With the results of the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review now published, Sarah McCulloch considers potential alternatives to the impending spending cuts. From getting rid of Trident to clamping down on tax evasion, she found a few. Sarah McCulloch On Wednesday the 20th of October George Osborne announced £81bn in cuts to public spending. This includes […]

The coalition government proposed to help pay the cost of tuition fees for some of the country’s poorest students ahead of the tuition fee vote last week.

After much agonising we now know how each Liberal Democrat MP cast their deciding vote during last Thursday’s crucial debate. As expected, every Lib Dem at the centre of government, including Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Business Secretary Vince Cable voted for the rise.

Up to 500 students and activists marched in Manchester against the government’s proposed rise in tuition fees last Wednesday. The march took place on the eve of the House of Commons vote, which saw an increase in fees by a majority of 21 votes.

He’s probably the most successful composer you’ve never heard of, but having written stunning soundtracks to films like Amelie and Goodbye Lenin!, this French multi-instrumentalist’s pedigree is assured.

The National Union of Students has a £5.5m tobacco habit, is this why students don’t campaign against cigarette companies?

Two very different poets introduced Magma to the Manchester Literature Festival, giving the audience an extraordinary display of the talent and skill, which lines the pages of the ever-growing poetry magazine. Jacqueline Saphra challenged the limit of her listeners’ squeamish boundaries with a (thankfully, brief) glance at her own conception, while Alan Buckley somehow managed […]

Both magazines are sold in Cornerhouse; to contact the magazines visit www.corridor8.co.uk and www.bewilderbliss.com.

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is Ben H. Winters’ imaginative parody of Jane Austen’s nineteenth century classic.

A blend of comedy, romance, thrilling swordfights and contemporary horror

Everything you would expect to find in an early piece of Gothic writing is there

To add to the stress of a human-vampire relationship and the perils that befall it, there is a murderer on the loose and his pattern is “fang-bangers”

The novel is brimming with taboo images of the sexually repressed Victorian period.

Wednesday 20th October saw the first successful UMSU General Meeting in 18 months, with six motions being passed. Yet whilst I was in the meeting I began to understand why it rarely reaches quorum. The whole process is wrapped in bureaucratic red tape, making it dull and boring; for every motion at least four speeches are made, with room for questions in which the speakers just tended to repeat themselves. If someone wants a motion to go straight to vote, then another two speeches are made.Most people that come to General Meetings come to support or to block a particular motion. These people come with their minds already made up. Case in point: this reporter believes that Manchester Labour Students (MLS) and J-Soc (Jewish society) came to the General Meeting in order to block the Peace Through Education motion, by leaving the meeting at a crucial point, in what appears to have been an attempt to break quorum. If that is the case, then they had just come to the meeting with their minds already made up, so what was the purpose of all the speeches anyway?

Young women in today’s society are often said to have it all – the power to have what we want when we want. Unlike our parent’s generation we have fewer issues with women’s rights (though not completely eradicated) and are largely free to live in a society where men and women have equal privileges. For the large part, as women our autonomy remains largely uncompromised – we can go to university, study a subject we like, get a job we want – without our sex compromising it – or so it would seem. There is however one part of our lives that remain uncontrolled and an unfathomable force of Mother Nature, not understood by men and women alike – our breasts.

It is a well-worn path to criticise the hypocrisy of many Liberal Democrat voters. While in the run up to the general election many were brazenly calling for “new politics” (a phrase that dated as fast as it was coined) and making a plea for an end to the tribalism of the two party system, these people (many of whom are students) are now reeling and seething at the Lib-Con marriage that is the coalition Government.

Twitter was busy this week with Manchester students moaning about the cold whilst protesting against cuts outside the Tory conference in Birmingham. Black and red posters appeared hastily pasted up in their usual fashion around the campus, “Stuff your cuts, we won’t pay!” read the slogans. But it’s not just the Commies who are upset; there is an atmosphere on campus from many students and staff that they are on a collision course with the Conservative-Liberal government.

There are a section of people present at most universities in Britain who probably accumulate more dislike from the rest of the student body than any other. They are the only group cliquey enough to organise their own ski trip, whilst being the only sports team more unbearably annoying than the organisers of the normal ski trip. I’m referring to the single most ‘banterific’ group of students that has ever walked the Earth, the Medic Rugby Boys.

“I am who I am because of everyone” was the tag phrase of the old advertising campaign of a certain mobile phone company, and a tag phrase that also I took personal disagreement with, despite it being a very arguable, if pretentious, slogan.

“There simply isn’t room in the ivory towers for fifty per cent of school leavers to attend university, and there never was”