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Month: June 2017

Ex-Chancellor George Osborne given honorary professorship at University of Manchester

Former Chancellor of the Exchequer and new editor of the Evening Standard George Osborne has been appointed Honorary Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester.

The university announced the news, saying: “As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Osborne was very supportive of Greater Manchester and the University, particularly in supporting the National Graphene Institute and Henry Royce Institute as important scientific centres for translating cutting-edge discovery into economic growth.”

The unpaid role will see Osborne, who oversaw the country’s budget in his role as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2010-2016, “sharing his knowledge with staff and students by giving lectures, masterclasses and conducting informal visits.”

Moreover, the university added, “he has indicated his strong interest in continuing to support graphene and related research and applications.”

Since leaving the government last summer, Osborne has been the subject of much discussion thanks to his multiple lucrative post-government job opportunities, including his controversial appointment as Editor-in-Chief of the Evening Standard, and his one day a week, £650,000 per annum consultancy position for US fund management firm Blackrock.

Moreover, Osborne has been the chair of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, a business lobby group he began in September, which aims to boost the North’s economy, and whose membership also includes Vice-Chancellor of the university, Dame Nancy Rothwell.

In announcing his new professorship, the university said: “His commitment to the North will be extended in his new role as an honorary professor as he advises University leaders on how Manchester can play an even greater part in the Northern Powerhouse agenda.”

George Osborne said: “I am bowled over by this honour. The University of Manchester was at the centre of so many things I tried to achieve as Chancellor, from the promotion of new science to the building of the links between this country and countries like China.

“It is also one of the jewels in the crown of the Northern Powerhouse.

“I remain completely committed to that idea that together the different communities in the North can work together so that the whole is greater than the parts — and I believe more strongly than I ever did that the entire county, including our capital, would benefit from a stronger North.

“That’s why I remain closely involved as chair of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership — and look forward to playing a part in the life of The University of Manchester.”

Vice-Chancellor Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell said of the appointment: “George’s decision to accept our offer of an honorary professorship is very exciting news for the University. He has been a leader at the top level of UK and world economic policy for many years and showed the vision to recognise the enormous economic and scientific potential of graphene to the UK.

“Our students and staff will benefit from all of this experience and he will be invaluable in helping the University to support the growth of our city and region.”

The reaction to the news, however, was not all positive, with some seeing his appointment as particularly galling given the university’s recent announcement of 171 redundancies.

The Facebook page Resist Restructuring Manchester, who started the petition calling on the Vice-Chancellor to scrap the proposed job cuts, asked: “So Mr George Osborne is adding another job to his list, whilst our staff face uncertainty with threats of 171 redundancies. Thoughts anyone?”

Students’ Union Education Officer Emma Atkins, reacting to the news, said it was “foolish of [the university] to appoint such an undeserving character to such a prestigious role after announcing 160+ staff cuts,” and added, posting on her Facebook page: “This is a joke.”

“How can Manchester honour this man whose track record over ‘Economics’ was abysmal? I bet Economics students at Manchester would have something to say about being associated with him…,” making reference to the Post-Crash Economics Society, whose globally-recognised campaign aims to fundamentally change the way that Economics is taught at universities, in light of the financial crash.

Continuing, Atkins stated: “OK, he worked for the Northern Powerhouse and ‘supported’ the Graphene Institute but does that cancel out his abject failure over the economy for 6 years, driving ideological and unnecessary austerity which inflicted severe hardship on millions and humongous cuts to vital public services? Which has since been backtracked by the current Chancellor?

“Worst possible example of contemporary ‘Economics’, and so much for UoM’s boasting about its self-proclaimed ‘Social Responsibility’ principles. Our Vice-Chancellor Nancy Rothwell said that ‘Our students and staff will benefit from all of this experience and he will be invaluable in helping the University to support the growth of our city and region’… just painful.”

On Twitter, writer and political commentator Harry Leslie Smith, @harryslaststand, posted: “Making #GeorgeOsborne editor of the Standard & now an economics lecturer at Manchester Uni tell us the 1% are laughing in our faces.”

He added: “I hear University of Manchester has also made the captain of the Costa Concordia a lecturer on cruise ship navigation. #GeorgeOsborne”.

Comedia Sean Leahy, @thepunningman, posted: “All this time we were worried about robots and immigrants taking our jobs, when the real threat is George Osborne.”

Nigel Farage, ex-leader of UKIP and prominent Brexiteer, tweeted: “The man that got Brexit totally wrong & doubled national debt becomes Economics Professor. You can’t make this stuff up.”

Osborne will take up the post in July 2017.

Review: The Red Turtle

Studio Ghibli time and time again have produced some of the most beautiful and captivating not just animated features, but films in general since its birth in 1985. Spirited Away (2001), Princess Mononoke (1997) are but two shining examples of the studio’s outstanding track record, however, following the retirement of Ghibli stalwart Hayao Miyazaki, it was thought the end was nigh for the company.  The Japanese auteur had been so integral to the studio’s success and reputation that it seemed the departure of Miyazaki marked the end of an era.

Yet, despite the apparent swansong of When Marnie Was There in 2014, the studio has resurfaced in a co-production with European company Wild Bunch.  Resembling the art work of Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin more than anything, The Red Turtle shares little physical similarity with previous features by Ghibli.  Yet those familiar with works such as Mononoke and My Neighbour Totoro (1988) will quickly recognise the charm and beauty the Japanese studio is renowned for injecting into its films.

Directed and written by Dutch director and animator Michaël Dudok de Wit (Father and Daughter – Academy Award winner of Best Animated Short Film in 2000), The Red Turtle is a Crusoe-esque tale of a man who, following a savage storm at sea, finds himself stranded on an eerie yet beautiful island, teeming with smaller life forms such as crabs, various creepy crawlies, and sea-lions.

However, as he attempts to leave the island in a make-shift raft, his escape is thwarted by the island’s largest resident – the eponymous red turtle. After several attempted getaways where his vessel is destroyed by the marine giant, the man eventually finds the creature on land, basking in the sun on the shore.  In a fit of rage, the protagonist flips the turtle on its back, rendering it helpless, marooned on the beach.  What follows is a tale of guilt, transformation, love and solace.

At first glance, the film may sound to some like an animated re-hashing of Daniel Defoe’s classic novel, or Robert Zemeckis’ Cast Away (2000), but this could not be more of an erroneous judgement.  The Red Turtle is quite simply an absolute masterpiece.

Scored impeccably by French composer Laurent Perez del Mar, it is a story which in a mere 80 minutes manages to act as a meditation on life, death, the history of man, and familial love.  Adhering to the fantastic genre, just as the majority of Studio Ghibli’s features do, the ambiguity between the real, surreal and the magical truly absorbs the viewer into the dream-like serenity of life on the island.

A key factor of the film’s potency is the complete lack of dialogue.  The silence created by the speechless nature of the film accentuates both the alien and familiar sounds of the island biome, as well as the aforementioned exquisite soundtrack by Perez del Mar.  For many, the absence of dialogue may cause hesitation and concern, but this choice by Dudok de Wit has proved integral to the emotional power which the film holds.

On a limited release, it may be hard to track down a chain cinema which is showing The Red Turtle, but I cannot recommend highly enough seeking your nearest independent cinema (HOME in Manchester, for example) and going to see for yourself how outstanding this latest project from Studio Ghibli really is.

Visually stunning, melancholic and breath-taking, The Red Turtle is an encouraging reminder that, despite the dominance of 3D and CGI in the modern world of animated film, simple hand-drawn picture still has a place at the heart of cinema.

5/5

Festival preview: Reading and Leeds

Festival season has well and truly begun and the excitement is rife as people across the country drag out their tents from the attic, pull on their shorts-and-wellies combo and bulk buy 12-packs of Kopparberg.

But Reading and Leeds, one of the most anticipated festivals of the year, is also one of the latest, leaving fans waiting until the tail-end of the summer to set up camp. Once again, however, the line-up promises to be wholly worth the wait.

This year, the main stage is showcasing one of the most musically diverse line-ups in the festival’s history. R&L regulars Muse are joined by Kasabian and Eminem, instantly ticking three boxes on the ultimate live band bucket list.

These headliners are joined by Bastille, who late last year took on arenas across the country with exceptional energy and a captivating performance, whilst Circa Waves and Two Door Cinema Club promise to have crowds swarming the main stage for some indie rock magic. Jimmy Eat World, meanwhile, provide the pop-punk nostalgia we all secretly crave, and Rat Boy has quickly accelerated up the list ready to bring his contagious energy back to the festival.

Meanwhile, the NME stage features a headlining set from last year’s secret act, You Me At Six, a band at the forefront of modern British rock, alongside American rock band Haim and Flume, who this year won a Grammy for his latest album, Skin. Other highlights include Loyle Carner, Reading’s own Sundara Karma and Halsey, whose intoxicating vocals bring a highly anticipated set.

Whether you’re a massive fan of dance or you’re at the festival for its rock roots, the dance stage always proves to be an unmissable experience, made even more so by the likes of Fatboy Slim, Jax Jones and Charli XCX. Over on the other side of the festival, however, The Pit hosts a number of the biggest names in rock, with While She Sleeps and Neck Deep fronting a headliner-packed line-up, including the Japanese One Ok Rock who have captivated audiences across the world and The Amity Affliction whose cathartic song craft will certainly make them one to watch.

A tent I have tended to overlook in previous years, the Festival Republic stage, this year gives platform to some of the most exciting names in the industry. Names like The Hunna, Cigarettes After Sex and The Japanese House are joined by The Amazons and Eden, both of whom have been gathering an increasing amount of attention over the past year.

It is, however, the BBC 1Extra stage that features one of the acts I am most excited for this year: rapper and poet, Watsky. If you see one artist this year that you’ve never heard of before, make it Watsky. You won’t regret it.

Of course, the music isn’t the only reason Reading and Leeds is one of the most enjoyable festival experiences; the alternative stage has a history of featuring some of the greatest comedic acts around, and this year we have sets from Katherine Ryan and the internet’s favourite satirical news reporter, Jonathan Pie.

Tickets are selling fast for what has proven continually over the years to be the ultimate festival experience, so if you haven’t already, get securing yours.

Reading and Leeds takes place on August Bank Holiday weekend, 25th – 27th.

Weekend camping and day tickets are available for both Reading and Leeds via Ticketmaster here.

Interview: Christina Martin

Having just finished a series of shows in her Canadian home-turf, Christina Martin didn’t have long to rest before starting her UK tour. This Friday, Manchester hosts Sonder Festival, which presents a combination of exciting new music, comedy and arts performances, and Martin is excited to continue the momentum she’s built up, although she admits that she is feeling “pretty fucking exhausted” – and no wonder.

She’s been playing as a solo artist since 2002, built her own music label Come Undone Records from 2011, and has won multiple ECMA and Music Nova Scotia awards – and Martin is no stranger to long bouts of touring. She’s looking forward to returning to familiar British venues, such as Little Rabbit Barn, The Bank Eye, and The Latest Music Bar, as well as trying out new places such as The Sound Lounge and Sonder Festival.

Speaking about the pros and cons of stripped-down shows, as she will be playing at several venues, Martin has mixed feelings. Although she misses the rhythm section and playing electric guitar, she sees these shows as an opportunity to really “share a bit more of my stories” in such an intimate setting.

Martin’s music has strong influences of Americana and rock, largely inspired by her early music career in Nashville: self-penned, full of emotion and heavily reliant on guitar. Her most recent single, ‘Lungs Are Burning’, is exemplary of her personal writing style and background in addressing social issues of mental health through music.

“The song was a response to reading about the Fentanyl crisis in Canada,” she explains, “I’m sensitive to the issue because I lost my brother to an opioid overdose in 2013.”

With such personal connections to what she is singing about, Martin chooses to disconnect from these when workshopping songs such as ‘Lungs Are Burning’. She describes this as being on “automatic”, drawing on her writing experience as a professional musician for the past 18 years so as not to become overwhelmed by the emotional content in the studio.

The social responsibility of music artists is a very relevant topic of discussion today, particularly acknowledging Simon Cowell’s recent collaboration of “Artists for Grenfell” on a cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ in order to raise money for the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire.

Although Martin doesn’t believe that that artists have a definitive responsibility to do anything other than create music, she does state that “music can be a great way to build connections and raise awareness.” She herself attempts to raise awareness for CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Foundation) by sharing her personal experience – “stories have a great healing power,” she says.

Lastly, when asked about earlier tour experiences, Martin particularly relishes a high point in 2009 performing for the Queen in Ottawa. In typical musician fashion, however, when further pressed Martin admits “I can’t tell you the other memorable road stories, for confidential reasons”, ending our interview with mysterious winking emoticon. I guess we’ll never know.

Christina Martin will be playing at Sonder Festival on Friday 30th June 2017. Sonder Festival runs this weekend in Manchester from 30th June – 2nd July.

TEF awards: Bronze, Silver, Gold, or fraud?

It has been a year since the campaign at Manchester against the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) was set into motion, from lobbying the university to boycotting the National Student Survey (NSS), and the rallying cries against the scheme have recently been reignited.

Yesterday, the Olympic-esque TEF awards were given out rather unceremoniously at 00:01, followed by a flurry of scrutiny, celebration and outrage. The University of Manchester received a Silver award, but as the Vice-President of Teaching and Learning said in a statement, all TEF results “must be treated with caution“.

A widely shared view of the TEF is that it is not a legitimate measurement of teaching excellence for a multitude of reasons. It bases its awards on how universities perform in three ‘metrics’ — data from the National Student Survey, graduate outcome data, and drop-out rates — alongside a 15-page written submission authored by each university. This approach has, to say the least, been consistently viewed as ‘controversial’, even by the Chair of the TEF panel who gave out the awards.

Many critics have argued that the TEF serves to cram all the uniqueness, diversity and breadth of university education into three narrow-minded categories. It’s undeniable that the higher education sector is complex and intricate, and frankly, using the TEF as a tool in the realm of teaching excellence is as suitable as using a hammer in a watchmaker’s workshop.

More criticism has poured out of the sector since the results were released. This Twitter thread reveals how the University of Southampton, despite doing better than the University of Bristol in the TEF data, was given a Bronze while Bristol received Silver, and discusses the potential over-importance of the universities’ written submissions to the final ranking decisions.

In reaction, Southampton’s old Vice-Chancellor told The Times that the framework was “meaningless” and had “no value or credibility”. Current Vice-Chancellor Sir Christopher Snowden, speaking to the Times Higher Education Supplement, said: “There is no logic in our result at all. How can you have so many positive comments and exceed many of your benchmarks by a colossal margin and still get a bronze?”

The University of Westminster released a heart-breaking statement in response to its Bronze rating, appealing to its students that, “You know as well as I do that the TEF result is just not true.

“You know that in Sociology you’ve got a really dedicated teaching team… We’re confident that you know how good our teaching is, but we don’t want the TEF’s insinuation to shake that.”

Other universities were criticised for celebrating their Gold awards. A lecturer at the University of York wrote in the Times Higher Education Supplement that sharing results with pride was “galling hypocrisy”, because “by applauding TEF results we implicitly accept this framework and its methodologies, when it is abundantly clear that it needs to be dramatically overhauled if it is to do as it claims and measure ‘teaching excellence’.”

The future of the TEF, then, is uncertain. Due to strong student opposition, including the national boycott of the NSS, there will be an independent review of whether it is fit for purpose, and the link to tuition fees has been delayed to 2020.

Putting more emphasis on teaching at universities is important and students should be at the heart of defining teaching excellence and how it can be measured. However, tuition fees should never be linked to such a scheme.

Not only will it obstruct accessibility and further the marketisation of education, but it will also distort universities’ behaviours. Harnessing fees to the TEF will incentivise universities to abandon what is actually teaching excellence in favour of the TEF’s flawed definition of quality.

As the author of The Undercover Economist, Tim Harford, notes: “The basic principle for any incentive scheme is this: can you measure everything that matters? If you can’t, then high-powered financial incentives will simply produce short-sightedness, narrow-mindedness or outright fraud.”

Controversial TEF rankings shake up Higher Education hierarchies

The results of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) were released yesterday with only eight of all 24 Russell Group universities receiving the highest ranking of gold, while many other leading universities were handed a bronze ranking, in what is the first league table of teaching standards at universities.

The University of Manchester received silver status along with 116 other universities across the UK, missing out on the prestige of gold status awarded to 59 institutions.

Many have commented the new assessment of teaching standards has disrupted the traditional higher education rankings. One of the leading universities to receive the bronze ranking was the London School of Economics, rated second in the QS global rankings for social sciences.

The TEF rankings have also caused some controversy due to the metrics on which the results are based: dropout rates, graduate employment rates and student satisfaction survey results from the National Student Survey. Critics argue none of these statistics can be seen as a measure of teaching quality.

The TEF was introduced by the last Conservative government to assess teaching quality in higher education, with the initial plan being that those institutions who receive the higher rankings would be able to raise tuition fees in line with inflation.

During the passing of the Higher Education and Research Bill through parliament, the House of Lords passed an amendment to the bill that would de-link the TEF from tuition fees.

In April it was announced plans to link the results of TEF with fees would be postponed until there had been an independent review of the TEF ratings.

The NUS claimed both of these developments as victories for the student movement. According to Sorana Vieru, NUS Vice President (Higher Education), “Without the hard work of students and students’ unions over the past eighteen months, this Bill would have been even more harmful for the future of higher education in this country.

“NUS’ hard won amendments including securing a student representative on the board of the Office for Students, heightened scrutiny to new providers and a legal requirement for institutions to publish attainment gaps go some way towards putting students’ interests in the Bill, but still this is not the Bill students want or deserve.”

In a statement about the TEF awards, the University of Manchester Students’ Union said they didn’t “recognise the TEF as an adequate measurement of teaching excellence, nor a legitimate mechanism to grant awards to universities.”

They also expressed concern that the TEF will not help students decide between universities as it claims to, due to a lack of transparency, as the “complex array of splits, benchmarking, flagging and Z-scores that are used to justify each award are not common knowledge”.

The Students’ Union added that despite “claiming to put students ‘at the heart of the system’, the government ignored student consultations on the construction of the TEF and students all around the country have since made their opposition clear” through a boycott of the National Student Survey.

The University of Manchester Students’ Union was one of 25 to take part in the boycott. The aim of the boycott was to invalidate the survey’s results, leading to the TEF being seriously hindered, although this year’s TEF ratings were based on “last year’s NSS results, (…) unaffected by the boycott”, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Education, speaking to the student newspaper Varsity.

In response to the TEF results, the acting director of the Russell Group, Dr. Tim Bradshaw, said: “Our members provide an outstanding student experience where teaching is enhanced by access to world-class research and facilities.

“This is a trial year. We need to recognise that developing a robust TEF that is truly reflective of the UK’s excellent higher education sector will take time.”

A University of Manchester spokesman claimed the university’s silver status “acknowledges the tremendous progress our University has made in recent years to bring about significant improvements in the student experience particularly across teaching quality, assessment and feedback”.

However they admitted that “robust and credible measures of teaching quality will take time to develop”, claiming that it is “widely acknowledged within the higher education sector that the metrics used in this TEF will be refined to more accurately reflect the quality of teaching, learning and the student experience” and promised to “engage with government, the Russell Group, Universities UK and our students throughout this process”.

Review: The Handmaiden

When reading other critics reviews of ‘The Handmaiden’, I was surprised to see how some thought the erotic scenes involving the two lead actresses were sexist. Lena Wilson (The Radical Notion) wrote ‘I think it’s time for non-lesbian/bi female creators to stop interpreting lesbian texts however they please’, calling it ‘uniquely troublesome’. I believe that she, along with all others, misunderstand the role eroticism plays in the film.

At the very beginning, men are very much portrayed as dominant. Strong characters who would not hesitate in using violence to keep their wives or daughters in line. The women, in keeping with the time period, are obedient, doing only what is expected of them. Therefore the sexual scenes involving Lady Hideko and her handmaiden follow the same rules. They succumb to their desires, too weak to control themselves.

But over the course of the whirlwind 167 minute runtime the roles change drastically. Behind man’s powerful facade lies fatal single mindedness. For some this is money, for others it is a sexual desire so deep-rooted it becomes perverse, shown most prominently during Lady Hideko’s readings. As this desire starts to unravel their rule, women rise to take over with this change encompassing the sex scenes too. Vulnerability is now replaced with righteousness.

It is important to note that there is not one scene that involved the naked body of a male (although there are a few male bodily organs in Uncle Kouzuki’s basement). Their lustful pursuit ultimately causes their downfall, becoming blinded to what occurs around them. In short, the men in ‘The Handmaiden’ are too weak to be seen in their purest form. Nudity is not cheap or meaningless here, quite the opposite.

This is but one example of something the film truly excels at, showing the same scene in dramatically different ways. Director and cowriter Park Chan-wook achieves this commandingly through the use of a non-linear storyline and by alternating the perspective between each of the major characters. In recent years this style of storytelling in film has become few and far between with Memento (2000) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) the only notable examples in the 21st century.

Perhaps seen as an unnecessary risk by filmmakers and producers, it uses the patience of the audience to bring multiple stories together, as well as giving us the ability to emphasise with each character, hero or villain. When implanted well, it can result in some of the greatest films of all time, such as ‘Mulholland Drive’ (2001) and ‘Pulp Fiction’ (1994). Can ‘The Handmaiden’ hold a candle to those? I absolutely believe so.

The majority of the film takes place within Uncle Kouzuki’s mansion and its grounds. Cinematographer and long-time collaborator Chung Chung-Hoon does an incredible job at bringing the setting to life with every frame looking visually stunning.

Similarly as beautiful were the three lead actors/actresses Kim Min-hee, Kim Tae-ri and Ha Jung-woo, who are constantly adorned in elegant and luxurious clothing. The riches of the Japanese Kouzuki is often juxtaposed with the poorness of the Koreans, whose country his is occupying. All three, along with the various supporting characters, give phenomenal performances, with no single person outshining the rest.

Park once again turned to another collaborator Jo Yeong-wook for the soundtrack, having worked together on such films as ‘Oldboy’ (2003) and ‘Thirst’ (2009). Something I found particularly interesting about this fantastic soundtrack is that the main theme, contained in the track ‘My Tamako, My Sookee’, is very reminiscent of the main theme to the BBC television show ‘Downton Abbey’, which also shares the same deep-rooted class divisions.

The original source material for ‘The Handmaiden’, Sarah Waters’ ‘Fingersmith’ is also set in historic England, however several decades prior in the Victorian era. Despite its often fiery nature, the orchestral backing never feels overpowering, instead lifting the on-screen action to reach more emotionally powerful heights.

The Handmaiden is a sensational psychological thriller, without a doubt one of the the best films of the year if not decade. Director Park Chan-wook has created a masterpiece, one that will captivate you from start to finish, leaving you breathless when it finally reaches its climax. There are many plot twists throughout that no viewer could successfully predict the ending after the opening thirty minutes and as a result it demands not just to be seen, but to be watched again and again.

Interview: Spoon

Spoon are a band perpetually at the top of their game – every single record they have released since 1997’s Soft Effects has been seemingly effortlessly great, and they only get better the more you listen.

This year’s Hot Thoughts is no exception, the band once again creating a blinder of an album better than anything since, well, their last one.

With this latest success in mind, as well as the band’s upcoming UK dates with Adam Buxton (which is a frankly genius choice, Buxton’s ridiculously consistent brilliance making him comedy’s answer to the Texan indie rock greats), we called up multi-instrumentalist and generally lovely man Alex Fischel to talk everything from ambience to impeachment.

We started with the response Hot Thoughts has received, and Fischel was happy, though modest, about its near-universal critical acclaim. “It seems like it’s been pretty good”, he told us, “it’s been a fun thing to get the new songs together and play them for people.”

The record has been described by many critics as quite a big departure from Spoon’s previous work, and whilst it is clearly the same band, it uses a very different set of textures and colours to their previous work. “Yeah I’d say so,” Fischel agreed, “I mean for one thing there’s certainly a lot more keyboards – and not just piano or natural, more acoustic sounding instruments – we opened up more of a synthesizer world a little bit and kind of went down that road.”

The guitar, the traditional cornerstone of a Spoon record, is now a far less integral element. As Fischel said, they’re “still on the record, but when they’re there it’s more of a statement”.

Fischel is responsible for all the synths in Spoon, so was this shift down to him? “I’d say I had something to do with it, yeah”, he told us, “I mean that’s my instrument, that’s what I learned to play music on with piano, and then through that you kind of expand as you learn about more.”

However, he insisted it was not a conscious choice to bring his talents to the front. “It wasn’t really a decision, it kind of just happened”, he explained, and instead he believes the shift is really more of a continuation of what came before. “The last song we worked on for the last record, They Want My Soul was ‘Inside Out’ and that was already kind of going in that direction a little bit, where it’s more keyboard-based, more soundscape-y, and I think we kind of just picked up where we left off when we started working on the material for Hot Thoughts.”

This more experimental turn was perhaps also down to producer Dave Fridmann (most famous for his work with the Flaming Lips), but not in the way you might expect. “His place is kind of out in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York,” Fischel told us, and this relative isolation even limited what Spoon could listen to whilst making the record, as “in the kitchen there’s a little CD player and that’s the way you can listen to music.” This meant they listened to a somewhat limited selection of music, at least compared to the infinite choice of something like Spotify.

“We burned some mixes,” Fischel elaborated, listing the likes of Talking Heads, Thee Oh Sees, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, as well as Lodger, Bowie’s weirdo peak (or nadir, depending on how you feel about these things). These records can all clearly be heard on Hot Thoughts, and with good reason – according to Fischel “you end up listening to the same stuff over and over again cos you had to go and make CDs if you wanted them.”

Bowie in Berlin is perhaps the most obvious influence on the album, especially on its two ambient centrepieces ‘Pink Up’ and the stunning ‘Us’. These two tracks are the biggest departures, and are totally different to anything Spoon’s done before, so we wanted to know how they came about.

Fischel was more than happy to tell us. “’Pink Up’ is more of a studio piece,” he explained, “that one just grew and grew and grew and eventually we were like OK!”  He was also particularly pleased with the focus on texture over traditional melody. As he put it, “there’s proper vocals on it, not just the reversed effected vocals, but they don’t come in for a while, and I like when they come in but it’s not the whole focus of the song.”

The closing track, ‘Us’ came about almost by accident. “So originally we were looking for a sax player – again Bowie – to do a part of a song, and I live in LA and I have a friend who knows a tonne of different musicians, so I went to him and asked if he knew anyone and he recommended this guy Ted Taforo,” Fischel began, “and Ted went over to Britt [Daniel, Spoon’s singer and guitarist]’s and listened to the song, and I think he listened like twice and was like “OK! I know what I wanna do.”

Britt hit record and he played through the whole thing, then he was like “OK give me one more track” and played through once more and harmonised with what he’d done originally, in time and in rhythm and all of that. He was in and out real quick, it was like thirty minutes or something.”

“Later that night Britt went back to listen to it”, Fischel continued, “and he muted the rest of the song and just left the saxes and was thinking wouldn’t it be cool if we just did a song based on those saxes? And that’s how that song came to be.”

This shift towards a more ambient is something the band, or at least Fischel, would definitely like to explore further. “I would love to”, he enthused, “I love that kind of stuff, I’m a huge Brian Eno fan.” However, a more experimental sound makes it more difficult to play these songs live, and Fischel said the band are still trying to figure them out for a live setting. “I mean playing ‘Us’ I don’t know how we’d do that. We’d need a sax player, none of us can really do that”, he admitted, “but ‘Pink Up’ we’re working on getting together right now, we haven’t physically tried playing it yet but we’ve discussed it a lot.”

Hot Thoughts is not just noticeable for its experimentation, however, but also its tense atmosphere. The song ‘Tear it Down’ is perhaps the most explicitly political track (“let them build a wall around us/I don’t care I’m gonna tear it down” goes the chorus), but the whole record seems to be at least partially influenced by the political turbulence surrounding us.

The album was recorded before the U.S. presidential election, though, and the band were hoping it would just be a reminder of past times rather than reflecting any ongoing crisis. “When we were making the record we were hoping that this would be like dust in the wind and this point, like the record would come out and this wouldn’t be an issue any more”, Fischel said sadly, “but unfortunately things didn’t work out that way, and we have a pretty messed up situation right now.”

Messed up situation seems to be putting it lightly, “Oh I mean there’s so many different issues to talk about, that’s a whole other conversation”, agreed an audibly despondent Fischel. “It’s really messed up. It’s depressing. It’s constantly depressing. It’s every day waking up and seeing the news and thinking is this real? This can’t be fucking real. And it’s real.”

However, Fischel does look for the positives, even in as bleak a situation as this. “If anything, maybe it’s given people a sense of renewed spirit or resilience or duty that they feel to start standing up and speaking for what they think is right”, he told us, “cause this cannot go on much longer, it’s just the worst.”

And how much longer does he think it will go on? How long will Trump will last? “Ideally not another day, but I’m on a watch list for saying that now probably”, he laughed, “you know, he has his four years, and hopefully by the time those four years are up people come to their senses and we can right the course a bit.”

But for Spoon, things are still on a seemingly constant upwards trajectory, and the band have a packed schedule to capitalise on the success of this fantastic album. “We’re gonna do some shows back here in the UK and Europe and then do more shows”, Fischel explained excitedly. “Shows shows shows,” he added. Shows.

And finally, what advice does Fischel have for any bands just starting out? “Uh, ah, oh,” he laughed, “I don’t know. Don’t listen to me. That’d be my advice.” Well he may not be a brilliant motivational speaker, but he’s a brilliant musician, and we can’t wait for the next inevitable Spoon masterpiece.

General Elections 2017: Don’t forget to v-sign

Elections can be conceptually reduced to being, in essence, a single-answer question. What do you make of the country at the moment? Who do you think should be running this ship? Is Electorate Group A or Electorate Group B right? And if so, are they racist? The power mongers ask, the people respond. Fairly straightforward, it would seem.

But the best elections, such as the one we have just experienced, tend to produce more questions than they answer. Questions around Brexit, austerity, Theresa May’s employment, the point of UKIP and the state of the party system have arisen since last Thursday’s bizarre result. There is one thing in particular that I have been asking myself, unable to get the image of Mrs May’s victory-but-somewhat-concession speech outside No. 10, looking like a rather dour member of the Council of Ricks, out of my frazzled head. And that is, how many more times will democracy leave us at the discretion of governing forces before they realize that it won’t always work in their favour?

Theresa and the Tories played with fire: they thought they knew what Britain wanted and ended up wasting a fraction of their mandate, chasing their fantasy majority. After the April 18th announcement, their poor follow-up action gave away soft goals to a spirited Labour party; the Tory party leadership’s drastic overestimation of Conservative popularity, campaign competency and public attitude became evident 51 days later. The whipped-out weapon of democracy had backfired.

Theresa May has said this was about getting more support for her Brexit crusade, but many suspect the Conservatives were more interested in wiping the liberal parties off the playing board, as public opinion at the time suggested would happen. It has been widely reported that the Prime Minister never really wanted to play snap with the election, which is easier to believe given her denial for so long of there being another one until 2020. Perhaps this is why she has been allowed to hang on to power, becoming now a scapegoat for a decision made by someone else.

This was nothing new. David Cameron of course lost his job after committing rather blatant governmental negligence, promising something to the public he himself never wanted. Though Farage and UKIP can be given some credit for fanning the fires of the EU debate, it was Cameron who went from a negotiating approach to a full on In/Out Referendum, thereby bringing it to the realm of mainstream party policy. As an antithesis to Miliband’s Labour and an appeasement to those voters eyeing up the UKIP alternative, Cameron assured the British people he would leave it to them to potentially make a decision — one he would never have made himself.

Not only did Cameron casually throw around guarantees of a referendum to tease votes, but he completely underestimated the importance of effective campaigning in his favour, as well as the profound consequences of direct democracy.

Perhaps the poor turnout and resounding rejection of the Alternative Voting Referendum from 2011 gave Cameron and his team reason to believe the British public would shrug their shoulders or side with the path of least uncertainty. This was a glaring miscalculation. Instead, he became like a parent who doesn’t think their child has it in them to make it to university and offers them a grand for every B and above they get in their A levels, then silently weeps as they cruise up to halls for freshers in a new Yaris.

Cameron may have respected the will of the people, but he did not respect their willingness. The discontented took their chance to change something. Economic frustration reared its many heads. Some even suggested the Leave result was a big fuck you to Cameron and the establishment. In the end, his toying with democracy cost Cameron a fundamental change to British politics he had overtly feared, as well as his job.

A brutal lesson learned, right? Apparently not. A scrap for the PM spot ensued and Theresa May emerged from the corpse pile to take national leadership. For a while, it seemed she had learnt from her predecessor.  Ten months after Cameron’s demise, this clearly was not the case.

The moans of Brenda from Bristol were heard around the country after the snap election was called in an attempt to twist the knife stuck in the opposition. Democracy was once again being used for personal and political validation. Some have argued this was a gamble. Others have argued this was greed. I for one sided with the many that, regardless of their political sympathies, could see the sense in May’s approach.

But what started as an astute move soured as campaign scrutiny kicked in. The Tories took what they saw as the simple approach and made the election into a personality contest to bury deadpan Jeremy. The thing is, that would only work if you have a personality yourself to fight with. And I’m sorry Theresa, but no one likes a wheat field vandal.

Again, economic frustration appeared, rejecting further austerity in favour of Corbyn’s idealism. Young people put down their phones and turned up to bring some balance to the polling station demographics in an unprecedented performance. The landslide that should have been instead drowned in a cesspit of the Tories’ own making.

The election was impacted by, and reflective of, too many fascinating variables to squeeze in one article. A fundamental confusion over what Brexit should be is evident. The beginning of the end for the mainstream press is tantalising. Yet, there is one thing people should now realise: trying to second-guess the British public will not always work.

The snap election was an attempt to reaffirm the government’s dominion in these complicated times. Thirteen lost seats later, we can see the misjudgement. What this proves is that democracy is a bit like masturbating; it is important to practice every now and again, but force it too many times and you will end up only hurting yourself. I believe it was Thatcher who said that.

Elections and referendums should be savoured for when appropriate and needed. By using it as a tool for personal success, politicians are inevitably blunting its effectiveness. Democracy is not to be thrown around arbitrarily and at the right time, leave all complacency at the door — you don’t know what the British people are capable of.

Presume at your own peril. Here’s hoping for some breathing space before the next time we have to cross a box.

Apply to join the 2017/18 Editorial Team

Applications to join the Editorial Team for 2017/18 are now open. This is your chance to work for the biggest student newspaper in the country and gain authentic journalism experience.

The experience you will gain working for a student print publication will be invaluable and enhance your CV immeasurably. Previous section editors have gone on to careers in the national press, public relations, and broadcast journalism.

All current students at the University of Manchester are able to apply and you don’t necessarily have to have worked for The Mancunion before — our only requirement is a demonstrable passion for journalism.

You have until 11.55pm on the 4th of July to apply.

Please keep in mind that successful applicants will be invited to training days on the 11th and 12th of September, which while not compulsory the training will be comprehensive and highly beneficial to your understanding of your positions requirements and the inner workings of The Mancunion.

To apply, please fill in the application form at the bottom of this page. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact [email protected].

The positions available are:

News Editors – In charge of producing six pages of The Mancunion every week, including the all important front page. News Editors will have to demonstrate a keen awareness of the student area of Manchester to enable them to find news stories, and understand the workings of student politics, as they will have to follow the work of the 2017/18 Exec team closely. The News Editorial team will consist of a Head News Editor and two Deputy News Editors.

Science and Technology Editor – In charge of the Science and Technology page of The Mancunion. Works closely with the News Editors and shares their contributor meetings. The role will involve keeping up to date with all the scientific developments at the University.

Features Editors – In charge of two Feature pages of The Mancunion, which can include in-depth investigation articles or interviews. The team will be made up of a Head Features Editor and a Deputy Features Editor. Both editors will have a desire to follow-up and investigate stories within the student community, and the ability to encourage other contributors to do the same. They will also have imaginative ideas about who The Mancunion could invite to be interviewed.

Opinion Editors – In charge of designing two Opinion pages a week, with a focus on articles which have a predominantly student focus. The team will consist of a Head Opinion Editor and a Deputy Opinion Editor. The editors will be in charge of chairing meetings with Opinion contributors and ensuring that a balanced range of views are represented.

Music Editors – In charge of three Music Pages a week, which will include reviews of gigs, albums and longer features. The team will be made up of  Head Music Editor and a Deputy Music Editor, who will be in charge of keeping an eye on review opportunities and the sharing out of these between contributors.

Games Editor – In charge of one page in The Mancunion each week. Run by just the one Games Editor who will be in charge of keeping an eye on new releases to be reviewed and commissioning longer features, always with a student audience in mind.  

Fashion and Beauty Editors – In charge of the two page centre spread of The Mancunion every week. The team will be made up of a Head Fashion and Beauty Editor and two deputies. They will have to keep an eye on fashion and beauty trends, particularly within the Manchester student community.

Film Editors – In charge of designing two pages every week. The team will be made up of a Head Film Editor and a Deputy, who will have to keep an eye on new releases to be reviewed and share these opportunities with their contributors. They will have to ensure their content and choices of films to review are with a student audience in mind.

Books Editor – In charge of one page in The Mancunion every week. Run by just the one Books Editor who will have to keep an eye on new releases to be reviewed and wider literature news and distribute these opportunities to contributors.

Food & Drink Editors – In charge of two pages every week. The team will be made up of the Head Food and Drink Editor and a Deputy. There is budget within The Mancunion for contributors to spend reviewing restaurants in the Manchester area, and the Editors will be in charge of co-coordinating this and ensuring that all places chosen to review are done so with a student audience in mind.

Arts Editor – In charge of one page every week, and run by just the one Arts Editor. They will have a keen awareness of the arts world of Manchester and be able to keep up with any developments, sharing any review opportunities with contributors.

Theatre Editor – In charge of one page every week, and run by just the one Theatre Editor. The Editor will be aware of the Theatre world of Manchester and be able to keep up with all the new shows, sharing any review or interview opportunities with contributors.

Lifestyle Editors – In charge of two pages in The Mancunion every week. The team will be made up of a Head Lifestyle Editor and a Deputy, who will write and commission articles on a range of topics that make up the student lifestyle. Topics can range from travel writing, mental health articles, advice columns, sexual health and much more.

Sport Editors – In charge of the four back pages of The Mancunion. The team will be made up of a Head Sports Editor and a Deputy. Their roles will include covering national sport developments, but their focus must be on University sporting achievements or local sport coverage.

Sub editors – These editors will be some of the last to read articles before they are published in print and online. It is a Sub editors job to ensure there are no spelling/grammar mistakes or factual errors within articles before they are published. They are also in charge of ensuring all headlines and excerpts are as eye-catching as possible.

The team of Sub editors will be run by a Head Sub editor and then there are an unlimited number of positions available on the team, as it is a time-consuming task, therefore it is good to be able to rotate the team.

Social Media Editors – A team in charge of overseeing high quality social media output on our Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram to ensure we reach a wide student audience.

All section editors are expected to work diligently with the rest of Editorial Team to ensure the paper produced weekly is to a consistently high standard.

The roles do require a significant amount of time to be committed, but this volunteering time will be printed upon your degree certificate, and will be highly valued by employers. We will also work to help you manage your time effectively to ensure you’re able to create a balance between university work and your editorial commitments.

Section editors are required to run weekly meetings for contributors to attend and pitch stories. They must act as mentors for their contributors and work to engage them in The Mancunion and help them to improve their writing and understanding of journalism.

After distributing the articles for that week they must then work to ensure all the content is submitted to our sub editors on time. They then must use InDesign, which they will get thorough training in prior to the first print deadline, to layout their section ready from print every Friday.

Overall we ask that all section editors work enthusiastically and passionately throughout the year to ensure all the editorial staff feel supported and part of a strong team. Our aim is to create quality journalism in an inspiring environment.

Apply here

Interview: Chadden Hunter

Manchester’s dull and wet weather makes the city an unusual place to find BBC nature producer and self-confessed “hot weather person,” Chadden Hunter. “I had wildlife coming through my window,” the BBC producer says of his childhood growing up in North Queensland, Australia. “You live outdoors 365 days of the year – windows never shut – and I do find it different coming to different parts of the Northern Hemisphere.”

It seems lucky then, that Chadden, who has been involved in projects such as the beloved Frozen Planet and Planet Earth II series with David Attenborough, saw a rare sunny day in Manchester for his ‘Behind the lens: Do documentaries help save wildlife?’ talk at the university this April.

As we sat down with him, Chadden speaks passionately about how his childhood influenced his engagement with nature: “I’m sure for me, part of [my interest in nature] was that complete emersion in tropical biology and life that made me fascinated with it…there were green tree pythons or frogs or you name it”.

Considering his background in biology, filmmaking would seem like a nature step for a nature enthusiast. “Well it was never planned,” Chadden explains. “I always wanted to just share my love of biology with other people, so I always thought I was going to be a Biology professor.”

“Then while I was doing my PhD on gelada baboons in Ethiopia, based out of the University of Liverpool, a film crew came and did a little piece about my monkeys”. This was Chadden’s first experience with filmmaking, albeit it in front of the camera.

For the project, I did “an interview for Ethiopian television where I was trying to talk to people about how important gelada baboons were,” he explains. At the time, gelada baboons had seen their population numbers decrease substantially after farmers started shooting them for eating their crops.

“That was the thing that made me realise television, especially, was a really powerful tool” for both education and entertainment.”

Photo: Chadden Hunter

It seems that working as a wildlife filmmaker is as fun as it seems, with Chadden telling us that “one of the amazing things about [it] is that you’re really spoilt for adventure.

“You get to go to parts of the world that no one else gets to,” he says. “And because someone is paying you to do that [as a producer] you sometimes look for parts of the world you are fascinated in.”

His drive for variety and exploration explains his desire to work on Frozen Planet, back when he was A JOB. “I really, really wanted to get on that series because I had no Antarctic or Artic experience so it was a one-off chance.”

Chadden discloses that the Frozen Planet has been his most challenging project to date, in terms of the physical difficulty of filming. “We did under ice diving in Antarctica,” which was demanding “because everything about [that environment] is not made for humans.”

“You are drilling through two metres of sea ice with a big drill to make a man-sized hole and any bit of exposed skin starts dying in that temperature,” he tells us. “Bits of your lip start falling off because everything else is covered apart from your lips around the regulator.”

And as they “weren’t tethered in Antarctica…it’s very easy to get a long way away because the water is so crystal clear.” Chadden explains the risky choice is all in the hope of getting the perfect shot. “Russians and Norwegians would tether underneath ice but when we were filming, because we don’t want the ropes getting in the way of our shots, we asked if we could go untethered.

“[It’s] fine if you’re looking out for each other, but if you swim away from that hole for ages you don’t realise that actually you’re 200 m away because the water is so crystal clear” and you’re underneath this huge “white ceiling.”

Whilst a rewarding experience, Chadden recounts that the cold weather conditions during filming “killed me.” Because of this, he made the (perhaps wise) decision to head straight to the Arabian Peninsula for the production of his next series Wild Arabia.

“I remember the very first day on Wild Arabia we were in the desert, I was wearing shorts and flip-flops and I was getting the camera out of the big pick-up truck and we were in work-mode, thinking about the shots. I looked down to my flip-flops and I almost wanted to cry, I was so happy,” he says laughing.

But the weather isn’t the only challenging aspect of filming: “Technically [speaking], the thick grasslands (seen in Planet Earth II) were tough because you can’t see anything,” says Chadden. “We were using drones to get shots from above, trying to setup camera traps inside the grass that animals would walk past, but it’s very hard to know where the animals.”

“We had to set up a trigger, usually an infrared beam up a pathway, which the animals would trigger as they went past to tell the main camera to turn on before the animals got there” but this wasn’t always as easy as it sounds.

“Grass blades would fall around and trigger the infrared beam, so you get lots of false triggers where the camera switches on and there is nothing all day,” Chadden explains. “Then a lot of the animals, when they came across these cameras hidden in the grass, they just hated them and they would start to pull them apart.

“Sometimes trying to outwit animals and get cameras close to them without disturbing them is probably one of the biggest challenges.”

Photo: Chadden Hunter

The idea of just watching nature, instead of interacting with it, is a recurring theme in modern documentary filming. As Chadden says, actions taken by animals are purely “natural selection.”

“On frozen planet, there was this one situation where these king penguin chicks, which were pretty big but still fluffy, had fallen into a hole in the ice. They were all trapped in there and freezing and were never going to get out.”

But “this cameraman was insisting on getting them all out and we decided not to do anything because that’s happened naturally, it probably happened every year – there are thousands of penguin chicks that haven’t fallen in that hole – but for him it was a personal thing that he couldn’t stand by and watch it.”

However, last year’s Planet Earth II series saw a U-turn in this way of thinking. Many might remember, during the finale ‘Cities’, the hundreds of turtle hatchlings in Barbados that were killed by cars or by falling down drains after becoming disoriented by city lights.

“The turtle hatchlings were really interesting because the public response was ‘how dare you’,” says Chadden. The BBC later released a statement stating that all the hatchlings filmed had been returned to safety, and that they were now working closely with local conservationists on methods of prevention.

“If it’s a man-made ordeal that the animals are going through then we might make a different decision but usually we are working with someone who is a local expert or scientist that would take that responsibility on.

“If you see a very emotional scene of an animal dying on screen we always get some kind of comments from viewers” but “you do not interfere with nature taking its course, no matter how horrific it is” – a hard, but necessary, action to take.

So, what should wildlife fans look forward to next? The BBC produce one blockbuster nature series each autumn, and this year is no exception. “Coming up later this year we have Blue Planet II with David Attenborough on-screen again” (a rare but welcome surprise), says Chadden.

“Then the next year we have a series called ‘Dynasties’ where each episode follows a different animal family. We spent two years following one lion pride in Kenya etc. but it’s a really different style and hopefully the storytelling in it will be more genuine because you really will be watching the rise and fall [of these animal families].”

 

The Top Films on Netflix – Spring 2017

These are a pick of current Netflix gems which are perfect for settling the nerves of University or at least escaping from them for an hour or two.

What We Do in the Shadows (2014)    4/5

Created by Kiwi film-maker Taika Waititi – director of 2016’s critically acclaimed Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Disney’s Moana – What We Do in the Shadows is a hilarious yet dark comedy-mockumentary about four vampires living together in Wellington, New Zealand.

Co-directed and written by Flight of the Conchords star Jermaine Clement, the film was billed by The Guardian as ‘funniest comedy of the year’ in 2014, and puts previous attempts to tackle the vampire-comedy genre such as Fright Night (2011) and Dark Shadows (2011) to shame, Waititi perfectly judging the balance between the dark and the funny.

Encounters with a gang of socially insecure werewolves and a brilliant gag regarding vampires not having reflections are but two wickedly funny moments in the film that, despite its sinister subject matter, is a surprisingly uplifting and warm comedy which is perfect for lifting those exam period blues.

Sicario (2015)               5/5

From the director of 2016 hit Arrival and the much-anticipated, upcoming Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve’s Oscar-winning Sicario is an adrenaline-fuelled foray into the war on drugs and the Mexican cartel.

Anyone who has watched a film from the French-Canadian auteur will know that Villeneuve pulls no punches in his works, and Sicario is his most brutal and shocking film to date.  Emily Blunt (Edge of Tomorrow, The Girl on the Train) plays a former FBI agent who is assigned to a CIA task-force, with the objective of finding a Mexican drug baron, accompanied by a grizzly CIA officer played by Josh Brolin (There Will be Blood, No Country for Old Men) and Benicio Del Toro’s (Che, Guardians of the Galaxy) mysterious Alejandro.

Visually stunning and ingeniously written, the city of Juarez and the surrounding desert are shot so ominously that the on-screen locations truly feel alien, akin to the representation of the middle-east in Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (2012).

Equally impressive is Blunt’s brilliant performance as the protagonist, mirroring exquisitely the paranoia and dread the film induces in the audience.  Arguably the best thriller currently on Netflix, if you need a film to help you forget those pre-exam butterflies for a couple of hours, Sicario will definitely do the job.

The Nice Guys (2016)       4/5

A slightly different tone of film from Sicario, The Nice Guys is an upbeat crime-comedy thriller starring Ryan Gosling (Drive, La La Land) and Russel Crowe (Gladiator, Les Misérables).  Set in 1977, Gosling’s Holland March is a private detective who unwittingly crosses paths with Crowe’s glorified thug-for-hire Jackson Healy, who then both proceed to investigate the disappearance of a young girl.

Not to be confused with Will Ferrell’s much sillier and more brainless The Other Guys (2010), The Nice Guys is a colourful, comic caper which juggles tactfully the laugh-out-loud funny and the neo-noir thriller.  The two main characters are flawed yet loveable, with the chemistry between Gosling and Crowe the driving force behind the success of the film’s gags and narrative.

Director and writer Shane Black is no stranger to the crime genre, having written the Lethal Weapon film series, but after the distinctly average Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) and the latest Iron Man sequel, The Nice Guys is a return to form, and is one of the funniest films on Netflix at the moment.

Honourable Mention:  The Lobster (2015)        3/5

An acquired taste and definitely not everybody’s cup of tea, despite the glum, deadpan nature of the film, The Lobster is undoubtedly one of a kind.  Colin Farrell stars as the recently dumped David who is sent to a countryside hotel in a dystopia where single-life is forbidden, and all partner-less residents must find a spouse within 45 days, failure in doing so resulting in being turned into an animal of their choice.

With supporting performances from Ben Whishaw (Cloud Atlas, Skyfall) and John C. Reilly (Wreck-It Ralph, Kong: Skull Island), Farrell is unrecognisable with a beer belly and a pair of dorky spectacles, worlds apart from his roles in Hollywood juggernauts such as Total Recall (2012) and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016).

Ultimately a scathing attack on the concept of love, The Lobster is gloomy yet ‘hideously funny’, the morbid, satirical and dystopian nature of which making it a must-watch particularly for fans of recent Netflix addition Black Mirror.

Review: Mindhorn

Fans of the BBC cult-comedy The Mighty Boosh will be delighted to see Julian Barratt (Nathan Barley, A Field in England) finally land a lead role on the big screen.

Written by himself and occasional fellow-Boosher Simon Farnaby (Bunny and the Bull, Burke and Hare), the film follows Richard Thorncroft (Barratt), the washed-up star of an 80s TV crime show named ‘Mindhorn’, where he played the titular bionic detective who, with the use of a robotic eye, could literally ‘see the truth’.

Thorncroft’s career is well and truly down the drain, until a suspected serial murderer tells the police that he will only speak to Detective Mindhorn.  Consequently, Thorncroft is drafted in to the negotiations with the criminal, and the actor does everything he can to utilise the situation to reignite his dwindling career.

Despite the slight similarities with 2013’s Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa, Mindhorn really does feel like a breath of fresh air.  The laughs are relentless right from the get go, and is a welcome break from the constant churning out of film adaptations of British TV comedies.

It proves British TV comedy actors do not have to resort to rehashing their shows on the big screen in order to achieve cinematic success, as did Jack Whitehall in the dire The Bad Education Movie (2015) and Ricky Gervais in the plain David Brent: Life on the Road (2016).

It is also a unique chance to see the Isle of Man finally having a chance to play itself in a film, after being passed off as locations such as New York (Me And Orson Welles), Cornwall (Stormbreaker) or various other places in the majority of its appearances in film.

The jokes which Mindhorn delivers are genuinely hilarious, and offer as much ‘quoteability’ as comedies such as Hot Fuzz (2007) and the Monty Python films.  However, for those who have not seen the trailers, my advice would be to stay away from them before watching the film, because, as is the case with the majority of comedy trailers, they do show many of the best gags.

A cameo from Kenneth Brannagh is one scene which is almost shown in its entirety in the trailer, and will undoubtedly deliver more laughs if avoided before viewing.

It has to be said that Barratt and Farnaby have done a superb job in creating the fictional show of ‘Mindhorn’, with such zest and authenticity that you could not be blamed for believing that the 80s show genuinely did exist.

It is the backdrop of the fictional show which helps give a certain degree of credibility to Barratt’s ridiculous yet sympathetic Thorncroft, and it is exciting to hear the writers on the BBC Breakfast Show recently speaking about the possibilities of making a TV series of the fictional drama.

As with Alpha Papa, the film does begin to feel slightly stretched towards the end, the gags and humour becoming slightly usurped by action and hurried narrative resolution.  There is the slight suspicion that it would have perhaps worked better in a shorter and more succinct TV feature.  However, it is lovely to see Julian Barratt finally getting the limelight on the big screen, and in time to come, Mindhorn will possibly come to be mentioned along with recent greats such as Shaun of the Dead (2004) and In the Loop (2009) when people speak of great modern British comedies.

4/5

 

Review: Girl on Girl

Photographs of women taken by women are nothing new in a time when most people have access to a camera and women are no longer chained to the kitchen sink. But the “female gaze” is currently having a moment in the artworld and female photographers are breaking boundaries both in terms of creativity and relating to gender.

Girl on Girl is a photobook curated by Charlotte Jansen and it features the works of 40 contemporary female photographers. The images are as diverse as the women who took them; the photographers come from different countries and cultures, and the images vary in style, yet are united through the concept of the female gaze.

Each artist has their own story to tell, resulting in photographs that succeed in both aesthetics and meaning. Lebohang Kganye layers images of herself over old photos of her mother, wearing the same clothes and recreating her mother’s pose, resulting in ghostlike apparitions that hover in the original image and explore the similarities that appear across the generations. Her images have a beautiful ephemeral quality, yet there is a sad nostalgia to them as they reflect how brief a relationship between mother and daughter can be.

Contrastingly Mihaela Noroc photographs women of today, with the aim of capturing a woman in every single country. She celebrates the diversity of female beauty, her work perfectly illustrates that it shouldn’t be limited to a Westernised ideal. Noroc has photographed women, so far, from a variety of places, including India, the Amazon Rainforest and China. Each woman is unique and of equal importance in every image.

The female gaze can transform the way that women are viewed, challenging old fashioned opinions. Tonje Bøe Birkeland does just that by championing the idea of the female explorer, a figure who is often overlooked by history. Birkeland stands alone in barren, hostile landscapes that seem to be never ending, yet her figure is a point of gravity within the image, secure in itself and in its surroundings. She portrays a woman who is brave and daring, one who is not afraid of adventure.

Yvonne Todd also seeks to transform stereotypes; she takes the idea of the traditional, glamourous housewife and turns it around to reveal a more disturbing side. A woman with shiny hair and perfect make up stands in a quilted dressing gown, staring frightenedly at the lens with red-rimmed eyes which don’t quite match the rest of her appearance.

Another image captures a necklace entwined in the delicate fingers of a manicured hand, but the acrylic nails are so long they become claw-like and threatening. Todd’s women challenge the Hollywood housewife ideal and her photographs convey a sense of eeriness and of unease.

Every page of Girl on Girl is different. Some of the photographs are easy to look at, with colours and compositions that please the eye; others are more shocking and are even grotesque. But they all celebrate femininity and the creativity of women today.

Interview: Green Party candidate Laura Bannister

With the election only three days away, I was grateful that Green Party candidate Laura Bannister had taken the time to meet me at the University of Manchester Students’ Union, straight from the train station, for a last-minute grilling on her campaign, the homelessness crisis, and climate change.

When did you join the Green Party? Why?

I joined the Green Party in 2009, after going to a workshop about economics and banking with Molly Scott Cato [Green MEP for the South West of England and Gibraltar]. It wasn’t party-political, but hearing the Green Party talked about in connection to progressive economics, it made me want to find out more about it. I fully expected it to be quite meek [Ms Bannister admits here that, like many, she associated the Green Party as predominately ‘environmental’ before her research] but found there to be radical, yet sensible and workable proposals for a different kind of economy and society that I wanted. The policies were a close fit with the values that I have and so it seemed like the logical step to join up. I’ve been there ever since.

Why did you decide to run in Manchester Withington?

I’ve lived [in Withington] for a couple of years now, but have lived in surrounding areas since I moved away from home. It’s my home in Manchester and I feel really connected to it as an area. I’ve talked to lots of people and feel connected to what’s going on, so of anywhere I’d like to represent it would be [Withington].

If elected, what are the biggest changes you would like to see in your constituency?

I think the people of Manchester Withington are a pretty broad-minded bunch so there is a lot of stuff I would want to fight for in Westminster. A very big part of that is a new economic approach that reverses the austerity cuts we’ve seen over the last seven or eight years.

So many of the issues that people have been contacting me about essentially tail back to huge funding cuts that we’ve seen in public services, the NHS, and in schools. There are so many different groups that are suffering as a result of that, including a domestic violence group I am in contact with that has had their funding cut. People are worried about health issues but there is no funding or staff. It always seems to come back to this issue of funds being taken away or not increased in line of what they need to.

The Green Party’s manifesto is fully-costed so we are not making empty promises when we’d reverse the cuts, that we’d invest in the NHS, we’d invest in schools – we’ve actually looked at the sums and what we can raise from progressive taxation. None of which are especially radical or extreme. They are all about asking people to contribute a little bit more when they are well able to and benefiting from the economy as it is.

The Green Party is particularly popular with young voters. Why do you think this is and how have you reached out to young voters during your campaign?

I think the Green Party is a very broad-looking party and we talk about change on a bigger level. When I was originally looking around at political parties, no other offered the sort of positive change that I was looking for. I think that maybe young voters tend to look at the bigger picture, and to think long-term – ‘what kind of world do I really want to live in?’ – rather than settling for immediate and smaller changes that other parties offer.

I also think that we have a lot of great policies that young people can see themselves benefiting from, like free education and writing off tuition fees. We’ve also talked recently about free travel for younger people and bringing services back into public ownership. Young people are about to go out into the world of work and are looking at where their careers are going. They want to be working in important sectors of the economy that are driving forward into a useful and workable future. You want a vision that is moving towards a world of opportunities.

I think young people respond to the same kind of messaging that everybody does. We talk to young people like we do to all people, which is frankly and realistically about what is going on. But we do try to reach people through various channels; public meetings, street stalls, and on social media, so that we are hopefully connecting with people.

You’ve mentioned during your campaign your passion for fighting against high levels of poverty and homelessness across the city. What would be your next steps if elected?

I think we’ve got to be clear about taking real action rather than just making targets and giving warm words. I really hope that Andy Burnham [who has dedicated 15 per cent of his Mayoral wage to a homeless charity] does take real action and this goes so far beyond politics. Homelessness is an immense crisis – I’ve only just come through the city centre and the sheer number of people sleeping rough and begging is a massive indictment on our society. No-one should end up living in that situation.

We need a multi-pronged approach with social housing, so that there are homes available in which to house people, and I hope that Andy Burnham and the Labour Party will take seriously the prospect of building social housing and changing the laws that allow it to be sold off so easily at the moment. There are also a lot of expertise of people who have worked with people with these problems, that is not being put to use because of cuts. It comes down to taking the problem seriously and beyond targets, to making sure the homes and services are there.

This year we saw climate change find its way into mainstream political discussion on the BBC Debate and Caroline Lucas [co-leader of the Green Party] was particularly happy of its inclusion. What are your thoughts on the issue, especially with the recent news of President Trump backing out of the Paris Climate Agreement?

It’s not really an option whether we take action on climate change or not. We can choose to ignore it, as it might not be that important as it hasn’t affected it us yet, but innocent people who are famined and have done nothing to contribute to climate change are already suffering.

I think we need to use it as an opportunity to recreate the systems of economic systems and our transport, energy, and housing, in a better way. For example, if we are going to create a new energy infrastructure, rather than having it privately owned by a few well-off individuals, we could have it in broad public or community ownership with lots of people benefiting from it. I think it’s important to bring into the debate that this is not a problem of personal morality – we need to have solutions on a political level. That’s why we need politicians like Caroline Lucas to start those discussions and then we need the policies to nod us, as individuals, in the right direction.

How do you feel about the co-leadership of the Green Party? Do you think we will see this style adopted by other parties in the suture?

I think it works brilliantly for [the Green Party]. Caroline [Lucas] and Jonathon [Bartley] work great together – they’re both great people and speakers so they complement each other well. Whether it will be adopted by other parties, I couldn’t really comment on.

What I would say is that I don’t think that parties having dual-leaderships because leaders represent different fractions in a party would create a cohesive voice – which is often what people look for when searching for a political party. It’s not a solution for a diversity of opinion.

‘Hey Nancy, leave teachers alone!’

Picketers performed a parodied rendition of Pink Floyd’s protest anthem on Oxford Road, outside the Alan Gilbert Learning Commons on Monday 5th of June, in objection to the recent board of governors’ decision to axe 171 staff jobs within the month.

A group of academic staff and students from the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures called upon an alternative style of social activism by reworking the lyrics of Another Brick in the Wall in a bid to grab the attention of passers-by and encourage onlookers to get involved.

The song, sung twice in unison over a backing track recorded four days earlier, opened and closed the event, with a short poem written by the University’s Chancellor, Lemn Sissay, recited in between.

Joining the demonstration was branch secretary of the University of Manchester’s branch of the University and College Union (UCU), Adam Ozanne, who provided context to the Manchester 2020 manifesto, announced on 10th of May, which puts over 900 staff across the university at risk of possible compulsory redundancy.

“We were shocked because we thought that after the terrible IT services dispute two years ago, we had an agreement with the university that nothing untoward and sudden like this would happen, that there would be a period of notification and planning”.

He told The Mancunion that the proposals were both “flawed”, in that the university has reserves totalling £1.5bn and a recorded surplus of £59.7m for the year of 2015-16, and “antipathetic to everything that stands for in a university based on public service and collegiality”.

Close to 200 professors from the university have already signed a letter addressed to Edward Astle, the chair of the university’s board of governors, expressing their discontent with the “ill-considered and unjustified way” in which proceedings were taking place.

But Adam called upon people from everywhere in the university to “mobilise support”, even those not at risk, and praised this particular event for being a step in the right direction — “it captured the eye and was extremely helpful for spreading the message”.

Sorcha Floyd, Campaigns and Citizenship Officer for the Students’ Union, also present at the rally, spoke of how such “creative tactics” are “a fun way of getting attention” and “letting the senior management team know that people aren’t happy to lose their jobs”.

One senior lecturer, who teaches a final-year option on French Protest Music, comments on how such an approach can “forge group identities and feelings of communality — people coming together around shared interests and goals”.

“Its immediate, simultaneous, ubiquitous nature facilitates and strengthens the expression of resistance”.

Though the rain had threatened to call off the event, which was relocated last minute under shelter, the event saw a turnout of approximately 40 attendees, of which members from student activist groups made up a large number.

Jade Alleno Mortimer, a French and Italian undergraduate, there on behalf of Resist Restructuring Manchester, outlined what had already been done in solidarity with the staff at risk, including an online petition that had amassed over 5000 signatures at the time of writing.

Meanwhile, Krutik Patel, studying Genetics, there on behalf of SOS MCR (Save Our Staff Manchester), detailed what was being organised for the coming weeks, including email dumps, open letters, a banner drop and a demonstration on Wednesday 7th of June from 14:00-15:00 outside University Place.

For Jade, student participation has never been so paramount to achieving social action, “because staff jobs are at risk, they don’t feel able to speak out”, but “it’s not a risk to us, and I think it’s our duty to help them”.

In a statement a spokesperson from the University of Manchester said: “Regarding the ‘£1.5bn reserves’: this figure includes all of our buildings, all equipment, books, land and heritage assets. Our Financial Report for 2016 shows that the University’s cash reserves are £430m, but £300m of this relates to bond finance raised to enable the relocation from North Campus.”

The University’s Chair of Governors, Edward Astle, also replied personally to all of the signatories in which he wrote: “I fully recognise that some of these proposals will cause concern to some staff. To minimise the period of uncertainty, I am very supportive of the University’s efforts to proceed with consultation with the Trade Unions and to open a targeted voluntary severance scheme as soon as possible to avoid the need for compulsory redundancy if at all possible.”

Manchester attacks: “I am writing this as a Muslim, a woman, a mother”

As you can probably tell from my name, I am an Arab, I am a Muslim and I am not British. The aim of this article is not to state that Islam is a religion of peace, nor to say that all these terrorist attacks do not represent me, my religion or my beliefs.

I am writing this to share my feelings. I am writing this as a Muslim, a woman, a mother, as someone who lived in Manchester for many years, as a student who learned and gained experience from the University of Manchester, and above all as a human who is feeling sad, confused, scared, but who still believes in the good of sharing feelings and thoughts that bring us all together.

The Manchester Arena bombing was devastating news. This news came seven months after me and my family left Manchester and returned to our home country, after six years living in Manchester.

During my usual morning Facebook check, I saw the news that Manchester was under attack. I immediately checked the news, and asked my sons to ask about their friends in Manchester to see if they were ok. While I was watching the news, I felt that my home was being attacked.

Those streets, alleys, hospitals, and halls, were all familiar to me. The hospital I took my son to, the street I walked on dozens of times, the shopping centre where I used to hang around, and most importantly, the people, the Mancunians who I talked with, made friends with, with whom I celebrated New Year and Christmas lights, enjoyed hot summer days and complained about the non-stop rain.

I felt that my home was under attack and didn’t know what to do. The children who were in the concert could be my children’s friends or friend of a friend. It could have been myself and my children since we went to many concerts in our days in Manchester. These children could have been the same children who came to our house, and played football with my sons.

On top of being sad and devastated for the families who lost their loved ones and for the city I love dearly, there also came the news that the attacker was a Muslim man who lived his whole life in Manchester — this alone added salt to the wound and made the pain even more severe.

The bomber had a similar name to our names, claimed to have a religion the same as mine, talked my language, but was in no way near to what I hold in my heart and mind.

Yes, the people of Manchester were betrayed by a man who lived amongst them, who attended Manchester schools, and who went to Manchester hospitals when he felt sick, who walked between people but deep inside him and in his mind he was planning ways to kill and destroy.

This man and anyone who acts or believes in what he did, betrays the communities they live in. These terrorists do not only attack and betray cities and spread horror, they betray Islam. They make Muslim communities vulnerable to hate crimes, anger and to be subjected to crimes they did not commit.

As Muslims, we now find ourselves demonized on all news channels, social networks, and in most discussions. We are attacked by both sides, by terrorists who kill our loved ones, and disrupt the stability of the countries and cities we live in, and by a society, who questions our faith in all media and conversation.

These terrorists condemn all that is important to us. Our home, loved ones, security, freedom, faith and ultimately, our identity.

As a Muslim woman and a mother, and as someone who has lived for many years in England and in the Middle East, I have to say, I am scared, powerless, angry, and I feel stuck. I am stuck in a situation that I can do nothing about. I cannot convince ISIS to stop the killing, destruction and the horrific treatment of people. I cannot tell them to stop using my beloved religion to serve their agendas and sick motives. I cannot convince the world that ISIS doesn’t represent our beliefs or us.

In the past few years, I have seen the utter anguish of an Iraqi friend who lost her father in a bombing in one of the Baghdad markets. I witnessed the pain of a relative who lost her twin boys in an ISIS attack in an Istanbul restaurant. And yet more pain for another relative who lost her cousin (a mother of two) also in an ISIS attack.

I have witnessed the rise of ISIS in my region and every time I watch the news, I feel like I am watching a horror movie from the Middle Ages. I have witnessed the deadly war in Syria and Yemen, where people of all ages are being killed, bombed, poisoned by chemical weapons, forced to flee and drown in dark seas for a war that no one knows why it started or when it will end.

I feel scared by the rise of tension between Suna and Shiaa Muslims as neighbours kill each other because of religious and racial conflicts. I feel scared by the rise of Islamophobia. I try not to read the comments on social media as I feel I am being blamed and attacked for something I will never do.

I always try not to be affected by the stories of friends who wear the Hijab and are constantly being attacked in the streets. People who get shot and stabbed because they look like Muslims and Arabs. My relatives who are doctors and students are shouted at and being called losers because they are Muslims. I feel scared for my children, my sisters, my brothers, and my friends for fear of them being bullied, discriminated against, or attacked for being Muslims.

I feel powerless. I have no power to stop ISIS. I have no power to stop the Syrian War. I have no power to stop the weapons trade. I have no power to stop corruption or disruptive ideologies. I have no power to stop discrimination and hate. I have no power to stop the media from calling ISIS or DAESH ‘Islamic State’, a name they gave to themselves but which put every Muslim and terrorist in the same box.

In the past few years, I have tried to do something and not just stay with hands folded. In 2011, I went to my boys` school in a local neighborhood in Greater Manchester. There I talked with children about Islam and tried to let them know that Muslims are not the evil people they see in the news but they are their friends and neighbors.

In 2014, I created a video by asking Muslims from different parts of the world to hold a paper saying “Bring Back our Girls” in solidarity with the girls in Nigeria who were kidnaped by Boko Haram, a terrorist organization who also use Islam as their tool to achieve their own agendas.

In 2015, I wrote an article entitled “Not In My Name” in this newspaper after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris saying that those attacks were not in our name and that it didn’t represent our faith or us.

In 2016, I went to a vigil in Manchester city centre after the Nice terrorist attack. I went there with my veil on to stress that I am a Muslim and I am in solidarity with the French people.

But whatever I do seems tiny and insignificant compared with the events that are taking place. The amount of lives lost, the ugly ways of killing, the attacking of places, cities, communities that we love, and the feeling of betrayal, makes me feel I am standing in front of a tsunami wave that wants to wipe out everything we hold as important.

So to anyone who is out there, feeling scared, angry and helpless, know this: you are not alone. To all mothers, who are afraid for the future of their children, who want their children to be safe and respected for who they are: you are not alone.

To anyone who hates terrorists and what they believe: you are not alone. To anyone who is sick of politics and power: you are not alone. To anyone who wishes for a better future, who believes in unity, friendship and love: you are not alone.

To anyone who is willing to stand beside me in front of the tsunami wave: I hope I am not alone.

Dalal Abbasi , has an MA in Digital Technologies for Communication and Education from the University of Manchester and a PhD in Education.

Interview: Liberal Democrat candidate – John Leech

The first person to greet me as I walk into John Leech’s Chorlton based HQ is Leech himself, dressed casually in a Manchester City t-shirt and jeans, sorting through campaign material.

I have to wait a few minutes before we can start our interview while he speaks with a constituent who has come in to offer is support. After this we begin our interview in an office cut off from the noise of a room buzzing with volunteers, all wearing bright orange stickers which read ‘I miss John Leech’.

Leech lost the Manchester Withington seat in 2015, as one of the many casualties of the UK-wide collapse in support for the Liberal Democrats, however he is adamant that the stickers are not wishful thinking.

“If I had £10 for every time someone had told me over the last two years how upset they were that I didn’t get re-elected in 2015 I’d be a very rich man”.

This apparent desire to see a Liberal Democrat back in power does not, however, seem to be reflected within the national polls, for most of the campaign they have stalled on 8 per cent, meaning they have made little to no advance in the polls since their disastrous 2015 election.

Leech is not unaware of this issue and while he argues that he’s “not entirely sure that the national polls are accurate because the only real poll that we’ve had in the last eight weeks is the local elections where we polled 18 per cent of the vote”, he knows the reception on the doorstep he describes “doesn’t necessarily translate into votes”.

The Liberal Democrats began their campaign confidently with the hope that their passionate pro-EU stance would win over the 48 per cent of remain voters, but if we are to believe the polls this is not going to happen. With this in mind does Leech admit his expectations of what’s going to happen to the Liberal Democrats on June 8th have changed since the beginning of the campaign?

“Well we certainly expected to do better than we expect to do now…people seem to have waved the white flag and just accepted that the economy is going to be destroyed after Brexit”.

When this snap election was called most expected it to be the Brexit election, but domestic issues such as social care and now anti-terror and security policy in the aftermath of the tragic events in Manchester and London have taken precedence over the issue of Brexit.

I ask Leech whether the party may now regret pinning their hopes on remain voters, but he is unwilling to change the record and boldly claims “the reality is if the 48 per cent of people who voted to remain in the European Union actually voted Liberal Democrat we wouldn’t be leaving the European Union, because if we were back in government we would stop it”.

Leech also blames their lack of momentum on Labour and the fact in his eyes that they are conning voters “into voting Labour thinking that Labour are on their side on the issue of Europe”.

“How anybody who voted to remain is even considering voting Labour given where they are on Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn almost certainly voted to leave the European Union, went on holiday during the campaign and made no attempt to get Labour voters to vote to remain in the European Union”.

Leech’s bemusement at the support of remainers for Labour is clear, as is his obvious desire to continue to maintain his passionately pro-EU stance: “One thing that I’m not prepared to do is change the message”. However has this message failed to get through to the voters?

“I think so, yes” he quickly replies before blaming this on the fact “Labour have tried to avoid the election being at all about Europe, because they are so all over the place on the issue”.

Leech promises that when we do leave the EU, which seems now to be inevitable, he will be saying “we told you so… we warned people and we’re just going to have to face the economic reality of a trashed economy post-Brexit”.

On this downbeat note I change the subject to how he felt the night he lost his seat of 10 years at the 2015 election, but he admits he knew way before then it was “blindingly obvious” it was not going to go his way.

“From about 3 days after the election in 2010 I knew I was not going to be the favourite to win in Manchester Withington at the following election”.

The public had in his words decided in he was “going to get punished, because we’d been in coalition with the Tories, despite the fact the things that they wanted to punish me on I hadn’t voted for”.

Leech was one of two Liberal Democrats to vote against the coalition agreement, “the only living person who didn’t vote for the coalition”, he adds, with the former leader Charles Kennedy who passed away in 2015 being the other. Does he still believe this was the wrong decision for the party?

“It was the wrong decision made with the right intentions. People who voted for it genuinely believed it was in the country’s interest”, however despite this he claims “had we not been in coalition and had we then had a second election I am absolutely convinced that in the event of there being a referendum on our membership of the European Union it would not have been lost”.

“An undamaged liberal democrat party would have been able to persuade enough people who ended up voting leave to vote remain”, he explains.

I check I’ve heard him correctly and ask again whether he really believes joining the coalition is to blame for Brexit?

“We might as well get blamed for that because we’ve been blamed for everything else”, he jokes, but adds that no one “could have foreseen what would happen. I don’t think anyone actually thought that the referendum was going to be lost”.

The conversation turns now to the elephant in the room, tuition fees. Leech as with the coalition agreement voted against the rise in tuition fees, despite this I ask whether he feels it still impacts on the electorate’s view of him?

“Not massively so. I think the issue was not the issue, the issue was trust. You said you’d do this and you did that.”

Leech explains he believed that the “compromise deal on tuition fees should have been no raise no fall”, but blames the previous Labour government and the Browne Review for removing funding from universities with the plan that this funding would be replaced by removing the cap on tuition fees, “everyone seems to have forgotten that”.

Leech is not wrong here, his party used to enjoy 30-40 per cent of the student vote before 2010, and since his party’s backtrack on their tuition fees pledge the Conservatives are now the second-most popular among students, according to recent research. I ask Leech what his views on tuition fees are now?

Leech maintains “a first degree should be free” but “we just can’t afford to do everything we would like to do”. Instead he outlines how the Liberal Democrats have prioritised education in the early years as they believe “the biggest barrier for people being successful… and going to university is falling behind early on”.

He also argues there needs to be “a proper debate about how many university places there should be” with so many people leaving University and ending up in non-degree jobs.

This argument does not seem to be changing the hearts of young voters however, particularly as Labour have promised to make tuition free; does Leech think he is going to win back student voters at this election?

Leech is not optimistic their message will win against “Jeremy Corbyn’s fantasy manifesto which offers pretty much everything apart from free ice cream for kids”, but argues that young people have not recognised that “if some political earthquake puts Corbyn into number 10 they won’t be able to deliver on it”.

I turn the questions now to local issues facing students in his constituency. In the past few years there have been numerous reports of attacks against young women in the area, which the annual Reclaim the Night marches aim to highlight.

Leech is adamant that as part of the planned redevelopment of Owen’s Park in Fallowfield, which will see more students flood into the area, there needs to be a fully costed patrol system funded by the university “to not only keep students safe but also to ensure that local people are also not having to put up with significant amounts of noise late at night”.

I ask whether he agreed with the use of G4S as patrols in the area and he admits he’s not “massive fan”.

“Ideally the university development [would fund] police community support officers to do that role, it’s far more appropriate for it to be done by the police, rather than by a security firm.”

In addition to Leech highlights that under the Liberal Democrats there would be an extra £16m per year for GMP to increase police presence, particularly in student areas such as Fallowfield and Withington, and Leech claims he has been working closely with GMP around the attacks

The issue of police presence draws our interview to the tragic terror attacks in Manchester, and now London. I ask what more he thinks needs to be done to prevent such an attack?

“I suppose the sad reality is if extremists want to do people harm…there are going to be certain tragic terror events that we can’t stop.”

However he explains there are ways of minimising the risk and claims the Prevent strategy which aims to this currently “simply hasn’t worked”.

Leech explains how his party believes it “needs to be replaced with an alternative, which we would call engage”. This alternative according to Leech would work with different communities to come up with a better strategy.

Alongside this Leech argues we need to “do an awful lot more in schools to ensure that young people aren’t being disaffected… We need to find out what the cause of that disaffection with young men is, where are we going wrong?”

As our time begins to run out I give Leech one more chance to try and win over the young voters of his constituency and he claims that during his 10 years as MP he “stood up for students” and was “constantly attacked for either standing up for students or for criticising students”.

Unsurprisingly however, his final words are on the topic of Europe as he urges young voters to recognise that “the other two main parties have abandoned remain voters”.

“We are the only party sticking up for Britain being at the centre of Europe and young people want Britain to be at the centre of Europe so young people should be voting Liberal Democrat”.

Review: Object Lessons

Enter the Object Lessons’ Exhibition room and you will be greeted by one of the collection’s strangest curiosities, a preserved Armadillo. So well preserved is this Armadillo, you may even think it was still alive. Suspended in time, the Armadillo seems to represent the idea that lies at the very heart of the collection, to provide a window to the past through the intricate beauty of objects.

The windowless room in which the collection rests, subtly bathed in moody yellow light, puts the visitor in mind of a mysterious, old, room in a stately home, brought to life by table after table adorned with a charming relics of the past.

At its centre, is one of the loveliest. Papier-Mâché flowers and glass jellyfish sit in their very own bell jar, allowing visitors to admire the life-like craftsmanship of the German Glassworker Leopold Blaschka, alongside scientists worked with his son Rudolf to create true-to -life models of sea animals.

Made in a time when soft bodied animals like these could not easily be preserved, the glass models allowed the animals to be documented free from the limitations that came from analysing them in their organic form. The glassware helped bring exotic creatures, such as the Portuguese Man O’ War to Victorian England, and allowed scientists and biologists to record their existence.

Much of the rest of the exhibition once served as an educational tool and in one corner it even features a collection of old projector slides, formerly used in university lectures, like little stars in a mirrored cubical.

Each one is illuminated, allowing the viewer to appreciate miniature illustrations of everything from plants and flowers to dinosaurs, fish, and human anatomy.

Another corner hosts the Framing Time collection which displays a set of 19th century models representing prehistoric animals along with drawings and fossils, which show Victorian interest in prehistory and what contemporary scientists thought these creatures might have looked like.

Critical to the collection is the Museum’s goal of blurring the boundaries between art and science. Most of the pieces on display belong to the private collection of George Loudon, a prolific art collector who has, for much of this life collected anything from carpentry tools to high art.

The collaboration between Loudon and The Manchester Museum has not only facilitated the public display of historical objects that would otherwise be confined to the private market but also allowed the Museum to display valuable items that are usually kept in storage.

The partnership, which also includes the World Museum in Liverpool also lets the spirit of contemporary art to permeate the arrangement of the pieces. With minimal information provided alongside the objects, the viewer is encouraged not to become preoccupied with factual detail but rather to appreciate the aesthetic beauty of the objects presented.

The benefit of enjoying the collection in this way means that the pieces can be fully appreciated for themselves, giving them renewed value.

Removed from heavy factual contextualisation, the collection allows the viewer to appreciate the little details that help to build the wider scientific world, piecing together ornaments of the past. The beauty and charm of these objects facilitates interest in them and helps to bring the viewer closer to a world often overlooked.

Object Lessons runs at the Manchester Museum from 19th May – 20th August 2017

Students evacuated from homes as massive police investigation takes place in Rusholme

Homes and businesses around the Rusholme Place area of Rusholme have been evacuated as police continue to investigate ‘significant’ developments relating to “the movements of Salman Abedi” prior to last week’s terror attack at Manchester Arena, which killed 22 people and left more than 100 injured.

A 100-metre cordon is in place around a white Nissan Micra parked at Devell House on Oxford Place, which police are “assessing” and which is believed to be suspicious. Detective Chief Superintendent Russ Jackson said that the vehicle “is potentially a significant development in the investigation”.

A source told the Manchester Evening News that the vehicle “could be booby trapped, so the approach is cautious and the bomb squad will then be in to look at it. But they won’t come in until the evacuation is complete.”

The bomb squad were in the area for several hours, but are reported to have been seen leaving the immediate vicinity at around 5.30pm. Police are also raiding a house on nearby Banff Road, and forensics officers have been seen in the area.

University of Manchester students living in halls and rented accommodation in the area have been evacuated from their homes, as well as hundreds of people who have been evacuated from shops and businesses in the area, including the Ford Madox Brown Wetherspoons’ and Lidl on Oxford Road, which are now closed.

The Ronald McDonald House on Hathersage Road has also been evacuated.

Police are advising residents and passers-by to avoid the area, and the University of Manchester has advised all students who have been affected by the evacuations to make their way to the Owens Park campus.

In a statement online, the university said: “If you have been asked to leave your accommodation as a result of the ongoing police incident in Rusholme please go to Owens Park in Fallowfield. Staff will be on hand to provide more information or follow the updates from @gmpolice.”

One University of Manchester student who lives on Oxney Road, next to Devell House, said, “we are all unable to access the house,” and that they “were just told to stay away for the next few hours” by police.

Another University of Manchester student described a “heavy” police presence in the area. Twitter user @molliewalker_x tweeted: “Loads of police present in Rusholme. Thank you to @gmpolice for so much hard work over the last 2 weeks”.

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) have asked anyone with information about the car to come forward: “We are very interested in anything people can tell us about the movements of this car, and who was in it, over the past months.

“We are also interested in any information about who may have had access to the car or who may have gone to and from it.”

GMP confirmed yesterday that they still have 10 people in custody on suspicion of offences contrary to the Terrorism Act, and that six people have been released without charge.

Anyone with information relating to the investigation is asked to call the Anti-Terrorism Hotline in confidence at 0800 789321, and if you have any images or footage that you believe may be helpful to the police, then please upload them to Ukpoliceimageappeal.co.uk.