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Year: 2011

We didn’t make a fuss in case they abolished us – former drugs advisor

Written by Joshua Carroll on . Posted in News.

Eric Carlin was a government advisor on drugs on the same council as David Nutt, the professor sacked by the home secretary after claiming ecstasy and cannabis were safer than alcohol.

After Prof Nutt’s dismissal from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), Mr Carlin considered resigning but remained, believing he might still be able to affect change. Months later he finally left. In his letter of resignation he accused the government of heeding media pressure instead of scientific evidence when outlawing the ‘legal high’ mephedrone.

Mr Carlin now works with Prof Nutt on a rival body to the ACMD. He agreed to talk to The Mancunion whilst on a presumably rare holiday:

Is the current ACMD more placid than the one led by David Nutt ?

That’s a difficult one. I mean ACMD was never a radical committee; it was never a committee for people arguing for legalisation. I’m still in touch with several people on the committee. The situation changed in the last month of the Labour government and they did become far more hard line on drugs and far more direct with the committee. Are the ACMD more compliant? I don’t want to be too critical of them but what I do know is that the committee were set up as part of the Misuse of Drugs Act so looking at classification of drugs was obviously a key part of what they did.

With us, when it got to the stage of Alan Johnson sacking David [Nutt], I don’t think he anticipated how problematic that would be. I can understand why they had problems with him, he was very outspoken and perhaps not as politically sensitive as he might have been. But they sacked him by email. You don’t just send an email to an eminent professor and chair of a committee if you’re sacking them. The first he heard of it was when the BBC rang him and asked him if the rumour was true and he didn’t know. It’s bizarre.

Andi Sidwell of Students for Sensible Drugs Policy tells The Mancunion there isn’t a lot of research on drug use among students.

I do know SSDP, I didn’t know they were in Manchester. I think they’re actually a really good campaign group. Yes, I think he’s right. There’s not a lot of social research on drug use generally. When ACMD looked at mephedrone we relied on a small survey carried out by Dr Fiona Measham at Lancaster University and also on a Mixmag survey. That was the best information we had. It tells you something but it’s not exactly a survey of the general population.

I don’t think we properly know the statistics because there is an overwhelming emphasis on looking at the information in terms of banning and making use of the criminal justice system. As well as that there’s far, far too much emphasis on supply and not enough on looking at demand.

Do you have any pet hates in terms of the way the media handles stories about drugs?

The worst thing is that the media is always very concerned when someone middle class who’s never used drugs before suddenly takes an ecstasy pill and they die. Ecstasy still gets far more media attention [than any other drug]. There was a media review that showed that every time there is a story involving someone on ecstasy it gets covered, every death. But you could have three hundred deaths from paracetamol overdoses and it wouldn’t get covered because it’s not a glamorous way to overdose.

The image of drug users in the media is so far away from the reality of people’s behaviour. Someone using mephedrone or ecstasy in a nightclub is a million miles away from someone injecting heroin. They need to cover the various social elements of drug use.

You talk about experiencing government pressure in the ACMD. What form did that pressure take?

Well we were always sworn to secrecy, even though I would much rather have had as many of our discussions in public as possible. We had a lot of discussions in private when they really didn’t need to be and it might have been good for the public to see what we were saying on a whole range of issues.

I think the biggest issue is that we – several others and myself – felt we were being sidelined and weren’t being taken seriously. We didn’t want to make a fuss because we really got the impression that these politicians didn’t care and if we caused too much of a stink they’d just abolish us, which would be worse. That was the pressure we experienced. [With regards to secrecy] they were just really incompetent. For example, there’d be papers delivered and they’d been marked “Not to be shown to anyone” on the inside but they hadn’t been marked on the outside so I’d get my secretary opening these papers that were supposed to be top secret.

Did you ever directly experience any unpleasantness from anyone in the cabinet?

I didn’t have that specifically with the ACMD, I’ve had it previously with Caroline Flint, who was a Home Office minister, when my organisation did a piece of work on cannabis when it was first declassified to Class C.

The Home Office had asked us to do some information leaflets for young people. At the same time I was also Chair of the English Drug Education Forum. As part of that we issued a press release criticising Labour’s decision to, whilst declassifying Cannabis to C, get rid of school drugs advisers – that got to the front page of the Observer.

I was called in by Caroline Flint who had instructed a room full of top civil servants to tell me off, to tell me that my charity shouldn’t be taking money from government if we’re going to be criticising them. [JC: What did you say to them?] Well the government set up something called the Compact with the voluntary sector which is supposed to govern how the voluntary sector and government interact and guarantee the independence of the voluntary sector. I just took along a copy of it and gave it to them.

Have you ever used drugs?

I don’t answer that one. I love alcohol. I don’t smoke but I do drink a lot of coffee. The reason I don’t answer it is because I thinks it’s a distracting question. The whole drugs issue is so politicised that if I were to say to you I’ve either used drugs or not used drugs, I’d become part of something. I don’t think it enlightens anything.

Combined Studies students left to ponder their future after the discipline is dropped

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in News.

Combined studies will no longer be offered as a degree option by the University of Manchester. The course will be phased out, allowing this year’s new undergraduates to complete their final year, but no candidates will be admitted in 2011/12.

The course allowed students to study in two separate and otherwise unrelated academic areas. The first year of the course featured a mandatory volunteering project, where students raised money and awareness for charities in Manchester both nationally and internationally.

Students were not informed about the possibility of the course being withdrawn until the decision was finalised. In the final weeks of the last academic year, students were shown around the potential location for a new combined studies common room, and encouraged to give their feedback.

In July, new and returning students were sent a letter informing them that “following a review of the programme by the Faculty of Humanities[…] Combined Studies will admit its final cohort of first year students in 2010. “

The letter, from Alistair Ulph, then Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, contained no information as to what the review had found or why the action had been taken.

“Cutting combined studies is a sign of things to come rather than a one-off,” said Jamie Woodcock, Postgraduate representative on the Student Council and a member of Manchester University Against Cuts.

“When we approached the head of combined studies, they said that the university could not provide students with the support they would like to provide. We were told that there had been consultation with students on how to improve the course.

“The problem was with the number of tutors. We asked if it was an issue of funding, which they refuted. But with the right money, could there not be enough tutors?”

“We are going to see a lot more of this over this year and years to come. The problem with combined studies was the nature of the degree. It is symbolic of university education. It was not a profitable course.

“If you want to study history and life sciences, why not? We are going to see more streamlining and less module choice as the university focuses on more profitable education,” added Woodcock.

“I think combined studies is one of the best things the University offers,” said Martyna Sataite, second year combined studies student. “Not giving that choice will mean the University will lose very good people. More independent people with the ability to study multiple disciplines at once tend to choose a combined studies degree.“

Neil Ferguson, Head Of Faculty Academic Services for the Faculty of Humanities, said: “This has been part of an ongoing review. Courses are opening and closing all the time. It’s just that Combined Studies comes to more people’s notice because it is a larger program.

“It is not part of [a policy to streamline courses and reduce costs]. Combined Studies, it allows students to study over a number of pathways. Many of those pathways are replicated in other areas of the university. If you want to study French and German, you can do that within Languages, Linguistics and Cultures.”

When asked about more diverse combinations of subjects that will no longer be offered, Ferguson said: “You would be able to study aspects of these different subjects, albeit in a different way. It is always possible to take a couple of outside subjects within the context of a normal degree program. Much of the provisions of Combined Studies are replicated elsewhere in the faculty.”

Interview: Everything Everything

Written by music on . Posted in Music.

Music Editor Eoghan Bennett chats to front man Jonathan Higgs ahead of two very special gigs.

There’s a rumour that you’re back in the studio?

Yea we just got a load of new equipment that we’re trying out, so there’s a few new songs we’re working on. We haven’t got to the recording stage yet, we’re just still in the rehearsal room!

Are you planning on getting something on tape fairly soon?

I’m not entirely sure, there’s talk of us going into the studio early next year. Everything in the music industry kind of shuts down in December.

That’s fairly quick considering you’re debut was out fairly recently?

Yes, but some of the songs on it are a couple of years old now. We recorded Man Alive in February so we’ve had almost a whole year of playing it again and again! We’d like to have some new material for our live shows.

The second album always seems to be quite pivotal in a band’s career. How are you approaching it? Will it be a new departure?

Well we tried to make the first album as diverse as possible, with the intention of opening up doors early on that we could explore later, and to give us a bit of freedom with developing our sound. It’s too easy to just block yourself into a musical corner with no scope for progressing, and we wanted to avoid that. For the second album I guess it’s about finding our niche sound and refining it.

 

Musically, do you ever listen back to some of your earlier songs and think you’ve matured since then, or that you could have done better even?

We’ve certainly matured a lot in the last year or so, but we’re very happy with what we’ve done so far. All of the songs on Man Alive have gone through several lives, both in the studio during the recording process and through re-writing them after gigs… Well all except one anyway, which funnily enough is the song we’re most pleased with! I think if we could have done anything differently which would have improved the songs, we’d have figured it out long before the album came out.

You’re on tour at the moment, what are your favourite places to play?

 

We always get a great response in Manchester, but London and Newcastle too, as the other members are from there.

How did the gig with a full orchestra come about?

 

We did a show last year for the Mencap charity which we did as an acoustic set with a string quintet. We really enjoyed it so though we’d give it another go. This time we’re playing with 15 other people; it’s a huge sound when everybody plays together!

Are you re-writing all your songs then?

 

We’re not doing it ourselves this time as it’s a big task. At the moment we’re going into rehearsals with the orchestra playing our own music back to us; it’s a bit surreal! A lot of the songs have been re-worked, and there’s a few new bits that have been added here and there.

Between the four of you, you seem to play about 10 different instruments. How does that work when playing live? Are some aspects of the album difficult to pull off in a gig?

 

It is a problem but we try not to let that stop us! When we’re in the studio sometimes there’s a temptation to just add another guitar part to a song for the sake of it, but for Man Alive we had a really good producer who made sure things didn’t get too complicated. When we play live we sometimes have to leave out a few parts for practical reasons, but it doesn’t affect our overall sound and the audience sometimes doesn’t even notice.

What can listeners expect from any new material?

Well we’re using a lot more technology now and looking into what we can do with that. One cool piece of gear we’ve got recently is a keytar! It’s basically a guitar that you play like a keyboard, that can trigger samples and stuff. Also our drummer Mike is using a lot more drum pads and synthesised sounds to create drum loops. We actually got a lot of ideas from Delphic when we toured with them.

Speaking of Delphic, obviously you’re both breaking into the music scene at the same time and from the same city. Do you feel a particular affinity to other Manchester bands, or the music from the city’s history?

 

We do take few influences from other Manchester bands, but no more strongly than a band from London or Edinburgh would. None of us are even from Manchester, we’re all from different cities and just happened to meet here while we were at university. Obviously we love Manchester and we love the history of the city, but I think the influences of Manchester music can be heard across the whole country. A lot of bands now aren’t particularly interested in music from the 80s and 90s because we’re all too young to remember it, and we certainly don’t want to hang off the coat tails of it. If we were from Liverpool we’d probably be constantly asked about how the Beatles have influenced us. We’re just trying to do our own thing.

Everything Everything play Manchester’s RNCM on Monday 13th December, and London’s Union Chapel on Wednesday 15th December. www.everythingeverything.com

Manchester Literature Festival- Grimm Reading

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in Books.

In a back room at Manchester’s Cornerhouse, a small audience was joined by a panel of three authors who have all won awards in the field of horror fiction. Matt Haig, Conrad Williams, and Tariq Goddard each read from their latest novels before beginning a conversation on the breadth of the genre, chaired by a genuine British Horror legend Ramsey Campbell.

The discussions quickly swung to the long-running debate, concerning the snobbery that horror writing faces in the literary arena. Both Matt Haig and Conrad Williams had some fascinating insights and there talent, coupled with their relative obscurity, suggests that horror may still be receiving a raw deal.

Manchester Literature Festival- Face 2 Face with Heidi Thomas

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in Books.

Thomas is an award winning script writer for both television and stage. She has done a prolific amount of screen writing based on book adaptations including Madam Bovary, I Capture the Castle, Lilies, Ballet Shoes and, the extremely popular (although I never really saw why), Cranford.

Thomas gave some interesting insights into writing and the creative industries. She answered questions ranging from how she creates a character, to how she found moving from theatre production into screen writing. However, as for getting that much wished for big break into the industry, I’m sorry guys she didn’t give much away!

What are the alternatives?

Written by Features on . Posted in Features.

With the results of the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review now published, Sarah McCulloch considers potential alternatives to the impending spending cuts. From getting rid of Trident to clamping down on tax evasion, she found a few.

Sarah McCulloch

On Wednesday the 20th of October George Osborne announced £81bn in cuts to public spending. This includes a 40 per cent cut, that’s £2.9bn, in higher education funding. Although it is still unclear where exactly the axe will fall at our universities, previous experience tells us that we can be sure these cuts will lead to course closures, staff job losses and a poorer quality of education.

As a Students’ Union we will not stand for these cuts. During the summer, we agreed to make our priority taking a stand against cuts to higher education. Since term began, we have been raising awareness amongst students about the cuts by running stalls at the Welcome Week Fair and every day at lunch times in the student union building. We have also been doing lecture shout-outs and door knocking. On the morning of the Comprehensive Spending Review we held anti-cuts fairground games, encouraging students to play Hoop-liar, throwing hoops over the faces of Nick Clegg and Vince Cable.

Support

At the last General Meeting, the student body passed policy endorsing everything we have done so far and empowered us to work further on the campaign. On the 10th of November we are hoping to take 600 students down to London to demonstrate against the cuts to our education and the lifting of the cap on tuition fees. This event is being held in conjunction with the National Union of Students and the University and Colleges’ Union. Coach tickets are £5 from the box office in the student union building on Oxford Road, so why not join us?

Speaking to people about the campaign against higher education cuts generally gets a positive response; most students instinctively oppose the commodification and reduction in quality of their education. Every so often someone comes along asking, “But what is the alternative?” It’s a very fair question. How can we deal with the deficit without cutting public services?

Robin Hood?

The most immediate and effective option is to enforce taxation. Every year £70bn is lost through tax evasion and £25bn in tax avoidance by wealthy businesses and individuals. Due to cuts in staff £27.7bn in tax is uncollected by Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs every year. In September 2010, George Osborne intervened in an ongoing dispute between the HMRC and Vodafone, canceling Vodafone’s outstanding tax bill of £6bn. You read that correctly, £6bn. Andy Halford, Vodafone’s financial director, has been “advising” George Osborne on company tax.

That’s just enforcing the tax rules that we have already. Introducing a tax on financial speculation could also raise a great deal of money without unduly penalising financial speculators. Known as the ‘Robin Hood Tax’, a 0.05 per cent levy on risky investments could return almost £252bn globally a year.  Given that risky investments can make a return of up to 13%, this is hardly squeezing the rich.

Other alternatives include scrapping Trident, our nuclear deterrent. Yes, this is almost always mentioned by anti-government campaigners, but as we really aren’t going to be using a nuclear weapon any time soon, now or in the future, it’s not much of a deterrent. Scrapping Trident completely would save us £2bn a year (free education for everyone in the country costs only £3bn, remember).  We could also end the drug war, on which we spend £13bn a year prosecuting addicts and recreational users and imprisoning non-violent drug dealers.

Added together, these alternatives exceed the £89bn in cuts that George Osborne has announced that will “bring Britain back from the brink of bankruptcy”. These cuts are political choice, not inevitability. It’s important to remember that we are paying for a crisis we did not cause. The banking sector collapsing caused the crisis not the public sector. The coalition government talks about fairness, but why is it fair for the United States embassy to be exempted from £382 million in parking fines but we have to pay up to £7,000 a year for an inferior education?

The future

As a consequence of the reduction in public spending, the Comprehensive Spending Review looks set to create even further job losses. George Osborne himself estimates that there could be up to 490,000 public sector job losses.  What he hasn’t factored in is that because many businesses are dependant or heavily reliant on public sector contracts, dismantling the state will devastate the private sector as well, meaning nearly 700,000 private sector jobs could go.

This will create even more unemployment and an even heavier bill for taxpayers as hundreds of thousands of people land on Jobseekers’ Allowance. Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary has unsympathetically stated that people need to “get on the bus” and look for work. Duncan Smith and Osborne calculate that by reducing ‘welfare dependency’, the benefits scroungers they see everywhere will be forced to find work. However, for the tens of thousands of people who are disabled, sick, or just desperate to find work and unable to get it, the coming changes to the benefits systems simply mean more anxiety and uncertainty over how they will survive.

With businesses tightening their belts and the public sector being reduced by 19% over  the next four years, there simply aren’t half a million jobs out there to be had. Being in  education, students are currently insulated from this, but not once we graduate. Graduates are finding it hard enough to get a job after leaving university: with an extra half a million people with work experience also competing in the jobs market, the idea of putting yourself in £20,000 worth of debt with no guarantee of a job at the end of three years seems much less attractive.

The last Conservative-Liberal coalition government was in 1931. The government embarked on an austerity programme to deal with the deficit and promptly plunged the country into an economic crisis so deep that only the massive military expenditure and loans of World War II brought us out again – and the Prime Minister at the time, Ramsay MacDonald, lost his seat at the next election. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman warned: “The best guess is that Britain in 2011 will look like Britain in 1931, or the United States in 1937, or Japan in 1997. That is, premature fiscal austerity will lead to a renewed economic slump. As always, those who refuse to learn from the past are  doomed to repeat it.”

There is another alternative to this scary future. Instead of cutting public spending, we could increase it. We have plenty of work to be done that would create new jobs and encourage our ailing economy. We could invest in renewable energy and high-speed rail links. We could build new housing for the 1.8m families on council house waiting lists. We could repair all those dodgy roads that make it a nightmare to travel on the bus.

There’s so much public infrastructure that we could invest in which would provide a public service while employing people. Employment means people have money to spend, people with money to spend want services and goods, which are supplied by businesses who pay tax – and suddenly we have a balanced economy again.

Unfortunately, George Osborne has made a different choice and taken a risk with our economy and our future that history has shown does not pay off. Soon we are all going to feel it, as our GPs become even busier, as our buses and trains become more expensive, and as our universities shut down courses, lay off staff, and introduce charges for once-free services.