” and that “the dangers are unknown”. The other talks and the conference proved informative and successful, as a current third-year student at the University of Manchester told The Mancunion that this was her third time going to the conference and that it seemed to be going from “strength to strength.”

University of Manchester graduate Rebecca Allen reiterated this glowing testimonial, adding that “it being a local event was a big advantage.”

EP Review: Everything Everything – A Deeper Sea

Written by Winona Newman on 13th March 2018. Posted in Music.

Ahead of their tour Everything Everything have released a melancholic gem of an EP. A Deeper Sea comes after their decidedly more frenetic 2017 album A Fever Dream. The four song EP showcases masterful versatility and, inspired by singer-songwriter Jonathan Higgs’ shock at high male suicide rates, aims to challenge the promotion of toxic masculinity.

The lyrical opener ‘The Mariana’ tackles this head on as the EP’s only exclusive track. The title refers to the Marianas trench, the deepest point in the ocean, linking to the EP’s title and acting as a metaphor for the bleakness of depression. There is a sense of being lost and awaking in a messed up world of confused ideas and expectations.

The EP’s second song ‘Breadwinner’ was recorded a year ago with James Ford, but didn’t fit onto the latest album and as such it aligns tonally with A Fever Dream. It acts as a stealthy reminder of the power this band has, rumbling into an electronic show of pure, futuristic force. It reflects the same disillusionment with modern life, accompanied by a music video embracing the distorted and abstract animation of the internet’s viral culture, thus commenting directly within and in the age of internet obsession and meaninglessness. Instead of offering a solution, the song seems to simply cry out into the void, acting as an aching echo to the cries of a generation.

‘Ivory Tower’ from their latest album has been remixed by Tom Vek and, dare we say it, has been improved significantly. Setting the already lyrically interesting, catchy song atop a background of electronic haze transports it to the next level, allowing it to pervade an addictive sinister aura. It grabs you at the first bar and keeps your attention for its almost five minute duration.

To conclude, the band have taken ‘Don’t Let it Bring You Down’ from Neil Young’s exceptional ‘After the Goldrush’ album and electrified it. The cover was recorded at BBC’s Maida Vale in 2017. Neil Young’s lyrics generally evoke a sense of knowing and this song is no exception. The abstract imaginings of its lyrics paint the bitter-sweet cycles of life and death, offering a careful optimism. Everything Everything have taken this slightly eerie imagery and echoed it with sound. As such, the cover starts quietly reflective before exploding into a cacophony of electronic bliss, so much so you can almost feel the “castles burning”. It feels like a homage to the wisdom and gentle masculinity which has been embodied by artists such as Neil Young. As a conclusion to an an EP concerned with toxic masculinity it seems particularly fitting.

Despite the seemingly eclectic choice of material the subtle tonal and thematic links which run throughout this refreshing EP catapults the band into their tour amidst a frenzy of anticipation.

Complacent like me? Read ‘The Autobiography of an Ex-coloured Man’

Written by Margherita Concina on 13th March 2018. Posted in Books.

Have you ever had an epiphany?

I think I’ve just had one, and it has made me realize that I need more. Badly. This week’s reading for my 20th-Century African American Literature module deals with parody in James Weldon Johnson’s 1912 novel: ‘The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man’. You may have heard of it, but I hadn’t before it ended up on my reading list.

The nameless protagonist is the son of a former slave and her former master, who can “pass” as white due to his Caucasian skin tone and features. He’s a cigar roller at a factory, then a pianist in New York, then he travels to Europe and back. The book is amazingly well-written, engrossing, even exciting.

As I sat down to do my work, I vaguely tried to pinpoint what was being parodied. Was it the nameless narrator’s delusion of artistry? His self-satisfaction? The hypocrisy of the supposedly egalitarian North in the 19th- and 20th-century United States? Turns out, it was all of the above, and more.

It is the main character’s whiteness which is the main source of parody: his complete unawareness of his own prejudice, his brushing off of the tragedies he witnesses without really feeling any sympathy for the victims. And his rationalisation of all of this. There are plenty of demonstrations of his obliviousness, like when he casually accepts a drink from a self-proclaimed white supremacist or fantasies about creating a classical (i.e. white) masterpiece from ragtime music.

And I’d missed most of them. I suddenly felt like the butt of the joke I was supposed to be a part of. How could this be? I live in a time and place where equality is supposedly the norm, and which at any rate is very different from segregated America. I’m all for equality, obviously. My social circle has people from all walks of life.

Oh.

It hit me. I’d missed the irony, because I sympathised with the character’s motivations. I have internalised the same complacent tendencies he displays. When I see a homeless person, I feel justified in looking away. Reading newspapers depresses me, so I don’t. There was a recent election in my country, and I haven’t given it a second thought, because politics is just a sham and nothing ever changes anyway. But things have changed, and more needs changing. If I’m not careful, I could end up like the main character, with a vague sense of dissatisfaction hinting at a deeply-rooted selfishness – and missing the latter. I may have had an epiphany, but now I need to get to work on myself.

I know that if you’re reading this, chances are you voted Jeremy Corbyn, are politically aware, and are not unsympathetic to the tragedies of the world. But it’s not like I was a white supremacist myself when I picked up the book. So if you like to challenge yourself and your perspective, do the same. If you feel like you challenge yourself enough already, pick up the book all the same, simply because it’s amazingly well-written.

Just for me: I’m selfish because I willingly distance my self from caring, because I justify continuing to punish my parents for my anxiety although I know it’s unfair, for concentrating on my melodramatic insecurities instead of the faults and choices that impact my ethical perspective. I too have artistic fantasies that I never have the balls to act upon, and often pretend to care about people and causes more than I do.

The Library of the Future

Written by James Gill on 13th March 2018. Posted in Books.

In Nordmarka, Norway, 30km outside of Oslo, a thousand trees have been planted for a very special purpose: the library of the future. In 2115 they will be used to make paper for a collection of books.

The Framstidsbiblioteket, or Future Library, is a 100-year project launched by Scottish artist Katie Paterson. In every year from 2014 until 2114, a notable writer will give one piece of writing, destined to remain unread until after the project has concluded. The purpose is to give readers of the future a fresh anthology of works by some of the century’s greatest writers.

Starting the Future Library off in 2014 was Margeret Atwood, five-time nominee for the Man Booker Prize, who gave a work entitled ’Scribbler Moon’. She said of the project: “Future Library is bound to attract a lot of attention over the decades, as people follow the progress of the trees, note what takes up residence in and around them, and try to guess what the writers have put into their sealed boxes.”

The second contributor, for the year 2015, was David Mitchell, who contributed a piece called ‘From Me Flows What You Call Time’. Mitchell said “Civilisation, according to one of those handy Chinese proverbs, is the basking in the shade of trees planted a hundred years ago, trees which the gardener knew would outlive him or her, but which he or she planted anyway for the pleasure of people not yet born. I accepted the Future Library’s invitation to participate because I would like to plant such a tree. The project is a vote of confidence that, despite the catastrophist shadows under which we live, the future will still be a brightish place willing and able to complete an artistic endeavour begun by long-dead people a century ago. Imagine if the Future Library had been conceived in 1914, and a hundred authors from all over the world had written a hundred volumes between 1915 and today, unseen until now – what a human highway through time to be a part of. Contributing and belonging to a narrative arc longer than your own lifespan is good for your soul.”

In 2016, Icelandic artist Sjón’s piece was ‘As My Brow Brushes On The Tunics Of Angels or The Drop Tower, the Roller Coaster, the Whirling Cups and other Instruments of Worship from the Post-Industrial Age’. Patterson, who came up with the Future Library concept said of Sjón: “Sjón creates a world of metamorphosis: his poetic works weave together history and myth, folklore, ancient storytelling, the surreal and the magical, through the language of past and contemporary Icelandic.”

His writing is dynamic and melodic, and like Future Library interlaces the human and natural world through stretches of time. In addition to writing poems, novels, plays, librettos, lyrics, and children’s books, Sjón often collaborates with other artists and musicians, so I am very excited about the possibilities his contribution will bring to this hidden library growing through the trees.”

The most recent addition to the project is Elif Shafak. Patterson spoke about Shafak saying “her work dissolves boundaries: cultural, geographic, political, ideological, religious and spiritual, and embraces a plurality of voices. Her storytelling is magical and profound, creating connectivity between people and places: a signal of hope at a particularly divided moment in time.”

The works will be kept in a purpose-built room in the New Deichmanske Public Library that will be opening in Bjørvika, Oslo. The room, designed by Patterson, will utilise wood from the forest and will try to emulate the tranquility. There will be a list of the name’s and titles of the works included in the project, however, none will be revealed until 2114.

You can watch a short video about the project, featuring Margaret Atwood, below:

In Conversation with Lynne Ramsay

Written by James Gill on 13th March 2018. Posted in Film.

Lynne Ramsay is a Scottish film director and screenwriter who specialises in visceral films with themes of guilt and death. She has been described as one of the best British filmmakers of her generation. Despite this lofty praise, Ramsay is one of the most down to Earth people I’ve had the pleasure of talking to.

Her latest work, You Were Never Really Here, is a gritty thriller based on a novella by Jonathan Ames. “A friend of mine is really into his genre films. He works with a lot of really interesting filmmakers like Jacques Audiard and so he sent me this novella. I read it in 85 minutes which is probably the same length as my movie. They didn’t have the rights to it so I started writing it on spec to see if it would work out.”

“I had a draft in about four weeks and I was getting into it but it’s a very pulpy, B-movie kind of novella. Ames wanted to make this dime novel but the character was unusual. We talked about the script but he was never prescriptive, the only thing he said to me was he wants it to have the feeling of a page turner and I wanted that too.

From beginning to write the script purely as speculation to the finished film, there were many twists and surprises “It was strange for me with the script because there was a bidding war at Cannes and I was like what this isn’t even finished yet. Then Amazon bought it and then we were in Cannes the next year it was so fast.”

“Sometimes when you’re under the gun you have to kill your darlings a little bit. I knew I had 29 days to rewrite and prep, it was a nightmare. I don’t think I slept but I think that’s why it’s a bit of a hallucination. It was also super hot in New York — never shoot in summer in New York it’s totally brutal.

“There was something about going there when I had previously lived in a village with no cars, it was driving me mental. You shut your eyes and it’s just noise. I think that really went into the sound design. I hate to say it but some of the limitations actually brought around brainwaves when you have your back against the wall but it would be nice to have a bit longer time though.”

Part of what made it possible to prepare the script in under a month was the length of the book, at just 96 pages. “With my last film, We Need to Talk About Kevin, it was a huge book and was armchair edited. In order to get the money and edit it, we had to cut huge parts of the book out and it was so forensic. For this one, it was about 70% from the original book though it is quite different. Obviously, I would never want to do a straight adaptation.”

The main performance in the film is Joaquin Phoenix’s character, Joe. Phoenix was haunting in his role and ended up winning Best Actor at Cannes but his collaboration with Ramsay began quite unusually.

“I think it was a first for both of us. I’ve never not met the actor before but I knew I wanted him to play Joe before I wrote the script that I didn’t even have the rights to. I think I was telepathically willing him to be in the movie because he’s quite choosy. He arrived as soon as we, the crew, arrived, and I was terrified. I had six weeks to look at 90 locations in New York which takes weeks and he was building up and becoming this beast. It was exciting how it evolved really.”

“No-one recognised Joaquin that much, which was great, they thought he was a construction worker or a bum. I remember someone throwing some coins at him when he was on the floor tying his shoe. That meant we could run and gun in a way, there wasn’t that crowd with iPhones or anything. I saw French Connection at this screening in LA and was blown away at how they shot it, without permits! It was just really inspiring because the car chase in that is one of the best car chases ever.”

During this time in New York, she found out her film was going to be in Cannes, just one year after her script was purchased by Amazon. “I got this call from this French company saying I have a meeting in London for four hours. I put two days aside in the schedule I had to shoot stuff in New York and I was just thinking ‘oh my god he’s not giving us the rest of the money to make the film’. He just said to me ‘it’s in Cannes’.”

“It was a lovely thing to hear but I had my head in my hands. Cannes is quite a brutal place and I was still only writing the script, it was kind of surreal, a bit like this film was telling us it was going to be crazy the whole way through. I edited this one in half the time of We Need to Talk About Kevin but it had the same frenetic energy that the prep and the shoot did. Sometimes a film tells you what it’s going to be and it just felt like a nervous breakdown the whole time in the coolest possible way.”

In order to convey the feeling of a nervous breakdown, Ramsay turned to sound. “The sound is like music. It’s subconscious. You don’t know why it works but it does. It stirs you or takes you into a dream. For me I worked on the sound really early, I never understand why some people only think about the sound at the end. With this is was very much the opposite, we’d do a cut and then do sound so that the sound could inform the cut.”

“After that, we’ll get a piece of music from Johnny Greenwood and it wasn’t like that’s the exact place you need to use it. You were looking at the pieces and it was a bit like a puzzle. Joe Bini, the editor, and I were getting all these pieces of music and they were amazing.

“We took them and put the right piece to the right part of the picture and then cut the picture to the music. It’s not a very conventional way of doing it, but that works for me. If you ever watch a non-mixed film you instantly know, it’s a different experience. We were premixing ours the whole way through.”

With a runtime of 90 minutes, Ramsay keeps this film lean. As a result, it never drags, and just as Ames wished, it truly feels like a page-turner. That said, there were quite a few scenes that didn’t make the cut. “It was never really a long assembly but you could have made a Harold and Maude type film with the stuff with Joe and his mum. There was so much good stuff, some amazing scenes.”

“I was constantly thinking that it could be a different film, this hitman living with his mum, a totally different tone. Plus his takes were all so different, sometimes he’d do something funny and other times you’d just think what the hell was that. You just have to let this animal loose. Like in that scene with the drug dealer he really did punch that guy and we were all shocked. Luckily the extra was pretty cool about it. It’s the same improvisation with the scene where he’s singing on the floor of his house with the agent.”

Phoenix punching an extra isn’t the only problem Ramsay had with her extras in New York. “Well, there’s a thing called a tier system in New York. If you shoot something super low budget then you can use who you like but after a certain kind of budget, you have to use a union like SAG extras.

“You can’t even speak to them; there’s this weird system where only the assistant director can. I had this experience with We Need To Talk About Kevin with SAG extras where the shot was down a street in New York and I was saying ‘why are these extras all walking so slowly’, it’s because they all wanted to be on camera for ages. So I was getting into trouble for telling these guys to hurry up.”

“I also remember with Kevin I had to get quite a few waivers because there was a kid that just hung out on set in a Halloween scene. There was a SAG guy who was telling me I can’t just pull someone in like I can do in the UK. I got fined by SAG that day for making a girl cry, but she loved it, she came up to me and went ‘that was the best experience of my life’. It was because I was telling her to really feel the emotion.”

At Cannes, Ramsay also won Best Screenplay for her film, which drew comparisons to iconic films such as Taxi Driver and Léon: The Professional, something which meant a lot to her: “Just to be mentioned along with those films is amazing. What was great was when I was in Paris on the radio. They did a trailer that was dubbed and asked me about my film.

“Afterward, they played an old clip of Paul Schrader talking about Taxi Driver saying almost the same things I did. It was weird was I thinking along the same lines as him?”

“I was talking to someone recently about the film Five Easy Pieces, a character study of Jack Nicholson. Maybe it’s a bit of a cliché but where are those movies these days, with the real conviction behind them. There’s such good television these days I think we need to elevate the movies. The cinema needs to be a spectacle and not just a marvel one.”

“The first time I went into the cinema and felt like I was in a complete other world. When I came out I was still in it for another couple of hours. That was with Blue Velvet when I was 15. I went with my boyfriend at the time and had to lie about my age because he was a bit older than me, but then he found my school bus pass.

“Half the audience walked out of that film because they didn’t get it, and they really didn’t. It’s quite a scary film. The way Lynch uses sound, like in Lost Highway, I think it’s very inspirational. You can only get that feeling by being in the cinema.”

Looking forward, Ramsay isn’t quite sure what her next film will be. “I’ve no idea. A comedy. I’ve been thinking of a few things for a while but you don’t finish a film when it’s finished anymore. It gets a release and then you have to go here and here and then talk about it and try to explain it.

“I’m used to being behind a camera not in front of one you know. I know people who have been doing screenings and such a year after. The thing that makes me feel the best as a human being is just creating stuff so it doesn’t feel that great talking about it, but I think it’s all a part of getting it out there.”

Fergie-time screamer gets United a win at Crystal Palace

Written by James Gill on 13th March 2018. Posted in Sport.

With Liverpool comfortably beating West Ham 4-1 and moving up into second place, Manchester United need a win against relegation-battling Crystal Palace to stay above the rest of the pack fighting for those Champion’s League positions. Mourinho would have been feeling confident however, as Palace have not won a single game against the Red Devils in 17 Premier League Meetings.

There was just one change from the side that beat Chelsea 2-1 on the 25th February 2018. De Gea played in goal with a back four of Valencia, Smalling Lindelöf and Young. McTominay gets yet another start alongside Matic and Pogba. Lingard came in for Martial to join Lukaku and Sánchez in an attacking three.

Crystal Palace’s McArthur got the game underway. Roy Hodgson opted for a two-striker setup with a 4-4-2 formation so I expected more crosses at Selhurst Park than at the Vatican’s Sunday service. The centre-back partnership of Smalling and Lindelöf looked nervous when faced with the initial influx of crosses. They needed to get settled, and fast, if there was to be any hope of getting a 16th Premier League clean sheet.

Palace were moving the ball around very well and United seemed to be caught out by their intensity. After Pogba needlessly wasted possession by launching the ball upfield, a single pass cut through the United back line giving Benteke acres of space to manoeuvre in. He found enough space to shoot but instead passed it laterally to Townsend on the edge of the box who hit it first time into the top corner. The replay shows that the shot took a massive deflection off Lindelöf, which gave de Gea no chance of stopping it. Although luck was on their side Palace were by far the better team in the opening ten minutes.

If Hodgson’s side were to win this game, it would be their first points this season without Wilfried Zaha in the side. They have lost all eight games without him this season and his return in a couple of weeks may be the difference between relegation and survival.

The main issue United had was their narrowness on the ball. All of their possession was channeled through the centre of the pitch and that suited Palace. Townsend and Schlupp came inside and congested the midfield area with the open space on the wings being left open by United. If they wanted to penetrate this well-drilled side, they needed to use more of the pitch and spread their opposition out to create pockets of space for Sánchez or Lingard to run into.

Slowly but surely United built into the game and a major part of that was adding width to their attack. They took a lot of confidence from Palace keeper Hennessey fumbling a couple of simple catches. Their defence isn’t one of the best in the Premier League but if they can’t get past the midfield and into dangerous positions they wouldn’t trouble Hennessey at all.

Scott McTominay got a yellow card for completely mistiming a challenge. As he slid in it seemed like a simple tackle, but he missed the ball and took all of the man. Meanwhile, Valencia and Young kept making great runs down the wings but continued to be totally ignored. I wasn’t then surprised when Rashford came on at the start of the second half.

At halftime, Mourinho would have surely had a stern talk with his side. Presumably part of that talk would have involved an introduction of Ashley Young and Antonio Valencia as the way Manchester United played in the first 45 minutes, it looked as though they had never met. The first substitute took place as Rashford cane on for McTominay.

Matic conceded a foul just inside the United half in the third minute of the second half. The free kick was taken quickly and no one on the Manchester United team noticed until it was too late. When the closest defender Lindelöf saw what was happening, van Aanholt was one on one with de Gea and smashed it in to make it 2-0 to Crystal Palace. That goal really embodied the game as a whole. Palace, always looking to make a quick break and United, lethargic, looking like they’d left their desire to win on the team bus.

The first defensive mistake by Crystal Palace was capitalised on by Manchester United. The ball was crossed into the box and Tomkins was a little late in setting the offside trap and played Chris Smalling onside. The England international still had a lot to do but placed his head into the side netting of the far corner leaving Hennessey no chance. If United came back to win this game it would be their first 2 goal deficit recovery since 2013 at Hull. Just after Ashley Young gets a yellow card for a strong cuddle on a Palace player.

The game was really opening up now with both sides coming close with shots. Hennessey especially made a good save to deny a Pogba shot. Mourinho made a double change to try and spur Manchester United on to victory. Luke Shaw replaced Ashley Young who was on a yellow card and Juan Mata replaced Antonio Valencia. With 20 minutes left to play there was still enough time for the outcome to change. Palace could climb all the way to 13th if they hold out.

Matic came close to scoring his first goal for Manchester United after his move from Chelsea but it is cleared off the line by Benteke. Palace and desperately tried to hang onto this lead but they got relentlessly attacked by United. Townsend got a yellow card for a foul in the frenetic defending.

In the 75th minute, United got their equaliser. Sánchez saw his shot deflected off a defender and then off the bar into the feet of Lukaku three yards out. Immediately he was swarmed by five defenders but somehow he found a space to get a shot off and found the back of the net for the 99th time. The Crystal Palace defence looked dejected. Benteke got a header less than a minute later but de Gea showed why he is one of the best goalkeepers in the world with an unbelievable stop.

Palace were hanging on to this draw by a thread but there were only four minutes plus stoppage time left. Surprisingly Hodgson had only used one of his three substitutes. He had Souaré and Delaney on the bench who are both solid defenders, and it was clear that his back four were completely out of steam.

The fourth official holds aloft the board to show three minutes of additional time. Pogba has a shot from 20 yards out but it got blocked to Matic who was about 25 yards out. He lined himself up and hit it on the volley going straight into the bottom left-hand corner out of reach for Hennessey. Heartbreak for Palace who lost in the closing minutes to Tottenham last week too. Roy Hodgson would have been especially disappointed as he seemed to have done everything right.

Both sides face major tests in the next round of Premier League fixtures with Manchester United playing Liverpool and Crystal Palace playing Chelsea.

City progress in Champions League

Written by James Gill on 13th March 2018. Posted in Sport.

Manchester City suffered their first home defeat since 2016 in the Champion’s League against Swiss side FC Basel losing 2-1. Regardless of the result City still progress to the Quarter Finals as their 4-0 cushion from the first leg was enough to see them through.

Basel’s win means that they go into an exclusive list of clubs that have beat City this season: Wigan, Shakhtar, Girona (preseason) and Liverpool. This game was very reminiscent of the last Group Stage game against Shakhtar. If manager Pep Guardiola knows he will be going through to the next round he will opt to play a very young and inexperienced side.

Zinchenko, Foden, and Jesus all got starts with Diaz and Adarabioyo coming on later in the game. All of those players gave energetic and spirited performances but they lacked composure. Far too often their passes fell short or behind their man or they picked a safe pass rather than attempting to spark an attacking move.

The only veteran player that made it into the side was Yaya Touré but that was more of an advantage to Basel than to Manchester City. As great a player as Touré has been in the past that player was not there that night. His passing left a lot to be desired and his mobility was just painful to see.

Basel do deserve a lot a credit for the way they handled the game. Jesus and Sané were man marked for the entire 90 minutes and City didn’t have a solution for that. All their possession had to be channeled through the centre of the pitch but the well-drilled Swiss side left no open spaces whatsoever. As a result, the ball went backwards more than it did forwards.

It took only seven minutes for the game to get a goal. Gabriel Jesus got on the end of a Bernardo Silva low cross to grab a goal on his first start of the year. The goal was more a product of defensive errors than City’s attacking prowess however as the cross went through the legs of two, yes two, Basel defenders.

That lead lasted for ten minutes as Mohamed Elyounoussi bagged an equaliser after a lucky deflection left him all alone in the middle of the box with only Bravo to beat. There was perhaps a question to be asked of Bravo’s positioning as Zinchenko was blocking part of the goal but to save a shot from six yards out was always going to be tough.

The second half was a lot poorer from Manchester City, one of the poorest we’ve seen this season. Going forward they were like watching England play in a major tournament and defensively they were like watching England play in a major tournament. The lack in attacking intent proved costly when an Elyounoussi pass to Michel Lang left Touré and ZInchenko exposed. Lang blasted the ball from a tight angle and Bravo could only knock it into the roof of his own goal.

What was most surprising about the game was Guardiola’s choice of substitutes. 2-1 down he decides to leave Walker, Agüro, and De Bruyne on the bench in favour of Diaz and defender Adarabioyo. Even if the tie is over in the first leg it was disappointing to see the lack of desire to win the game. That frustration was evident in the stadium with the only chant heard in the full 90 was a handful of the old ‘Cmon City’ whenever they played the ball from Sané back to Bravo.

That 2-1 victory means that Basel are the only side to have beaten both Manchester clubs this season. With Manchester United playing Liverpool on Saturday 10th March, however, that could all change. Manchester City goes to Stoke on Monday 12th.

Review: Game Night

Written by Lucas Hill-Paul on 13th March 2018. Posted in Film.

Game Night take the easily exploitable premise of misunderstood, dangerous scenarios, and wrestles with an idea that could have easily fallen into traps of derision and vulgarity.

Instead it delivers frequent laughs, eccentric characters and inventive direction. Jason Bateman (Office Christmas Party) and Rachel McAdams (Doctor Strange) star as a couple obsessed with board games, charades and trivia who unknowingly embark on a dangerous mission, when Bateman’s older brother is kidnapped in the midst of a murder mystery game night.

Jason Bateman’s presence has always been hit and miss, and there’s no masking the fact that the poster’s declaration as being “from the guys who brought you Horrible Bosses” doesn’t exactly lend itself to promises of a new comedy classic. Screenwriting duo Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley may have contributed some high school charm to last year’s surprising Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Horrible Bosses was a capable farce, but their track record is shaky considering their first directorial baby steps, the crass reboot of National Lampoon’s Vacation.

Thankfully, Ed Helms and Christina Applegate are booted here in favour of a pair that, admittedly, are the least exciting entries on the cast list but are at least capable of believable chemistry and some much needed comedic timing. They’re not entirely the straight men of the ensemble, as comedy a notch above dead-pan is needed to ensure the idiosyncrasies of their supporting players aren’t too sharp of a contrast. However, their wry confidence and genuine emotional range, pulled from their drama experiences, is a welcome respite from the antics surrounding them.

What thrusts the film’s laugh tally from middling and crude into genuinely refreshing character dynamics is the thrilling supporting cast. Billy Magnussen channels his unpredictable energy from last year’s indie favourite, Ingrid Goes West, for a winning blend of naivety and scummy fortuitousness that cements him as a must-have wild card for any comedic cast. Lamorne Morris (New Girl) and Kylie Bunbury’s (Under the Dome) childhood sweethearts are in danger of suffering from a baggy admission and subsequent interrogation of infidelity that almost becomes the film’s most overplayed comedic through-line, before we’re treated to the best pay-off of the movie and it all feels worth it again.

For anyone who recently enjoyed the latest series of Black Mirror, the biggest laughs are likely to come at the end of Game Night’s second act. Jesse Plemmons is perfect casting for their jilted and paranoiac neighbour, who embraces his current public persona as the sinister and manipulative captain of the USS Callister.

Much of the direction is largely flat and bland, with no discernible use of inventive colour or lighting, but this is not to the film’s detriment. In fact, there are moments of genius camerawork that would have you fooled Edgar Wright has a new movie in cinemas. Its car chases don’t have the slick kinesis or impeccable timing of Baby Driver, but they have life, stakes and continuity.

The tilt-shifted landscape shots of suburbia effectively evoke the feeling of looking down at a game board, Bateman and co simply the pieces of a larger puzzle, and you’ll have a blast figuring out which action set piece is reminiscent of which party game. One long shot that recreates the panic of a game of ‘Hot Potato’ is particularly inventive and, take away the laughs, would be one of the several action beats that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in something like John Wick.

It’s easy, referential stuff on paper, but every moment of stunt work and combat is choreographed with care and purpose, ensuring that each scene has visceral impact as well as the peppering of humour. Bizarre as it may seem, it’s rather heart-warming to realise that Goldstein and Daley have released an unassuming action comedy that holds the same reverence for ‘Jenga’, ‘Operation’ and ‘Charades’ as Hot Fuzz has for Point Break and Bad Boys II.

4/5

To hear more of Lucas’ thoughts, listen to Take Three on Fuse FM’s Mixcloud

University footballers battle to draw

Written by Arthur Salisbury on 13th March 2018. Posted in Sport.

In his darker moments, Guy Debord foresaw a future in which the authentic would be completely replaced with the spectacular. So he would have been pleasantly surprised with the university footballers on Wednesday night, where the former was abundantly present at the expense of the latter.

Manchester played out a 0-0 draw with Sheffield and gave a big boost to their survival hopes at the Armitage Centre. A win against Leeds Beckett on March 15th would see them finish a respectable 3rd in the six-team table. This context the majority of the spectators were unaware of, leading to some bemusement at the final whistle, at which the celebrations of the Manchester footballers were poignantly dissonant with the game they comprised half of.

Manchester, playing in the traditional UKIP colours, were the brighter of the two sides, both technically and physically stronger. They attacked predominantly down the right, [2] and [11] creating what few chances there were in the first half.

Sheffield should have gone into the break a goal up when their right-back played a long ball that beat the Manchester centre-halves for height — in itself nothing to worry about, except when you are simultaneously beaten for pace by the opposition front line. Sheffield’s #7 thought he’d made the breakthrough when he poked the ball past [1], only to be denied on the line by [4].

Even though the audience was generally unaware of its wider significance, there was an undeniable hint of tension throughout the second half. The full-backs put it through to captain [?] in the middle, who spread it to either wing, where the ball would ricochet about until reaching [7], by a distance the most dazzling player on the pitch, playing to a step three standard in what was closer to a step five match.

And yet, despite the heavy lifting, Manchester were unable to get a shot away. Their satisfaction with the point, which means they need only avoid heavy defeat next Wednesday to stay in Northern 1A, coupled with Sheffield’s heavy legs, meant the game became a turgid midfield battle. Cheers were raised only occasionally and exclusively at a mishap, [captain]’s dithering in the centre circle providing a few chuckles.

There is only so much a humble match reporter can squeeze out of a frankly bloodless stone. The fun is to be had in the live experience, which cannot be conveyed in print. I therefore urge you to take yourself down to the Armitage Centre this Wednesday, just two steps from Squirrels, and sample some free sport from the university’s finest.

Hundred women to run shoulder-to-shoulder in Great Manchester Run

Written by Lucinda Obank on 13th March 2018. Posted in News.

One hundred women will be showing their support and gratitude of the Suffragette movement by running shoulder-to-shoulder in the Simplyhealth Great Manchester 10km run raising money for the Pankhurst Trust.

The event will take place on Sunday 20th of May and money donated will be fed into preserving the Pankhurst Centre itself and redeveloping the museum which relies on donations as it is run by volunteers and receives no public funding.

2018 marks a major milestone in women’s history, as it has been 100 years since they won the right to vote.

Bex Shindler, fundraising and development manager of the Pankhurst Trust told The Manchester Evening News: “I think there’s something really nice about running events in terms of building that support for each other. Whilst we’re all an individual part of the run, we’re all running together for something, [and it was the] solidarity and the sisterhood aspect that appealed to me and I think that would’ve really appealed to the suffragettes too.”

She added, “the Simplyhealth Great Manchester Run is a big event for the city and this is a great opportunity for us to celebrate the city and to celebrate our history… I can’t wait to share our story and get it out there!”

Emmeline Pankhurst is responsible for kick-starting a revolution that saw widespread social and political reform ensue for women over the next 100 years. Her supporters became known as the Suffragettes, who branched away from the Suffragists in 1903 as they became increasingly impatient with their respectable and steady tactics.

The Suffragette Movement was born here in Manchester. The Pankhurst Centre was home of activist Emmeline Pankhurst and her family and the meeting place of the first Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU).

100 years on it serves as a community centre for women and a heritage site which regularly opens to the public retelling women’s struggle for equality. It is also home to the Pankhurst Trust, a charity dedicated to tackling issues of gender inequality and domestic abuse to help improve the lives of women.

The Pankhurst Centre commented to The Manchester Evening news that raising awareness and fundraising “will help to ensure that this significant historical building remains open to the public and continues to inspire and empower generations, and to secure the future of Manchester Women’s Aid, so that we can continue to support women and children in need today”.

The 10km course sees participants run past Old Trafford, the Imperial War Museum, the Lowry, and finally Beetham Tower on Deansgate. Those taking part in the half marathon will also run on Mancunian Way.

Review: Immortal Redneck

Written by Jeremy Bijl on 12th March 2018. Posted in Games.

Immortal Redneck was never a game I was meant to like. From its immature sense of humour to its roguelike game design to its nostalgic invocation of an era of gaming which predated my experience, I fully expected to hate Immortal Redneck. What I soon found, however, was almost the complete opposite.

The backbone of the game is your ‘run’, in which you must navigate the floors of a randomly generated pyramid. Each room you enter requires you to kill every enemy in order to leave it until you eventually hit a dead end, die, or find the stairs up to the next level (or boss). Each death is permanent, sending you back to base, where you must re-enter the pyramid and start the run again. There are three pyramids, and you must defeat each one to gain access to the next.

On top of this simplistic backbone, however, developers Crema have built a whole network of intricate sinews, impressive muscles, and a fully realised skeletal structure to boot, fleshing out the game into a really quite impressive specimen.

The game, as a whole, combines a triumvirate of genres: the first person-shooter, the roguelike, and the RPG, retaining the fast-paced, action packed gameplay of the former, the randomness of the roguelike, and the grind-based progression system of the latter.

The first-person shooting mechanics are undoubtedly the first thing you’ll notice when playing Immortal Redneck. In the game, combat is high-octane, hyperkinetic, and minutely responsive. If you’re standing still in Immortal Redneck, you’re probably doing something wrong, and when in a room you hardly have a second to think until the room has been cleared.

This goes a long way to compensating for the game’s biggest weakness: its narrative and dialogue. In Immortal Redneck, there is little in the way of either, and what there is is generally annoying or nonsensical. I soon realised, however, that I barely noticed this. Immortal Redneck completely circumnavigates that emotional, analytical part of your mind and taps straight into your lizard brain.

Nonetheless, had Crema relied on the strength of the gameplay alone, it would quickly have become monotonous, and this is where the RPG elements come in.

In each run, killed enemies drop gold. You collect this gold, and it stays with you when you die and return to the homebase. This can be spent at the skill tree (which, pleasingly, is a physical tree that grows as you upgrade), which, in turn, will make you better equipped for your next run by granting you more health, better attack or defence stats, or various other benefits.

Additionally, you can, in true RPG fashion, unlock eight different playable classes (after the redneck), all of which come with different weapon loadouts, special skills, and stat benefits. One, for example, regenerates health from kills (at the expense of being able to pick up health kits), whilst another can summon a falcon to attack nearby enemies.

These RPG elements made it so that the pyramids weren’t the only place you were constantly moving, ensuring that you were always progressing, adapting your metagame, and finding new ways to optimise your run.

The roguelike elements of the game also add plenty of variety. Whilst you start with a preallocated set of guns, enemies will occasionally drop more. An arsenal of more than fifty weapons ranging from weak and cumbersome to powerful and satisfying ensures that rooms can always be approached in a variety of ways.

The strongest randomised element of the game, however, were the ‘scrolls’ – drops which acted as modifiers of your run. Scrolls could be game breaking or game making, but were always game changing and kept things interesting. With a hundred scrolls in the game, each pickup was a true lottery. One scroll immediately took 80% of my health, and another got rid of all my guns spare one. On the other hand, one effectively gave me another life, whilst another meant I was followed by an illuminati triangle that killed minions.

Perhaps because of this level of chance in terms of drops, I was a little disappointed by the range of enemies and rooms. Whilst it admittedly made the game easier, I soon knew every enemy and recognised the vast majority of rooms. Whilst each room and enemy were sufficiently different from each other to maintain diversity, it meant some runs felt a little stale, especially when the more irritating, awkwardly tiered rooms started recurring.

Regardless of how many hundreds of enemies and rooms you encounter, though, what lends the game its old school feel is that is only ever one real enemy: the game itself. It’s a game that challenges you to beat it, but, unlike some similar games like RUINER, it is a game that is intelligent in its approach to challenge: Immortal Redneck always pushes you, but shows enough restraint to give you the tools to unravel it if you’re willing to put in the time.

In some ways, Immortal Redneck isn’t so different from the pyramids which act as its levels. On the outside, it looks simplistic and antiquated, but on the inside lies a surprisingly thorough, intelligent and intricate web of design mechanics that keep you compulsively playing, and make you enjoy it while you do.

8.5/10

Should we be worried about game servers shutting down?

Written by chrisglover on 12th March 2018. Posted in Games.

The logistics of running and maintaining servers for online games is something the vast majority of gamers never think about, probably for the same reason you never wonder about the intricacies of the postal service or holiday insurance: it’s boring, and not your problem.

However, game servers do become your problem when they’re switched off. Fancy a quick online game of FIFA 09, or got that itch that only a multiplayer bout on Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 will scratch? Almost certainly not, granted, but it’s not just outdated iterations of formulaic sports games whose servers are lost to the ravages of time.

Last month, servers of Demon’s Souls – the landmark action RPG which many cite as spawning a whole new genre of games – had its servers shut down. Demon’s Souls had some truly innovative multiplayer elements: though a single player game, you would sporadically encounter the ghostly after-images of other players who had died, serving as a warning that danger lay ahead. It was a great system that integrated multiplayer without detracting from the game’s signature sense of loneliness and dread.

If iconic games from less than a decade ago are undergoing server shutdown, what will things be like 10 or 20 years from now?

If I want to go back and play (literal) game-changers like like Super Mario Bros and GoldenEye I can just fire up an emulator and enjoy them in all their glory. But when I inevitably attempt to force my interests on my future children and show them similarly groundbreaking titles from my era like Call of Duty 4 and Halo, I simply won’t be able to. The multiplayer element is what made both games so great, and it’s doubtful that servers will still be up and running to show it.

The unfortunate upbringing of my future kids aside, server shutdowns are already proving an issue for publishers and consumers alike. It may not surprise you to learn that of all companies, it seems to be EA who have caused the most friction.

Whilst some gamers would be happy to see the end of servers for EA’s latest debacle, Battlefront II, the speed with which their sports titles are stripped of their online capabilities is a frequent source of dissent. In 2013, a man called Justin Basset filed a lawsuit against the industry giant for shutting down servers for their games before he had received enough enjoyment from them.

“Had plaintiff known at the time that he would not be able to play the products online for a certain amount of time”, the court heard, “he would not have purchased the products or paid the price he paid for the products.”

Indeed, EA seem to waste little time in shutting down servers to save money and resources; FIFA 14, one of the highest rated games in the series, has already had its servers closed down, and Crysis 2, despite achieving both critical and commercial success, only lasted three years before having its servers shut down for PC.

To be clear: I’m not saying that servers should remain running indefinitely. I don’t expect in fifty years time I’m entitled to switch on an antique Xbox 360 in my care home so my geriatric buddies and I can enjoy a spot of 2012’s Grand Slam Tennis on immaculately-maintained servers.

However, issues of finite server support for video games are worth taking note of, especially as more big companies are setting their sights on lucrative ‘games as a service’ models with always-online titles like Destiny and the upcoming Anthem.

Perhaps it’s time for a legal minimum server-lifespan to be declared on game boxes, or some kind of assurance for consumers that the gameplay experience they pay for can’t simply be revoked in a couple years to save money for the next big release.

Without any such guarantee and with servers being closed left, right, and centre, gamers may find themselves wondering: am I really buying this game, or am I just renting server time?

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Month: March 2018