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Month: November 2014

Competition: WHP in association with Russian Standard Vodka presents Jamie XX & Jon Hopkins

On the 12th December WHP have a phenomenal line up gracing Store Street. Curated by Jamie XX and Jon Hopkins, the bill also features the likes of Modeselektor, Pangaea and Leon Vynehall.

Thanks to Russian Standard we have 1 pair of tickets to give away to the event. To enter simply email your full name to [email protected] with the subject header ‘Russian Standard WHP Competition’ by next Monday, 8th December.

Hard work? There’s just no knead

Another article, another bread recipe. Inspired by a blog favourite of mine, Budget Bytes, I prepared this unbelievably easy focaccia in time for a dinner party turned booze-up at a fellow food enthusiast’s apartment. The guests were impressed. I felt almost embarrassed to take compliments for something that was so simple to make, but not so embarrassed that I didn’t glowingly reply “it was nothing.” (It really was.)

Ingredients:

– 120g wholewheat bread flour

– 360g white bread flour

– 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast

– 1 1/2 teaspoons salt

– 480ml water

– 3 tablespoons olive oil (the better the quality, the better the bread)

– Sprinkling of herbs—salt & rosemary is a classic combination, or basil and garlic

Method:

Add all of the dry ingredients to a large bowl and stir. Add the water and stir gently with a spoon until the mixture is combined and in a sticky ball. Cover loosely with a tea towel and let sit overnight/about 14 hours.

Around 2 hours before needing the dough to be ready, prepare a tin with oiled greaseproof paper or foil and pour the dough onto the sheet. Stretch to the edges of the tin and let sit for another hour. Poke dimples in the dough and drizzle with extra olive oil, don’t worry about adding too much. Sprinkle with extra herbs and salt.

With the oven preheated to 200°C, place a sheet of foil over the mixture and bake for 20 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for a further 20 minutes, or until brown.

Wait until cooled to slice or enjoy hot.

If you’re worried about cooking times or leaving the dough for too long, you can always mix the dry ingredients before you go to bed and add the water when you get up in the morning. Minimum time and effort involved, and lovely risen dough for when you get home.

Prep time: Around 16 hours (the majority of which you will be sleeping for)
Hands-on time: 20 minutes
Oven time: 40 minutes

Recipe: Cheesy Hotpot

The grim weather at the moment necessitates a return to proper, hearty comfort food. Sometimes things like stews can be a real pain to cook though, especially when money is tight. Mince is such a good ingredient when you’re cooking on a budget; it is cheap and really adaptable. Sometimes the old classics get a bit boring though so I thought I would come up with a warming winter mince recipe that is a bit different.

This recipe is really simple although the homemade cheese sauce might prove tricky. You can obviously substitute this for something from a jar but white sauce is such a useful thing to learn how to make. You only need three cheap ingredients. The quantities here are just guidelines; really you just need enough butter so all the flour is incorporated but no more. The key is not to get frustrated and give up if you go wrong, just give it another go.

Cheesy Hotpot (Serves 2):

Ingredients:

– 125g of beef mince

– Half an onion

– 2 carrots

– One leek

– One beef stockpot

– 2 potatoes

– 10g of plain flour

– 10g of butter

– A cup of milk

– A couple of handfuls of cheese.

Method:

– Dice the onion and leek and add to a hot pan with a knob of butter. Once they have sweated down add the mince and brown. Add the carrots to the pan along with a cup of hot water and the stockpot. Leave to simmer on a low heat with the lid on, checking on it every now and again.

– Thinly slice the potatoes and parboil them for around 5 minutes.

– Melt the butter. Add the flour and mix until it forms a paste. Now add a little of the milk and whisk until it is all incorporated, add a little more and whisk again. Continue this process until all the milk is added. If it still looks a bit thick add some more. If it is lumpy don’t worry—just keep vigorously whisking it. If it tastes of flour just leave it on the hob until it boils, this will cook out the flour.

– Whisk half of the cheese into the sauce. Put your mince in a dish and top with the potatoes and the cheese sauce. Finally top with the rest of the cheese and cook under a medium grill for five to ten minutes.

Cost per head: £1.67

Washing up: A knife, a chopping board, 3 pans, a wooden spoon, a whisk, an oven dish, a plate and knife and fork.

Feature: Deliciously Ella

As the academic year progresses I tend to enter the waning months of culinary creativity. “This vegetable stock will make a fine replacement for a smorgasbord of finely chopped fresh vegetables.” “Who needs spaghetti bolognese when I can put tomato sauce on some noodles?” “Surely the cranberries in that muffin I bought at the petrol station counts as one of my five-a-day?” Naturally, my body begins to function like my five year-old laptop—grey in colour and wheezing loudly.

Fortunately for me, it was around this period in my nutritional health’s cycle that a beam of light shone upon me, mainly from my computer, as I discovered Deliciously Ella’s recipe blog. As her website explains, Ella Woodward’s culinary story began when she sought a change in diet from sugar-packed treats to natural, fresh food as a means to help her take control of a rare and debilitating illness. Over time, she gradually built up an enormous back-catalogue of recipes and ideas, which now branches out into lifestyle tips, blogs, an app, an Instagram page and a new book.

Seeking some nutrition changes myself, I retracted my hand from my crisp packet and set about finding a replacement for said snack. I came across Deliciously Ella’s recipe for Kale Chips, and was determined to try this leafy sensation for myself. Keep in mind, the only tools I had to hand were severely limited funds and a bus pass. I had feared that the quest to find kale would be much like trying to find your phone on silent, but there it was, sitting on the supermarket shelf.

Back home, the kale was prepped and in the oven in under two minutes, and within another ten, it was ready. The result? Absolutely delicious curls of crunchy goodness. The first bite tastes exactly the same as crisps before giving way to a whole new flavour. I was hooked. By the end of the evening I flopped onto my bed, breathing deeply like an over-fed lion, with tell-tale green smudges around my mouth. I had found my healthy, tasty replacement for fatty pieces of potato shrapnel.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I began to incorporate more of Deliciously Ella’s tips and ideas into my food, and I was shocked to see the difference; I woke early. I voluntarily did exercise. I was alert. I finally understood what my mother had always talked about—steering away from (even supposedly healthy) pre-packaged food had un-tapped me from the Matrix and pushed me into kale-fuelled action! An obvious conclusion of course, but almost every student can be forgiven for letting standards slip a little.

So far for me personally, my only limitations have been that a few ingredients and equipment don’t quite fall within my student budget, however these are often easy to swap for cheaper alternatives, and I have so far not encountered any troubles in using an average-priced blender. So for anyone feeling a little sluggish, using the desk as a pillow, or skipping breakfast: try a more natural, less plastic-coated option. Even two days was enough to feel the benefits. So thank you, Ella Woodward. The experience truly has been delicious.

You can find Deliciously Ella’s blog at www.deliciouslyella.com, or follow her Instagram @deliciouslyella.

When you go down to the woods today, you’re in for an axe wound to the face

I’m sitting in an aeroplane, my son Jimmy by my side. It’s oddly quiet at the moment but I don’t make much of it—the passengers are probably asleep. In a few blurred moments we hit some turbulence, and we start going down. My PC poorly renders our descent until I black out. I wake to a very nude mutant chap drooling over my mangled body. We’re in the wrecked plane and Jimmy is being dragged away. Inconveniently I pass out again.

The welcome to The Forest is short, brutal and a little bit harrowing. You are the sole human survivor of a plane crash on an island inhabited by tribes of mutant cannibals. You simply want to stay alive. All other ambitions have been obliterated—your thoughts must turn to the island’s resources and the decision to either confront or hide from the indigenous predators.

The Forest is Minecraft meets Amnesia: The Dark Decent. In its sandbox world, the player can build a home anywhere on the map using wood from felled trees, and a crafting feature is available, allowing players to produce life-saving tools by combining resources scattered throughout the forest. Being a horror game, all of your efforts invariably lead to a pant-shitting moment, thanks in part to the natives’ fantastic AI. Motivations between tribes differ depending on their religious leanings, changing the way they interact with you upon every new encounter. Some will be cautious of you, and run off to gather support. Others will rush fearlessly and twat you in the face with their fists, axes or burning torches. Some natives will even climb and jump between trees, and attack you as a group using coordinated tactics. In my time with the game, I genuinely felt like I was being hunted.

The island itself is a beautiful place teeming with dynamically animated fauna and flora, making the forests feel alive and densely populated. Combat, meanwhile, is weighty and visceral, and manages to reflect the realism of the environment without compromising on speed or chaos.

The Forest is currently available for players to purchase through Steam’s Early Access service. For those not in the know, you can now buy access to incomplete games and reap the associated benefits. Early Access titles are cheaper, they can be played earlier, and you can enjoy taking part in the projects as they evolve. Developers receive funding from sales to complete their games, allowing indie studios in particular to take ambitious gambles. The gamers operate as a wide-scale bug testing team by reporting any glitches or imbalances they find, but they can also submit original content-related ideas that might make it into the final release.

Having been on the market for just over half a year, the game has seen nine major updates since launch, the most recent of which introduces two-player co-op, a feature much lacking in the original release. Whilst the isolation of single-player lends itself more readily to horror, having a friend there to orientate you in the wilderness is extremely gratifying. As a lone player I often lacked the drive to finalise any of my projects because the end-game is conspicuously absent at the moment, but this issue will be resolved with subsequent updates. With a second player, however, the quest for survival feels like an adventure with a purpose.

Aside from the entertainingly buggy state of the co-op, which provoked my fellow survivor into moon-walking across the island like a crack-addled Michael Jackson, there is plenty of fun to be had here. Spelunking the depths of the island’s native-infested caverns with eighties pop blaring through your tape players (yes, they are in-game items) is one of many stand-out highlights.

Anybody setting foot in The Forest should expect an adrenaline-pumping, fast-paced and genuinely scary game. They should also prepare themselves for the occasionally frustrating, potentially session-ending bug, something that should be forgiven during its alpha phase. If you like the idea of participating in a game’s developmental process, and if you have the patience to see past the rough edges, you might as well splash on your war paint and enter The Forest now.

Morbid Rochdale torturer found guilty

Barry Edwards, 44, of Whitehall Street was found guilty of the nine-hour torture of his girlfriend at their home in Rochdale in May 2013.

The Minshull Street Crown Court heard how neighbours had alerted the police of the abuse after hearing loud banging noises and Edwards shouting he would “break her fucking spine,” before she responded, “don’t Baz, please don’t, I don’t want to die.”

Paul Hodgkinson, prosecuting, said that when officers arrived on the 29th of May 2013, they discovered blood-stained walls and found the victim unable to walk because her legs had been beaten so severely.

The victim was left with substantial injuries due to the horrific abuse she was subjected to. The court heard that Edwards punched the woman in the face, hit her repeatedly with a baseball bat, burned her hair and slashed her face and body with a razor blade. He also poured boiling water on her and kicked her down stairs.

During her nine-hour ordeal, Edwards also made her face the bedroom wall with a piece of card between the wall and her nose, said police. He said that if the card dropped to the floor or her hands dropped below her head, he would hit her, which happened when she tired and lowered her hands.

Police described the 25-year-old victim’s ordeal as “truly horrific,” and believe the person who reported hearing her shouts saved her life. She suffered a fractured rib, fractured finger, punctured lung as well as lacerations to her face and body and severely bruised legs.

Detective Constable Russ Clarke, from Greater Manchester Police, said: “This is one of the most horrendous incidents of domestic abuse I have ever dealt with, leaving the 25-year-old woman with terrible lifelong injuries.

“The attack was not only violent but degrading to the woman. He continuously made demands, instructing her to do things that made him feel powerful and simultaneously frightened her.

“He knew she would not be able to carry out what he asked and took pleasure from torturing her.”

A real-world Dystopia

As the most watched nation in the world—the one with the highest ratio of cameras to people, British streets are lined with CCTV cameras. In fact, our city centre in Manchester has around 51600. In comparison, London has about 4.9 million in total—at a total cost of half a billion pounds. One cannot deny the unsettling feeling that the UK is becoming more similar to a totalitarian dystopia.

This feeling, and reality, as a matter of fact, of being watched is often associated with the term Big Brother. Most students are aware that the term was first coined in George Orwell’s 1984, yet many still are not aware of the dystopian novel, which takes place during a time when people’s actions, feelings, words, and more were controlled by the government—or Big Brother.

1984 brings the reader into a terrifying alternative future Britain—set in London—where cameras are placed in the homes of citizens to watch their every move. For example, the protagonist, Winston Smith, hides from the cameras in a small corner of his house to be able to write down his thoughts and experiences. Along with these cameras and constant surveillance came restrictions on thoughts and feelings.

The language used in Orwell’s masterpiece was called Newspeak. It was a language composed in a way that rid it of words of any emotional attachment, leaving some thoughts unthinkable because they simply could not be put into words.

Moreover, the idea of doublethink was also introduced. As defined in the novel, doublethink is when one holds two contradictory ideas in their head and believing them both simultaneously—like telling a lie but believing it completely at the exact same time.

While at first these ideas seem completely radical to Orwell’s imagined society, the ideas were all rooted in the fact that the government watched the citizen’s each and every move. This abundance of surveillance, or more specifically, the fear of getting caught, is what fed the concepts of groupthink and Newspeak. Bit by bit, being watched evolved from a security measure to being a fertile ground on which the government created a terrified and strictly controlled society.

Of course, one’s natural train of thought would lead them to wonder if these concepts are starting to appear in our modern world. Undoubtedly, and by its nature, mass communication has been a great tool in spreading certain ways of thinking—to prefer a product in an advertisement, to hate the antagonist in a movie, and so on.

This is often done using certain words or phrases that slowly infuse into our unconsciousness. Realistically, introducing new ideas must be very subtle. For instance, Sainsbury’s recent Christmas ad seems to embody a sentiment that describes the true meaning of the holidays. Yet, upon closer inspection, that the advertisement beautifies one of the most terrible events that mankind has ever witnessed, The Great War.

The thought is coated with an atmosphere of joy and happiness, and thus effectively delivers a message: the gruesome loss of millions of lives of young men was, sometimes, a rather joyful endeavour.

This is only one of many examples of how successful the media can be at delivering subtle message to unsuspecting watchers; watchers that may morally have one view on an event, but yet somehow subconsciously also hold a completely opposing one—our media’s depictions of race, lower classes or the poor are poignant examples.

More importantly, it all started with surveillance, and the issue is escalating to create our very own version of doublethink.

Another problem of surveillance that has been highlighted in dystopian fiction is that it leads to a large dependency on technology. As mentioned above, about half a billion pounds have been spent on cameras in the UK. That same amount of money could have been used to employ an entire police force in a town. Instead, the money is put into technology rather than in human ability, furthering the idea of technology as superior to human talents and abilities.

In the movie GATTACA, we are introduced to a world where parents can control their children’s genes in order to create the perfect child. In this setting, the characters’ DNA are tested on a daily basis not only to confirm their identity, but also to see if they qualify for doing different things. Again, this sounds extreme but is actually quite realistic.

With growth in stem cell research, mankind is hurdling faster onto possibilities of enhancing the normal human of today. For example, there is an increasing reliance on genetic modification in agriculture to yield more meat.

Slowly, but surely, we are relying more and more on technology than on nature. While of course this comes with great advances in medicine or science and with a chance at fighting famine, there is an alternative side of the coin; the combination of surveillance and human control on genetics leaves a group of people marginally stronger and more powerful than the rest. As often said, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely—leaving this power in the hands of mere humans may just turn our modern world into a not-so-fictitious dystopia.

Many may argue that CCTV cameras help prevent crime in a way that no policeman ever could, or that they have saved many lives. Undoubtedly, they must have benefits, but society must determine whether or not these benefits outweigh the possibility of the possibility of an Orwellian Big Brother state.

With the spread of dependency on mass communication, it is definitely easier to spread a message or an idea. Moreover, this gives great power to certain people, who may or may not use it in our best interest. Slowly, technology is shaping a new world—and who knows what it holds.

What You Didn’t Know About Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol is considered the leading figure in the visual art movement pop art. His work was flourishing by the 1960s and he became one of the most renowned yet controversial artists of the twentieth century. His artwork has sold for a record of $150 million, making his work some of the most expensive paintings ever sold. But who was this man behind the colourful illustrative canvas? Here are The Mancunion’s top 10 things that you didn’t know about Andy Warhol.

1. He was born on 6th August 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and named Andrew Warhola Jr. His parents were Slovakian immigrants who moved to America just before Warhol’s birth.

2. Andy created at least 60 movies. His first was a 6-hour long masterpiece of his friend sleeping. He entitled it ‘Sleep’. His other movie titles include ‘Kiss’, ‘Blowjob’, ‘Eat’, ‘Shoulder’, ‘Couch’, ‘Face’, ‘Kitchen’, ‘Horse’, ‘Suicide’, ‘Drink’, ‘Closet’, ‘Sunset’ and ‘Bitch’.

3. He was the producer of the first record album by American rock group The Velvet Underground and painted the cover of their first album.

4. His High School excluded him from the art club because he was better than the other members.

5. Andy almost died when he was shot three times in the chest by Valerie Solanis at his studio. Solanis was an ardent feminist and one of many who deemed Warhol as abusive and controlling. She thought that he deserved to die. Warhol was at one point pronounced dead, but was revived and slowly recovered. Valerie was a founder of a club called SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) and she was the only member of the group. She was arrested the day after the assault.

6. The first Batman movie ever made, Batman Dracula, was directed and produced by Andy Warhol.

7. Warhol’s fashion sense was rather peculiar; he wore silver wigs and eventually dyed his hair silver. After having been told he had lazy eyes, he wore opaque glasses that had a tiny pinhole for him to see through.

8. Andy Warhol’s ‘wife’ was a portable tape recorder. He carried it around so much, capturing all his conversations, that he began to refer to it as his ‘wife’.

9. Aside from his art, Warhol also started a magazine, opened a nightclub and created two TV shows.

10. Hospital staff overloaded Warhol with fluids after routine gallbladder surgery and he subsequently died of a heart attack aged 58.

Turner Prize 2014 Artists: Tris Vonna-Michell

Established in 1984, the Turner Prize is awarded each year to a contemporary artist under 50, living, working or born in Britain, who is judged to have put on the best exhibition of the last 12 months. Previous winners include Gilbert George, Antony Gormley, Grayson Perry, Jeremy Deller and Damien Hirst. This year’s shortlist showcases artists whose work spans film (Duncan Campbell), print (Ciara Phillips), video (James Richards) and live performance (Tris Vonna-Michell).

Born in 1982, Tris Vonna-Michell is a British artist who performs narratives, and layers them to construct installations. He uses an array of media to project these installations including photographs and mementos. Accompanied by a ‘visual script’ of slide projections, his works are characterised by fragments of information, detours and dead ends.

Vonna Michell splits his time between Southend, UK and Stockholm, Sweden after he graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 2005. His work has been exhibited all over Europe and he was nominated for this year’s Turner Prize for his solo exhibition Postscript (Berlin) at Jan Mot, Brussels. The aim of this exhibition was to reconstruct a family narrative while keeping a close distance from history.

In an interview with the magazine, Art in America, Vonna Michell describes Postscript as “more about reconciling and leaving the past hahn/huhn narratives, dissolving certain works and motifs, memory failing, works running their course, works enveloping each other and, fundamentally, images continuously impeding and reinventing speech and memory.”

This unique and surprising artist to be nominated for the Turner Prize puts a dark horse amongst the other nominees. With days left before the winner is announced, the competition is truly warming up.

Should we accept a Surveillance State?

Yes

Lauren Wills

Combating terrorism is all about striking a balance between national security and civil liberties. Weighing up these two concepts proves problematic in issues such as mass surveillance; we don’t want to be controlled by the state, yet we don’t want leave ourselves vulnerable to attacks.

However, in terms of surveillance, I completely support it. Whilst I openly admit that the threat of terrorism is exaggerated by security advocates—often to maintain their control to survey as they please, those taking the opposite perspective also dramatise how violated they feel by security measures without considering the detrimental effects of potential terrorist attacks.

The UK’s counter-terrorism strategy, CONTEST, is based on four areas of work: pursue, prevent, protect and prepare. Mass surveillance solidifies and makes practical the strands of CONTEST, both deterring terrorist activity and protecting the state.

Because most individuals don’t really believe that terrorist activity is imminent and a real threat to them, it’s natural then, to go down the arguably selfish road of: “What does surveillance mean for me and my life?” and “I don’t want to be watched 24/7.”

It’s the type of hyperbolic thinking that George Orwell discuses in 1984. Instead of entertaining this ideology, I believe in thinking realistically about the security that’s needed to protect the United Kingdom.

Despite it being difficult sometimes to trust the government and their motives, real-life attacks are proof enough to enhance state security measures. The total financial cost of the 7/7 bombings for the terrorists in 2005 was only eight thousand pounds—with this measly amount they tricked the British Security Services and took 52 lives.

This shows how relatively easy it is for those with an agenda to carry out an attack which could target innocent people. Surveillance of bank transfers could expose terrorist financing to prevent such acts happening again.

Knowing that there could have been just a small chance of stopping the 7/7 attacks from taking place by coupling intelligence with extensive surveillance, surely we should implement protection measures for the future so nothing similar can take place.

Of course, I do not doubt that there are implications of the surveillance state on individual liberty; I just don’t think it’s as atrocious as people make out. It’s merely an inconvenience to be monitored, and in my opinion it’s quite egotistical to suggest that the government want to know about the intimate details of your private life.

They’re only interested in national security and preventing terrorism—not in your inappropriate messages or your spending habits. Neither do they have a desire to constantly watch you through your webcam.

It’s also important to consider the alternative measures to the surveillance state. There are counter-terrorism strategies to gain intelligence which do so in the most degrading, counterproductive and ineffective ways in the name of security.

An extreme example of the ways in which some states, potentially our own gain—the information they desire to prevent imminent terrorist attacks is through enhanced interrogation, which by the way is a nicer phrase for torture. When you compare innocent civilians being monitored to innocent civilians being falsely subject to water-boarding, hooding, beating, oxygen deprivation and sleep deprivation amongst many other method this small inconvenience to our lifestyles pales into insignificance.

Furthermore, strategies such as Stop and Search are alternatives to surveillance, which in the past were undertaken with so much racial bias that the legislature had to narrow the scope in which the police could stop citizens.

Having a system in which everyone is monitored prevents openly alienating people because of their race, colour or social class. Having the mentality of all being in this together is surely more effective than targeting and alienating specific racial groups.

It’s also important to note that as technology improves and advances the risk of hacking and cyber-terrorism increases. Cyberspace is all about exchanging knowledge locally, nationally and globally.

We rarely think about the opportunity this creates for terrorist organisations, but fairly recent instances in Iran and Syria highlight the detrimental effects of hacking. Being monitored on the internet is surely a small price to pay when one considers the worst case scenario of a terrorist organisation gaining access to individual, corporate, banking, defence, security or medical data systems.

The battlefield of terrorism is changing. The Internet has many benefits but the potential of causing more damage by a keystroke than a bomb is increasing daily, which shows the increasing need for enhanced security measures.

The surveillance state really is the lesser of two evils. This is not Big Brother; it’s not personal and it’s not for entertainment. It’s about living in safety and ensuring the UK has an effective counter-terrorism strategy.

 

No

Isaac Atwal

We now live in a surveillance state; everyone has been swept up into the culture of fear and surveillance that envelopes our world and we have let it happen without much of fuss. Even after Edward Snowden’s revelations and ensuing chaos not much has changed.

Save for a few public questionings of selected officials, most of the world and the public has settled back into their blind slumber with the frustrated minority trying desperately, but pointlessly, to change things.

The discourse on terrorism and security has been skewed in favour of massive data collection by our intelligence agencies and has been legitimised by constant announcements of the ‘continued threat’ of terrorism.

Surveillance is needed for certain investigations into terrorism, that is undeniable, but we are reaching a point where this concern is being used to justify ever increasingly intrusive and universal methods of surveillance that encompass an ever rising number of people.

Our security services already have vast access to our Internet usage. UK telecommunications companies have already been shown, through Snowden’s revelations, to be providing GCHQ with access to the huge undersea cables that carry all internet traffic in and out of the UK. A subsidiary of Vodafone, Cable & Wireless was assigned a full time GCHQ employee, paid millions of pounds for their co-operation and even given a codename for secret documents.

This at present includes metadata, non-content specific data such as internet searches and sites visited. According to Eric King, the deputy director of Privacy International: “Any internet search or website you’ve visited over the past two years could be stored in GCHQ’s database and analysed at will, all without a warrant.” This should concern anyone with a slight interest in his or her basic rights as a human being, that is, the right not is to be spied on by our own government.

What should be more concerning to us than the vast collection of our data without a warrant is the attitude of those that survey when they are challenged and forced to explain their methods. In a court case brought against GCHQ last year by a consortium of privacy groups including Liberty, Amnesty International and others government lawyers maintained that the “only way” to intercept Internet communications they need is to first intercept a large amount and then sift through them.

They have told civil liberties groups that they “must accept” some form of interception that “permits substantially more communications to be intercepted, including internal communications, than are actually being sought.”

Not only is this a blatant admission that the government sees no problems with obtaining masses of data that is of no relevance to them, it also shows their flagrant disregard for the privacy of millions of citizens of this country.

Using the shield of national security to legitimise their intrusion into our lives enables the security services to continue to use these methods and has the potential to instantly label anybody who disagrees of not caring about national security.

This has severe implications for the future, at present; we may be able to live with these intrusions, but hypothetically the situation could change in about in five or ten years with a conveniently larger and more dangerous terrorist threat. The key question is: Will more powers be sought, or will more intrusions into our privacy just be undertaken without a regard for the law?

Here is where the real problem for the future lies with our surveillance state. Our ever organised and level-headed Home Secretary Theresa May was singing the praises of the new Counter Terrorism and Security Bill this week that included a new raft of powers.

Some of these seem sensible, such as the power to seize and cancel passports of those going to commit terrorist acts abroad and those seeking to return to the UK afterwards. However, it is how May would like to build on this is even more worrying, saying these measures aren’t enough and reiterating the need for the scrapped Snooper’s Charter, which would have forced everyone’s online activity, including conversations, social media activity, calls and texts for 12 months.

This is the danger we face if we swallow the government’s narrative on the terrorist threat and measures needed to eliminate it. Anti-terror legislation of the past can be viewed as one huge snowball that accumulates more intrusive powers every time it is redrafted.

If we continue down this track of accepting these new powers then the security services will only want more, and continue until they can track and place every person in Britain at any time, regardless of their innocence or guilt. Britain is far from, and unlikely to become, a totalitarian state but every time surveillance is stepped up and is accepted, even grudgingly by the public, it paves the way for more of our rights to be eroded the next time.

Off-campus but on the record

You might remember earlier this year that changes to the University of Manchester’s policy regarding off-campus behaviour caused outrage. Perhaps you, like most, were unengaged, allowing the massive infringement on the rights of the universities students to slip by unnoticed.

Essentially the university saw fit to amend its Student Code of Conduct, in what those aware of the reform labelled a ‘Big Brother’ reform. The amendment to policy made the behaviour of students off-campus the interest of those responsible to infringing discipline on campus.

Put in layman’s terms, get in trouble off campus and you could be swiftly removed from the university and politely taken off-campus where you can’t cause the university embarrassment.

This could be seen as a good move on behalf of the university, the logic being an extension of the surveillance state resulting in a decrease in antisocial behaviour. What it evidences to me, however, is a wholly different, more authoritarian form of imposing the university’s standards and morality on all those who pass through its gates, whether you are on their turf or not.

Societally, it is my responsibility not to throw up through my neighbour’s letterbox while screaming swearwords through their open windows. I’m aware people don’t like that, so I don’t do it. The university suggesting that I need some sort of threat hovering over my head not to do so implies not to me that they have social responsibility but that they don’t have a huge amount of faith in me.

I personally feel that this form of surveillance of my off-campus behaviour serves to pander to a suppression of the minority who don’t act in compliance with social expectation, while undermining the majority who do.

“If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear,” I hear naysayers of my stance cry. True. Having said that, there is (I assure you) nothing untoward about my gmail inbox. I don’t, however, want Google, Facebook or the National Security Agency scrutinising my emails ‘just in case’ I’m an incredibly well-disguised Russian spy.

Similarly, there is nothing unusual about my off-campus behaviour but I don’t want the guillotine of university expulsion hanging heavy above me just in case.

The reform has immediately been called into action with revelations this year that the student residents of Fallowfield are the “worst ever.” Loud and raucous student parties have caused disgruntled residents to call for meetings with university representatives in order to tame their behaviour.

This highlights a whole host of issues, such as students being priced out in established venues in the city and also that these reports serve to vilify the majority of student residents who cause no such problems. The main one that jumps out to me though is that students are treated like children.

It is not the university’s position to cave in to local residents and offer disciplinary procedures against students in order to appease the pressure. If students are loud, it is a social not educational issue. Call the police by all means, but when these minorities of students are treated as if they are children in a school it’s difficult to complain when they respond petulantly.

Alternatively, if the university plans to act as a city wide police presence, enforcing the wishes of non-university residents, then I have an issue to raise on behalf of students.

In October the Manchester Evening News published an article entitled ‘We Don’t Feel Safe’. It was a quote by a University of Manchester student. It voiced a concern held by many of Fallowfield’s student population who, following consistent failure to protect our safety, no longer feel safe in their area.

If the university plans to make highly publicised efforts to appease residents, then I can’t help but feel similar effort should be made to fulfil the duty it has to keep its students safe.

While I’m not by any means condoning student’s behaviour, or suggesting that it is the complete responsibility of the university to ensure safety, turn the surveillance light upon student’s protection and it makes for uncomfortable viewing.

There have been thirty reported rape cases between August and September of this year, one of which took place when a student was abducted from the steps of the Students’ Union following Pangaea.

Three students were involved in an unprovoked attack near Revolution in Fallowfield which left one in hospital, his condition described as serious.

The surveillance is there, it is present, watching our moves, threatening our actions with expulsion, prompting complaints from local residents.

The surveillance however serves to infringe upon our rights are citizens of Manchester. We live with a constant threat hanging above us, one which we have power to contain, but which shouldn’t exist.

All the while, however, we live in danger. ‘We don’t feel safe’, let down by the same institutions who serves to threaten us with their surveillance of our actions.

We may be off-campus, but what we do is on record. The problem, however, is that the surveillance logging what we do is focused in one spot on the landscape while a far greater evil continues to operate in its blind spot.

Review: Gelish nail polish

Student budgets don’t often leave room for luxuries such as manicures. When you’re scrimping just to afford Sainsbury’s Basics wine, nails can take a back seat. But I think after all that time slaving in the various, but all equally depressing, computer clusters on campus, you need a little luxury. Not only will onlookers be envious of your computer finding abilities (seriously, it’s hard out there) but they will be positively green when they spot your flawlessly manicured hands. But of course, if you’re going to blow a significant part of a week’s budget on nails you had better make sure it’s worth the dollar. I recently forayed into the trend that is gel nail polish with a Gelish manicure and am now ruined for all other nail polishes. I was lucky enough to have my nails done by Charli Jepson, who has worked for Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen (I know) so you won’t surprised that I’m head over heels with the finished result.

Photo: Aimée Grant Cumberbatch

It’s pretty simple: once applied, the polish is cured in a futuristic LED lamp for 30 seconds, or it takes two minutes in traditional UV lamps if you’re using it at home. The best part of this product is that it lasts for up to three whole weeks! I can vouch for the fact that, after two weeks, my nails still look major. And I mean that. There are salons around Manchester that use Gelish Nail Polish such as Bella Nails on Oxford Street but you can order the polishes online if you’re a fan of the DIY style of pampering.

The only downside is that taking off gel nail polish has to be done properly or else your nails will be damaged; you either have to buy the Soak-Off polish remover or find a salon to do it for you. If you’re desperate you can use acetone but please do so with care!

So while Gelish manicures might do nothing for my quest for a computer in the Learning Commons they definitely work wonders for my stress levels, which is a miracle in itself.

Disability support at University comes under scrutiny

Government plans to “modernise” the Disabled Students Allowances (DSA) were set to come into force for the next academic year 2015/16. However after intense lobbying from the NUS and other campaign groups, the decision was made last week to postpone it until 2016/17.

According to a poll of over 500 disabled students carried out by disability specialists Randstad Student Support, 93 percent of students believe they would be unable to reach their full academic potential without support from DSA.

David Willetts proposed that “HEIs are expected to consider how they deliver information to students and whether strategies can be put in place to reduce the need for support workers and encourage greater independence and autonomy for their students.”

However in response to these plans Randstad concluded that, “universities alone cannot fill the gap.”

Victoria Short, managing director of Randstad Student and Worker Support commented that: “Equality of opportunity is why schemes like DSA exist… Shifting responsibility to universities is much more significant than it sounds. If disabled students must judge universities not by their teaching reputation, but on the likelihood of receiving the necessary support to study, then disabled students face a fundamentally different choice to others.”

Of those surveyed only four per cent believe their university has the resources to provide the same level of support without central government funded DSAs.

In light of this, The Mancunion spoke with a second year English Literature student who feels that: “Dealing with the Disability Support Office (DSO) has proved difficult for me, even though they seem to be a group of willing and helpful people.

“The first assessment meetings are available only on a drop-in basis, but each time I dropped in I was told they were either too busy to see me that day, or that I would face a one- to two-hour wait.

“After two weeks I managed to see someone and was assessed, however I was then informed that all subsequent support meetings were booked up until after Christmas and I would be placed on a waiting list until the New Year.

“While more immediate support is available, these meetings are for a full support plan, such as library and exam support, and support within your department. These measures will not be able to be put in place until Semester Two for me, and for others who have visited the DSO in the past few weeks (I was assessed in Week Five of this term).

“Not only is this problematic for many students, but the long waiting times I feel would cause some to give up, especially if they face mental health issues such as depression.

“A member of staff at the Office of the President of the University informed me that my student’s tuition fees contribute to services at the university that form part of the student experience; however I do not feel that my fees are being best used to aid my experience of University since I will have to wait all this time for a support meeting.

“Yet this is not the only issue—the counselling system within the university also has a long waiting time, and a financial assessment from the DSA generally takes six weeks to come through, and until this money arrives the University cannot put certain measures in place.

“Clearly, the whole system is struggling and needs to be readdressed.”

Rosie Dammers, Wellbeing Officer, said of this issue: “There has been a particularly long waiting list this term because the DSO has experienced staff vacancies, long term sicknesses and maternity leave periods.

“However, this is part of a wider issue which concerns government cuts to higher education which has led to a severe lack of funding available within universities for student support services such as the DSO.

“Disabled students are already discriminated against in higher education and the cuts to the DSA will only make it worse. The University has a responsibility to break down the barriers, and not let the governments’ right-wing discriminative agenda make it harder for disabled students to come to university.

“The university has committed to making up the funding for 2015/16, but no further than that. We need to be campaigning to ensure the university allocates adequate funding to the DSO and does not allow government cuts to effect disabled students on our campus.

“We also need to stand in solidarity with disabled students across the UK, whose university may not be able to afford to plug the gaps, and make the government reverse its plans.

“We have a disabled students campaign group who would welcome new members and support—if you would like to join the campaign please get in touch.”

University accommodation too expensive for students

For the last 10 years, the University of Manchester’s accommodation fees have been steadily rising. University accommodation fees are supposed to be rising at the same rate as inflation or Consumer Prices Index (CPI) and the rest of the housing sector. In mid-2004, University accommodation fees and the maintenance loan were at the same rate as inflation.

However, graphs obtained by The Mancunion show that the University accommodation is becoming less affordable for many students.

Ten years ago inflation was at 1.3 per cent (sources range from 1.3 per cent to 1.34 per cent) and at the time of publication inflation in the British economy was at 1.5 per cent. Nonetheless, University accommodation fees have increased as much as 22 per cent in comparison to inflation over the past 10 years. University accommodation is therefore becoming an unaffordable option for many students.

The Students’ Union Community Officer Ellen McLaughlin has expressed concerns as to how these new fees will affect members of the student body especially those from less privileged backgrounds.

Fears are rising within the Students’ Union that the new fees will put even more pressure onto students as living costs are projected to increase. Some question whether it could further discourage prospective students from applying to the University of Manchester due to the combination of higher accommodation fees, living costs and tuition fees.

The exact amount University accommodation fees will raise by has not been announced, though it is believed that the changes will come into effect after the redevelopment of Owens Park scheduled for next year.

Global week an eye-opening success

Global Week 2014 came to an end last Saturday. Throughout the week, University of Manchester students were given a unique opportunity to experience cultural diversity and raise international awareness. Among a series of activities, Global Night, held on November 20th, was the biggest and most impressive, attracting over 100 students.

For the Global night event, the 1st floor of the Students’ Union was converted into an airport departure hall for Global Night’s ‘One World Airlines’, coming equipped with staff dressed up as airline stewardesses, and drinks, cakes and chocolate fountains carefully laid out for the boarding students.

From here the Global Night event proceeded with a fashion show, with students from India, East Africa, Japan, China, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan and Mauritius modeling their traditional costumes. One of the East African models said that she was slightly apprehensive whilst waiting backstage, but when her turn came and she saw the audience smile at her, the anxiety completely faded. Speaking on the night she said: “I’m so glad that I can cheer them up and make them swing with me!”

After the fashion show, the One World Airline eventually ‘took off’ with a cultural talent show. With the audiences being shown dances, singing and band performances from different cultural backgrounds from around the world.

The eye-catching programs, including belly dancing, Chinese folk dancing, Jamaican Reggae, saxophone performance and guitar playing, which won waves of cheers and applause from the enthralled audience.

Tessy Maritim, Diversity Officer of Student Union Executive Team, hoped to provide a platform for students to showcase and celebrate their culture and background by organizing Global Week, and it seems that the effort was successful. Looi Ishiko, speaking about the event said, “I have made new friends through Global Night. This event has widened my horizons and built my understanding of other cultures.” Global Week 2014, and especially Global Night, has certainly succeeded in leaving a remarkable impression on the University of Manchester Students’ Union calendar.

A Union of apathy and failure

The social democratic services that served our parents and grandparents so well are gradually eroding, with the imperative of profit placed over the needs of people. Our climate hangs in the balance as greenhouse gasses emissions near the point of no return.

Today’s student will leave university with on average over £40000 of debt. Right now the average Arts student is paying £70 – £100 per contact hour—something to think about next time your lecture starts 10 minutes late.

Our own lecturers are facing cuts in pay, whilst the University does backdoor deals to outsource labour at below living wage standards.

If you want to live in London after all this, but you don’t have old money—good luck spending the rest of your life paying off a £400000 mortgage on some crummy one bedroom flat in a council estate.

Make no mistake, as a student body and more broadly as a generation we have genuine political grievances. We are facing systemic pressures on our quality of life and while it may seem all fun and drinking games now, you are looking down the barrel of a life of debt; we are the first generation since 1946 set to be poorer than our parents.

Student activism used to be a force in this world. From the Vietnam War and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament to South Africa’s Apartheid Regime, the student voice was heard.

Traditionally, the University of Manchester had been a hotbed for such radicalism but today, walking around campus, you’ll be hard-pressed to find any sign of political activism. Save for a smattering Socialist Workers Party leaflets, which call for some vague and half-imagined utopian revolution and the occasional cake stall for malnourished children in Africa or India, the public space is apolitical.

Now for the vast majority of us, our activism, our philanthropy and our ability to empathise only extends so far as our own interests. We don’t vote, rightly so according to Russell Brand—the apparent spokesperson for our disillusioned generation.

We are the onesie-wearing, vodka-swilling, MacBook-wielding, selfie-taking, apathetic generation of students. If we’re angry, you’ll hear about it, through an irate self-justified Facebook status or a warrior hashtag. Or maybe, just maybe, we’ll sign an e-petition. The problem isn’t ours, but we’ll pass it along to you.

Volunteer work is done overwhelmingly on advice to nourish our CVs and personal statements. You might see a picture of some of the more affluent among us digging a well in Kenya—a mild case of self-congratulating bohemianism before a sedentary and functionary life in a pinstripe suit with a white picket fence.

We stink of a generation who don’t know how to fight for ourselves.

The institutions that used to unite us are shrivelled, impotent to tackle our general political apathy, and are broadly complicit in the comprehensive privatisation of university life happening around us.

The University of Manchester Students’ Union, originally designed with the intention of representing and protecting our interests, is now loaned out to PR events for giant multi-national corporations such as Samsung or Lloyds TSB.

I’m sure Steve Biko, the legendary anti-Apartheid trade union activist, would be delighted to know that tax-dodging Starbucks was making a tidy profit under his name in Biko’s Café. In union elections last year, we got a dismal 7.5 per cent of students to vote online. Surely this speaks volumes of how much we as a student population value the institution.

However, if we look further to the National Union of Students, a key medium of student protest, then the reality gets ever more disconcerting.

An NUS Extra card now provides you with a healthy 10 per cent discount off all your favourite third world labour-intensive clothing from ASOS. It’ll get you another 10 per cent off orders from Amazon UK—no-one seems to have told the NUS that if Amazon paid its tax fairly, it would go a long way towards reducing our tuition fees from £9000 each year.

One survey conducted of almost 5500 students showed that 35 per cent don’t know what the NUS did, with only 7 per cent of students saying they thought the NUS was doing a good job.

It is easy to understand the sentiment behind these figures.

You can’t place much faith in an organisation that last month couldn’t even express solidarity with the Kurds (who are by and large Muslims) by condemning IS, for fears of islamophobia.

In the words of Amol Rajan, editor of The Independent, we the young “are being continually shafted.” Let’s be frank: as a student body, we need to get our act together.

Academic Cold War

The Marking Boycott has raised many opinions and sentiments and it would be an understatement to say that not all of them have been exactly positive. For the time being, however, I am not concerned about the motives of the strike as today I would like to discuss the long-term implications.

It is an interesting thing with trade unions—they cannot directly attack the university employers. The marking boycott provides a prime example of this. The UCU cannot directly get ‘revenge’ on those responsible for limiting their pensions. Therefore, they have had to express their disgust through other means, and those other means have ultimately come in the form of the boycott of giving back assessed work. While technically filling out their contractual obligation, they are able to still force their opponents into a stalemate.

But here lies the issue: by involving a third party in the process, they both implicate a sector of society that has no involvement in the argument and fail to directly inconvenience those at whom the boycott is actually aimed. Mainly because they can’t—there’s nothing the UCU can realistically boycott or strike about directly. Therefore, they have to go about it via indirect means.

If we look at examples of other strikes, such as the famous example of the coal miners striking against Heath’s Government tell a different story; by not providing the coal essential for power generation at the time, they were able to force the Government to instigate policies and helped to cripple the Conservatives until the rise of Thatcher in the 1980s.

That word brings with it a lot of emotion: Thatcher. I, of course, speak of UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher whose Conservative Government began a fiscally conservative policy that included the shutting down of the coal mines. In response, the National Union of Mineworkers chose to strike. But this time the National Grid was able to provide power from other sources. The strike failed. The opportunity for the NUM to cripple a government had passed. The NUM itself collapsed and Thatcher’s policies ultimately shaped the modern British landscape, for good or ill.

How are coal and education linked, though? I don’t believe that striking is nearly as useful as people think it is and this is why I believe that the UCU boycott is not going to have a long-term influence.

The universities themselves have been somewhat reluctant to get involved. The UCU do not have the power to do something drastic. The longer the marking boycott goes on, the more it will anger students. In 2006, a similar situation occurred. The results were decidedly mixed, with the employers giving little ground, and the university staff getting only part of what they wanted.

You might argue that is the point of negotiation. However, in this instance, if the UCU do not win this struggle outright, then they make a loss. There is no compromise this time. Either the pensions of university employees are cut, or they are not. They may be able to reduce the amount the pension is cut by, but ultimately, unless they win, they lose.

The boycott in 2006 is almost completely forgotten. Despite being the reason the UCU exists in the first place, it had decidedly little impact. The UCEA, the employment body, have shown this in their recent reactions. They knew this would repeat itself. And they clearly didn’t care.

A cursory glance on their website will tell you their response is as indifferent as it can be. The underlying theme of the information they have released can be summed up as such: “The universities are going to withhold pay to UCU members taking this action. Your move.” The wording is clever—they paint the UCU as the bad guys denying us the education we pay £9000 a year, or more, for.

I’m not saying the UCU won’t necessarily get what they want. The miners under the Heath Government won a resounding victory. But striking and boycotting are the nuclear weapons of diplomacy. Not because they are dangerous, no—that’s not the analogy I’m after. No, they’re like nuclear weapons because they involve mutually assured destruction that drags third parties into the aftermath.

The UCU can’t keep making their members breach their contracts. The UCEA can’t keep having their vested interests actively rebelling against them. And we students can’t have our education so discredited by something that is nothing to do with us. I don’t have all the answers, but what I do know is that somewhere along the line this is not going to end well.

The Most Arrogant of Lies: Voluntourism

Every once in a while, you may need a break from everyday life, whether it’s from work, university or general routine. In cases like these, a holiday would fit in perfectly—especially if it were to be justified by conscientious-seeming by-products.

Going on a volunteer trip sounds like the perfect package; it’s a break, it’ll look good on a CV, and there’s the fact that you might help some poor, disadvantaged kids on the other side of the world. However, the latter reason is starting to turn into more and more of a mere consequence of an anything-but-altruistic endeavour. While travelling to help those in need seems like a great idea—and indeed one can’t deny that it does do a lot of good—but this new kind of tourism needs close scrutiny and analysis.

As students at the University of Manchester, we naturally face two problems: 1) the financial hardships that come with being a student, and 2) the advantage of being in a university with so many volunteering and travel opportunities. These two aspects combined leave the average student in love with the idea of travelling to some exotic continent to help those who will probably never get the education or chances they have.

It also leaves them financially unable to do so because £2000 or £3000 is a bit of a fortune. Yet, this amount of money, especially when converted into local currency of the destination in question, could pay for professionals to do the services that students will attempt to provide, such as building a house or painting a school.

In this case, professionals would include manual labourers who leave their houses every morning hoping that someone will hire them if even for a day. Ironically, these labourers are just as unfortunate as the group the volunteers usually aim to help.

In fact, it seems extremely arrogant that we assume that as first-world citizens we are skilled at the jobs they have practiced their whole lives. A university student may be knowledgeable in all sorts of areas but what does a first year law student know about planting a garden in the middle of Nepal?

The issue entices two huge economic rebounds: it’s a waste of money for an indirect implementation of an otherwise good cause and it establishes the condescending robbing of unemployed citizens of potential, and long-awaited, job opportunities.

Aside from the issue of potentially harming the destination country, one must also looks at where the volunteers themselves come from. Take Manchester—a city of all types of social classes and living situations. In fact, homeless men and women line our very own Oxford Road.

Speaking from experience, it seems that the importance of helping them is dimming in the light of travelling to help others who may be equally less fortunate. By travelling hours and hours to reach a different continent, it is easy to overlook the common cry for help in our very own city.

Volunteering here, within a very small radius, can even come in all sorts of shapes and forms; it could be through helping the homeless, volunteering at orphanages or nursing homes, working with disabled children. There are many, many more opportunities. In the long run, these seemingly smaller acts of kindness may make a much bigger change than travelling to plant a garden or take children to a beach.

There are two equally important misfortunes that may result from attempting to aid the targets of the volunteer project, which are often children. First of all, spending time with these kids will naturally expose them to a type of lifestyle that they will probably never attain.

Of course, a volunteer will never purposely show off but, naturally, the kids will inevitably notice all the things they’ll never have; fluency in English, especially if you speak their language as well, nice clothes, or—without the slightest hint of irony—the liberty to travel abroad. Volunteers may cause problems or pains that did not even exist in the first place.

Secondly, one vital aspect of volunteering, especially when it is so personal and direct, is consistency. A once in a lifetime opportunity may sound alluring, but by definition, that itself is the problem; visiting these kids and growing close to them cannot cease to be once in a lifetime.

These kids may become too attached to the people that visit or to the fun that they bring with them. While schools or societies that plan these trips often plan to create long-term projects, chances are the volunteers themselves will never interact with the same group of kids again, tearing away one of the fundamental goals of volunteering.

Volunteering anywhere and for any cause is without argument a great way to attempt to make this huge world a better place. However, we must remember that what seems like a great opportunity may actually do way more harm than good.

While spending time and money on helping kids in third-world countries may be a worthwhile endeavour, we must first stop and check that it is not just a result of the boredom of first-world citizens seeking moral reassurance.

Turner Prize 2014 Artists: James Richards

Established in 1984, the Turner Prize is awarded each year to a contemporary artist under 50 living, working or born in Britain, who is judged to have put on the best exhibition of the last 12 months. Previous winners include Gilbert & George, Antony Gormley, Grayson Perry, Jeremy Deller and Damien Hirst. This year’s shortlist showcases artists whose work spans film (Duncan Campbell), prints (Ciara Phillips), video (James Richards) and live performance (Tris Vonna-Michell)

James Richards, born 1983, is a Welsh video artist and the third of this year’s artists to be nominated for the £25000 prize. He is a graduate of Chelsea School of Art and his work has been exhibited in countries such as Japan and Turkey.

‘Rosebud’ is the video piece that gave Richards his nomination after being showcased at the Venice biennial in 2013. This controversial artwork mixes censored pornography, found in a Japanese library with his own footage, filmed out in the countryside. This piece was put together to explore the pleasure in the art of looking. With an accompanying soundtrack, the emotional and psychological response is heightened in order to convey a sense of tenderness and claustrophobic intimacy, making this original piece one to remember.

Including ‘Rosebud’, Richards also has an exhibition at the Tate Modern which includes a variety of blankets containing photographs associated with the artist Keith Haring.

With three video artists in running for the Turner Prize this year, competition is high, and with only two weeks left, James Richards is currently one of the critics’ favourites.

Live: Mad Caddies / Jaya the Cat

24th November

Club Academy

5/10 (4/5 for Jaya and 1/5 for Mad Caddies)

Growing up I listened to a lot of Capdown, Less Than Jake & Reel Big Fish. I thoroughly recommend listening to ‘Scott Farcas Takes It On The Chin’ by Less Than Jake. It takes a nervous, anxious teenage story about feeling unhappy and detached and sets it to a backdrop of guitar riffs and trumpets. This is what made this music so universal; at some point every teenager feels misunderstood.

Ska-punk can be playful, fun and original. Jaya the Cat absolutely stole the show. They look like Dutch punks that went to colonize America: discovering sunshine, reggae and marijuana along the way. Their “dirty drunk reggae” music made a strong connection with the crowd. Having the Caddies follow that with generic ska-pop-punk-reggae mashup material was just unfair. There is nothing original or memorable about their new music. They sound like a cover band of The Specials trying to score radio-friendly hits. Some bands stay together too long, and make music that is honestly not as good as their back catalogue. Mad Caddies are in danger of being a perfect example of this. The crowd went wild for ‘Monkeys’ which they originally released in 1998.

‘Monkeys’ is an exciting song. It has trumpets, interesting snare-drum patterns, time-changes and is frantic when fast and swaggering/burlesque when slow. The album it is from Duck and Cover is solid. Listen to ‘Econoline’ from the album and you can hear them at their best. It is angry, and misunderstood and shares some of the qualities that make ‘Scott Farcas…’ by Less Than Jake so strong.

I am keen to see Jaya the Cat live again; but will steer clear of Mad Caddies unless they go back to their pre 2000 line-up. Their new album Dirty Rice is not worth listening to if you like their old music.