HARBEN LETS HL Fashion Show Preview - The Founder

thefounder 

the independent student newspaper of royal holloway, university of london 

Exclusive 

interview with the 

new SU President 

“It’s not the Rachel 

Pearson Students’ Union; 

it’s the Royal Holloway 

Students’ Union.” 

Ed Harper 

News Editor 

THREE weeks after the furore of 

sabbatical elections Rachel Pearson 

found time in an increasingly 

busy schedule to sit down with The 

Founder. Already delivering on her 

promise to be accessible and approachable 

to anyone at anytime, 

this would be Rachel’s second interview 

with The Founder where she 

talked about the thrill of winning, 

life since and the big issues affecting 

students. 

Bounding into Bedford library at 

9am with seemingly limitless energy 

Rachel and I initially began by 

talking about result night and life 

around campus since. Still getting 

used to being recognised around 

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News 

Fashion Show 

Preview 

campus Rachel described both the 

enjoyment and shock of being approached 

and pointed out to next 

year’s freshers during last week’s 

open day. 

Despite seemingly limitless enthusiasm 

for helping and representing 

the students at Royal Holloway, 

Rachel was also aware of need to 

finish her history degree. Admitting 

that “reading week came at 

the perfect time” as the rigours of 

campaigning had a left a lot to do, 

Rachel talked about how odd it was 

to return to work after spending 

so long focussing on the elections. 

Helped by James Pigeon who has 

warned next year’s sabbatical team 

about getting distracted Rachel was 

fully aware of the importance of 

Continued on page 3 » 

RHUL academic fights 

against climate change 

ALISSA BEVAN reports on RHUL’s 

involvement in the campaign 

4» 

The hopes of the Union lie with Rachel Pearson, above, next year 

Photograph: Tom Shore 

Comment & Debate 

Why is campus so 

expensive? 

NIKKI SAMUELS poses the question 

of why we’re so out of pocket? 

25» 

Sport 

RHUL Lady Bears win 

ULU Cup 

HOLLOWAY’S ladies’ basketball 

crowned ULU champions 30» 

E X T R A 

free! 

Volume 4 | Issue 8 

Thursday 11 March 2010 

thefounder.co.uk 

Library 

hours 

extended: 

pressure 

finally 

pays off 

After first being announced at the 

Big Student Debate a trial period 

of extended library opening hours 

began this week. Seemingly unannounced 

by the university, news 

spread quickly by word of mouth 

and via a facebook group. 

Both Bedford and Founders Libraries 

will (for a five week trial 

period) be opening from 8:30am 

to 1am on weekdays and from 9am 

till 9pm on weekends giving students 

an extra 24 hours each week 

for study. The result of continual 

pressure on the university to extent 

opening hours this extension marks 

an important first step towards the 

availability that so many students 

crave. 

Currently running on a trial period, 

these extended hours will only 

Continued on page 2 » 

Page 14 

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2 

The Founder 

The Independent Student Newspaper of Royal Holloway, University of London 

Email: editor@thefounder.co.uk 


For the latest news, reviews, and everything Holloway, get online 

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tf editorial team 

Editor-in-Chief 

Jack Lenox 

Editors (2010-2011) 

Tom Shore & Ed Harper 

Chief Sub-Editor 

Camille Nedelec-Lucas 

News Editor 

Ed Harper 


Editor 

David Armitage 

Features Editor 

Thomas Seal 

Editor of Extra 

Camron Miller 

Editor 

Tom Matthews 

Film Editor 

Daniel Collard 

Music Editor 

Jack Ingram 

Arts Editor 

Alexandra Kinman 

Sport Editor 

Lucy McCarthy 

Pictures Editor 

Tom Shore 

Designed by 

Tom Shore 

& Jack Lenox 

The Founder is the independent student newspaper of Royal Holloway, University of London. We distribute at least 

4,000 free copies every fortnight during term time around campus and to popular student venues in and around 

Egham. 

The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Editor-in-Chief or of 

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holders of copyright for any material used in this issue, and to ensure the accuracy of this fortnight’s stories. 

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© The Founder Publications Ltd. 2010, 53 Glebe Road, Egham Surrey, TW20 8BU 

Royal Holloway Entrepreneurs 

will be presenting its final event of this term on 

Thursday 25 March 

featuring our founding patron 

Professor Alec Reed CBE 

Founder of Reed Recruitment 

(and many more!) 

Main Lecture Theatre, 6pm 

News - In Brief 

tf Next deadline 

The Founder | Thursday 11 March 2010 

Library hours 

extended: pressure 

finally pays off 

» continued from front page 

become permanent if students use 

the extra hours however with end 

of term essay and dissertation deadlines 

fast approaching these extra 

hours should help. With Bedford 

library consistently full by midday 

each weekday, longer hours should 

take some of the pressure of study 

space that is all but stretched to its 

limits. With talk of plans to open 

up certain rooms around campus 

during exam period, genuine and 

beneficial efforts are being made to 

combat the problem of too many 

students and not enough desks. 

The next deadline is Wednesday 17 March, 

send your submissions to: 

Editor - editor@thefounder.co.uk 

News - newsdesk@thefounder.co.uk 

Comment & Debate - comment@thefounder.co.uk 

Extra - extra@thefounder.co.uk 

Arts - arts@thefounder.co.uk 

Film - film@thefounder.co.uk 

Music - music@thefounder.co.uk 

Features - features@thefounder.co.uk 

Sports - sports@thefounder.co.uk 

Pictures - pictures@thefounder.co.uk 

Thanks! 

You can also keep up-to-date with everything that’s happening at 

Royal Holloway on our new (and improved) website: 

www.thefounder.co.uk 

Many Royal Holloway students 

have expressed a strong desire for 

24-hour opening hours however 

concerns over student health and 

the cost of keeping a library staffed 

through the night have so far kept 

24-hour opening from being considered. 

However with many other 

universities both above and below 

Royal Holloway in the league tables 

already keeping their libraries open 

through the night, increasing pressure 

on existing resources and growing 

student support hopefully it will 

not be too long before the contentious 

issue of libraries is opened up 

for renewed debate.


News 

Exclusive 

interview with the 

new SU President 

» continued from front page 

concentrating on her degree. 

At the same time however Rachel 

is preparing herself for next year. 

Soaking up advice from James Pigeon, 

David Cummins and any previous 

sabbatical officer willing to 

give advice it was clear that Rachel 

is giving next year considerable 

thought. Following a fairly empty 

General Meeting on the 23rd Rachel 

talked about how she was “kept up 

for quite a while” that night trying 

to think of ways to increase turnout 

to this important event. Though 

not wishing to “take away a person’s 

right to be apathetic” Rachel is keen 

to publicise the event especially to 

next years freshers. 

During both interviews Rachel 

was brimming with ideas for next 

year including; holding a fortnightly 

two hour surgery to improve accessibility, 

a variety of practical plans 

to open up more space for students 

and societies, and holding a “design 

your own union night competition”. 

With over 8,000 students to please 

Rachel identified the need to gain a 

deeper understanding of what students 

want as another important 

aim, achievable through the expansion 

of “Operation Entertainment”. 

Recognising space, both for study 

and extra-curricular activates, as 

one of the most important issues affecting 

students, Rachel remained 

dedicated to helping improve the 

use of space, publicise the genuine 

improvements being made and improve 

awareness and ease of using 

resources in London. 

tf Newsdesk 

Pragmatism is an equally important 

part of Rachel’s approach. Acknowledging 

that some changes that 

students want are simply impossible 

to achieve in just a year or given 

their financial implications. However 

Rachel remains committed to 

lobbying for the big changes along 

with making the small changes that 

will improve the student experience 

at Royal Holloway. 

It is important to remember that 

Rachel’s campaign for the SU presidency 

has been three years in the 

making. When asked during an earlier 

interview for The Founder during 

polling week what had inspired 

her to run for the demanding and 

often thankless role of president, 

Rachel described how “the seeds 

were very much sown even before I 

got here, I knew I wanted to make a 

big impression” and that by November 

of her first year she had decided 

to get involved and eventually run. 

Involved continually in the union 

since arriving at Royal Holloway 

as first year rep for the drama society, 

president of the drama society, 

chair of roscars committee, societies 

federation officer and a volunteer 

around campus and during freshers 

week; it is strikingly clear just how 

much Rachel knows about Royal 

Holloway and how the lives of its 

students can be improved. 

Next year will show just how successful 

the many and varied ideas 

of next year’s sabbatical team will 

be yet from what has been seen so 

far Royal Holloway Students’ Union 

looks like it will continue to go from 

strength to strength. 

Want to join our reporting team? 

Just want to write a one-off article? 

Just want to give us an anonymous tip? 

Contact our newsdesk at: 

newsdesk@thefounder.co.uk 

Rise in university applications is both a good and bad thing 

Photograph: Yaopey/flickr 

Rise in university 

applications increases 

competition 

Amy Norman 

Recently published statistics have 

shown that university applications 

have reached record levels for the 

fourth year in a row, and this year 

could see over 200,000 prospective 

students missing out on a place at a 

UK university. 

According to the latest figures 

from UCAS, applications are up almost 

a fifth on last year. At the moment 

more than 570,000 students 

have applied for a place at university 

starting this autumn, an increase of 

over 100,000 on the same time last 

year. UK applicants are up 22.1%, 

while overseas applicants are up 

28.7%, having risen from 55,245 to 

71,105. 

Last year, despite 633,000 applications, 

only around 480,000 people 

got a place at university. This year, 

if applications continue to come in 

at the same rate until the June deadline, 

over 200,000 school leavers will 

not gain entry to university, as the 

Higher Education Funding Council 

for England (Hefce) has confirmed 

there will be 6,000 fewer places for 

full-time undergraduates in the next 

academic year. 

Mary Curnock Cook, chief executive 

of UCAS, has said “this cycle 

will be very challenging and competitive 

for applicants”. Coupled 

with the government placing a cap 

on places like last year and the fact 

that universities who broke this cap 

and over-recruited now face having 

to pay fines for each extra student, 

mean places will be scarcer than 

ever, and inevitably many students 

will be disappointed. 

It is thought that many of the increased 

number of applications are 

as a result of the recession, espe- 

Please recycle this newspaper when you are finished 


Arts Building, The Hub, Gowar and Wedderburn Halls, T-Dubbs 

3 

Want to write for the newsdesk? 

Got a tip-off? 


cially as applications from the over- 

25s rose by 63.4%, while those from 

the 21 to 24 year old category rose 

44.8%. There has also been a 45.5% 

increase in people reapplying for 

places. 

Professor Steve Smith, president 

of Universities UK, the group that 

represents ¬vice-chancellors, has 

said “it’s inevitable that we are going 

to see even more pressure on places 

this year and the strong possibility 

of many well-qualified students 

missing out.” 

However, the higher education 

minister, David Lammy, simply 

said: “Getting a place at university 

has always been, and should be, a 

competitive process. Not everyone 

gets the grades, and some decide 

university is not for them. It’s early 

days and students haven’t even sat 

their A-levels yet.”

4 

News 

Thanks, Mum : the free-digital way 

Royal Holloway, Egham, 22 February 2010 : 

Students of Royal Holloway are taking part in a 

Social Enterprise Challenge held by Thanks To. 

It is a not for profit organization that helps you 

send people a very special thank you. By writing 

a message on www.thanksto.co.uk you can show 

someone how much you care by sending them 

a message that lets the world know about their 

good deeds. Alternatively, you can keep your 

message private and just share it between you 

and the thanked person. Both ways, you show 

that extra bit of effort that will make your thank 

you extraordinary. 

Students participating in this challenge are postgraduates 

and they feel enthusiastic about the 

concept of showing their gratitude in a different 

way. 

Vera Hölscher, a member of Thanks, Mum campaign, 

expresses “We chose to champion Mums 

in our campaign because there are no other 

people in our lives that go to an equal extent at 

loving us and paving our way. Since Mother’s Day 

is around the corner this is the perfect (and free, 

last-minute) way of sending them a message of 

appreciation and love.” 

The link to the campaign is: 

http://thanksto.co.uk/campaign/thanks,mum 

In collaboration with: 

Last month saw a two day conference, 

Greenhouse gases in the 

Earth system: Setting the agenda 

to 2030 organised by one of Royal 

Holloway’s leading Earth Scientists, 

discussed the use of long-term 

monitoring to assess the effects of 

greenhouse gases on our planet 

The conference aimed to debate 

“the use of long-term monitoring to 

understand greenhouse gases in the 

Earth System.” Claiming that “new 

scientific advances promise regional 

audit of emissions, assessment of 

uptakes, and better understanding 

of controlling and feedback processes,” 

the event assessed the implementation 

of these new techniques 

in order to build the agenda for the 

next two decades. 

The two day conference took 

place at the Royal Society in London 

between the 22nd and 23rd of February, 

and was chaired and partly 

organised by Professor Euan Nisbet, 

of the Earth Sciences Department at 

Royal Holloway. Alongside Dr. Ed 

Dlugokencky of the Earth System 

Research Laboratory in Boulder 

Colorado, Professor Nisbet showed 

that atmospheric levels of Methane, 

a greenhouse gas more potent than 

Carbon Dioxide, have significantly 

risen over the past three years. 

A further aim of the meeting 

was also to discuss the need to improve 

the monitoring of greenhouse 

gases in order to set targets for the 

future. Although every country is 

now required to report their emissions, 

the discrepancy between the 

amount of pollution reported and 

the actual level of emissions in the 

atmosphere is an issue that needs to 

be addressed. 

During his presentation with 

Dr. Dlugokencky, Professor Nisbet 

explained how greenhouse 

gas emissions are monitored by 

ground-based systems and the improvements 

that need to be made 

in order to produce more reliable 

emission figures in the future. 

Green issues remain an extremely 

contentious contemporary issue 

however Royal Holloway has recently 

been involved in a number of 


Royal Holloway academic 

leads the fight against 

climate change 

Alissa Bevan 

Government-commissioned research 

published recently has found 

that students could be “sold on the 

idea” to pay higher tuition fees for 

courses that traditionally lead to the 

highest-earning careers. 

The Institute for Employment 

Studies (IES) who carried out the research, 

revealed that while students 

are averse to paying more for particular 

Universities, differential fees 

for different courses is seen in a decidedly 

positive light. However, the 

National Union of Students (NUS) 

reported that “it would consign the 

poorest students to ‘bargain basement’ 

degrees.” Essentially, those unable 

to fund more expensive degrees 

will have their studying options 

narrowed and consequently their 

career opportunities significantly 

diminished. While the increase in 

tuition may improve the situation 

with higher education funding, it 

could be very damaging in causing 

further rifts between the lower and 

upper classes. It is a choice between 

economy and culture. 

With degrees currently on one 

price level, going to University is not 

all about pursuing a career, but about 

finding out what is it we might like 

to do, what we are most passionate 

about and what does and does not 

look like a realistic prospect for us. 

By introducing differential rates, 

there would be significant pressure 

to choose the right course and to 

continue on, on the same track upon 

graduation. Traditionally, around 

75% of Oxford Law graduates go on 

to work in Law. With a possible 25% 

of students pursuing other options, 

the hike would be unjustified and 

potentially bankrupting. 

Opinions from Royal Holloway 

students show a mixed response to 

the proposal. While some feel pejoratively 

against the move, “It’s just 

not fair, if you don’t get a strong 2:1 

in Law, you won’t get into a good 

activities that aim to minimise the 

impact of our modern lifestyles on 

the environment. RHUL Islamic Society 

presented Ready? We’ll make 

you steady. GO GREEN on 25th 

February, was as a ‘unique event’ 

designed to “raise awareness of the 

state of the environment today.” 

Furthermore a short docudrama, 

The Age of Stupid, was shown to 

a large number of students in the 

Windsor Auditorium last term. Exploring 

the impact of our current attitude 

towards the environment on 

the future, the film is part of the ongoing 

10:10 campaign. With a continuing 

poster campaign informing 

students how they can help save energy 

as well as this and next year’s 

SU sabbaticals dedicated to raising 

awareness of climate change issues, 

Royal Holloway is begging to take 

all important steps towards becoming 

a much greener university 

For more information on the Department 

of Earth Sciences visit: 

http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Earth-Sciences/, 

while information on the 

Royal Society can be found at www. 

royalsociety.org. 

Different fees for different courses 

Francesca Wilski 

chambers and you won’t make a 

great deal of money to make up for 

the hike in tuition fees” argued one 

RHUL student while another pointed 

out such a change, “makes a degree 

a commodity that can be valued 

– it would put an actual price tag on 

diplomas and would risk destroying 

the validity of other courses.” While 

others seemed strongly favourable 

to it, “Those hoping to become layers 

or bankers generally come from 

wealthy backgrounds anyway, the 

private schooling and training often 

needed to have a chance at success 

in these sectors is expensive, so why 

not take as much money as we can 

from them, before we start paying 

their bonuses.” 

Any proposals to raise fees always 

result in a strong reaction from the 

student populace, as seen in last 

year’s “keep your cap on” campaign. 

This research marks a worrying development 

that potentially threatens 

to restrict university access.


News 

Students suffer the 

stress factor 

Alissa Bevan 

A three-year study carried out into 

the way students experience their 

time in higher education has shown 

that the post-Christmas blues hit 

first year undergraduates the hardest 

when they return to university 

for the start of their second term. 

The study saw forty undergraduates 

at Leicester University were 

asked to talk to their video cameras 

about anything to do with their university 

life that was important to 

them.”We gave first years a video 

camera, but then no other instruction 

except that we wanted at least 

five minutes of footage a week,” 

explained the director of the university’s 

Centre for Excellence in 

Teaching and Learning in Genetics, 

Professor Annette Cashmore, 

whose team then analysed the two 

years worth of video diaries. The 

subjects of research were completely 

undirected, which the professor said 

was a critical point to the usefulness 

of the data collected. 

Despite expecting students to be 

anxious about the transition from 

home to university in their first term, 

Professor Cashmore and her team 

were surprised by the increase in 

anxiety levels caused by going home 

for Christmas and then returning 

for the first weeks of the spring 

term. “One student talked about 

leaving her boyfriend at home, and 

when it got to Christmas she was 

nervous because of going back to a 

life she’d moved on from.” This point 

was reiterated by many students 

around the campus at Royal Holloway, 

with many explaining that they 

had argued or even split up with 

their boyfriends or girlfriends since 

moving to university. Some students 

found returning to old friendship 

groups difficult, particularly when 

many their school friends have chosen 

to take gap years and continue 

to socialise together regularly. 

At Leicester, second-year student 

Ann Akeredolu said that 

she couldn’t really enjoy that first 

Christmas break with her family 

due to worrying about exams. “I 

tf Newsdesk 

knew there were six as soon as I got 

back in January, but I also wanted 

to go home and have fun,” she remembers. 

Many first years here also 

experienced similar problems, finding 

that enjoying time with family 

and old friends and doing university 

work at home was a difficult balance 

to strike. 

Miss Akeredolu also pointed out 

that first years have to deal with living 

without their familiar support 

structures at a time of stress, as new 

friendships can’t yet be relied upon 

in the same way. “For the first few 

weeks of that second term back, I 

don’t think I was really settled into 

uni. You’ve only just made your 

friends, and they’re not deep friendships 

yet,” she said. 

Other worries that affect Royal 

Holloway students included house 

hunting and finance problems. 

“With all the problems I had sorting 

finance out last September, I’m really 

reluctant to start the process all 

over again for next year,” said a firstyear 

politics student. “House hunting 

also caused some awkwardness 

when we had to split our friendship 

group at uni into two groups 

to find houses for next year. We all 

had different budgets, and some 

people liked houses we saw together 

while others didn’t. We felt a bit 

rushed into signing contracts when 

we heard that other people had already 

sorted out their houses before 

Christmas.” 

While unsympathetic view might 

be that students will face more difficult 

challenges in the ‘real world’ 

after university and should stop 

complaining, Professor Cashmore 

explained that a central point of the 

study is to ‘find out what prompts 

students to drop out of university 

and how best to support them so 

they don’t.’Dropping out is an expensive 

and demoralising experience 

for students, and also damages 

a university’s reputation. Bearing in 

mind that 35,000 students a year in 

England don’t complete their degree 

course, it’s understandable that 

Higher Education managers want to 

find ways of to help undergraduates 

bear the pressures that arise dur- 


ing university life. “For many, university 

is a wonderful experience, 

but for some there can be times of 

loneliness, isolation and doubts 

about the choices they have made,” 

explains Dr Christina Lloyd, head 

of teaching and learner support at 

the Open University, which recently 

published a national survey of students 

who had dropped out or were 

considering leaving. A third of students 

who withdrew said they didn’t 

enjoy university life, while only 8% 

claimed debt was an issue. 

While it may be assumed that 

anyone who has managed their first 

year successfully will cope in their 

second and third, Professor Cashmore 

pointed out that as the video 

diary study has progressed, it has 

become apparent that students have 

to constantly adjust and readjust to 

changing social and academic demands 

throughout their university 

career. Repeated topics in the diaries 

included worries over settling into 

new accommodation, coping with 

new personal relationships and getting 

used to new styles of teaching 

and learning. 

At Royal Holloway, a number of 

options are available to students suffering 

under stress. Led by Elizabeth 

West, Meditation Day takes place 

on Saturday, 6 February, 10.30am 

- 3.30pm in IN244. Open to staff 

and students of all faiths and abilities, 

anyone interested should contact 

the Revd Sally Rogers on 01784 

443070 or email sally.rogers@rhul. 

ac.uk (lunch is not provided a donation 

of £5 for students and £10 for 

the staff is requested to cover costs.) 

Religious and spiritual support is 

also offered through the university’s 

chaplain and faith council services 

(information is available on the university 

website, www.rhul.ac.uk.) 

This website also lists the wide range 

of support available to students under 

it’s ‘student support’ icon on the 

university’s homepage. Names and 

contact details for everyone from 

finance advisors to residential support 

officers are provided. Help is 

at hand for the students looking for 

relief from stress. 

Students’ use of 

‘smart drugs’ on 

the rise 

Amy Norman 

The increasing trend for students 

using performance enhancing drugs 

in exams has lead to calls for universities 

to consider methods of stopping 

the problem, including random 

drug testing. 

Cognitive enhancement drugs, 

such as Ritalin and modafinil, are 

easily available to buy over the internet 

and are used to increase the 

brain’s alertness; however according 

to Barbara Sahakian, a professor 

of clinical neuropsychology at 

Cambridge University’s psychiatry 

department, this has “enormous implications 

for universities”. 

These types of drugs are usually 

used in the treatment of neurological 

disorders such as Alzheimer’s 

disease, attention deficit hyperactivity 

disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy 

by improving brain functions 

like alertness and attention. Their 

increased use by students has however 

prompted calls for an ethical 

debate on the matter, including how 

society views the use of such drugs, 

after concerns that they could give 

students an unfair advantage. 

When asked whether they would 

consider taking performance enhancing 

drugs, Royal Holloway stu- 

5 

dents give a mixed response. Some 

are in favour of the idea, saying “I 

don’t care about the long term effects. 

If it would get me better exam 

results then I definitely would” and 

“there’s nothing wrong with having 

a pick me up; it’s just a step up from 

caffeine really”. There are also concerns 

over the prospect of random 

drug testing, with students saying 

“surely this would raise a whole new 

set of both practical and ethical issues 

rather than simply solve the 

problem?” 

However, many are against the 

prospect, stating “I wouldn’t as it 

feels like cheating; you should only 

be tested on your natural ability. It 

would give some students an unfair 

advantage and pressure others into 

taking them in order to compete”, 

with another student adding “it’s 

just the same as an athlete taking 

steroids to win a race. I would say it 

counts as cheating”. 

There are also concerns over the 

health implications, with one student 

saying ‘I think it’s too risky. We 

don’t know the long term affects; 

no studies have been carried out. I 

wouldn’t want to mess around with 

something that could put my health 

at risk when it hasn’t even been 

proved to do any good”.

6 

News 


Pre-election debate: MPs, journalists and 

the Royal Holloway Debating Society 

Alexandra Sanson 

& Fiona Redding 

The Independent Live! Pre-Election 

Debate took place on February 3rd 

2010, and three members of the 

Royal Holloway Debating Society 

attended in order to participate in 

the political discussions which are 

reaching their climax in the run-up 

to the general elections. Although 

no date has been officially set for 

the general elections, there is a legal 

requirement for polling stations 

to be open before June 2010. Politicians 

and journalists formed the 

panel, which was presided over by 

Steve Richards, the Independent’s 

chief political commentator. The 

MPs were Charles Clarke, Labour 

MP for Norwich South and former 

Home Secretary, and Chris Huhne, 

Liberal Democrat MP for Eastleigh. 

They were joined by Independent 

columnists Yasmin Alibhai-Brown 

and Michael Brown; the latter is a 

former Conservative MP. 

The debate opened with each of 

the panellists offering their opinions 

about the British economy, society 

and globalisation. Charles Clarke 

expressed concerns that there had 

been an “insufficient assessment” 

of globalisation. His primary focus 

was the economy, stressing how 

the finance sector needed to be reevaluated 

in light of “utility” versus 

“casino” banking; he called for 

“less centralised government” and 

greater transparency of the tax system. 

The issue of centralised and 

local government became a theme 

throughout his speech, as he elaborated 

on public services reorienting 

their focus to the consumer’s needs, 

or the “patient, pupil and parent”. In 

response to green issues, he noted 

that society needs to undergo drastic 

“changes in behaviour”, in tandem 

with energy and transport policies. 

Clarke reflected that “we have 

to be more dependent on ourselves 

and our local communities.” 

Michael Brown offered a disparaging 

overview of the Conservative 

party’s shortcomings, commenting 

that the Tories are always liable to 

“snatch defeat from the jaws of victory”. 

Just a few months ago Brown 

was sure that David Cameron would 

“sleep-walk” his way into parliament; 

now, however, he does not 

believe that the Conservatives will 

be elected with an overall majority. 

He says that the Conservative’s 

economic policies are “unclear” and 

“confused”. Despite this, the Labour 

party are deeply unpopular amongst 

the British public, with 72% of the 

general public indicated in a recent 

poll that they do not want another 

Labour government. In Brown’s 

view, Cameron does not appreciate 

what being the leader of a country 

means, he simply fancies himself as 

the Prime Minister. 

In Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s view, 

Britain should “never again be taken 

to war on a false premise”, alluding 

to the Iraq Inquiry currently taking 

place. Alibhai-Brown offered a 

characteristically metaphor-laden 

diatribe against “double standards”, 

saying that we have all “got to live by 

the same rules”. She talked about the 

“imperialist gene”, apparently written 

into our DNA, which we must 

get over in order to face the “Muslim 

question”. Tensions became evident 

in her speech however, when 

she followed her previous argument 

with the idea that the British government 

had “gone too far” in liberalising 

society, and that this was the 

cause of increased fundamentalism. 

The final speaker, Chris Huhne, 

followed Clarke in making the 

economy the primary focus of his 

speech. He spoke of the need to 

reinvent the economy in light of 

advances in renewable energy, calling 

for a “green revolution”. This 

issue, he emphasised, needs to be 

driven by policy change rather than 

technology and business demands. 

Huhne commented that society 

is still “deeply unfair”, but he was 

quick to point out that the increase 

in the gap between rich and poor 

has not happened as fast as it did 

under the Conservative government 

of the 1980s. Huhne was particularly 

vocal in calling for less of the 

“lumbering traditional central government”, 

devolving powers to local 

authorities and constituencies. He 

noted that the UK has the most centralised 

government in the EU, with 

94 pence of every £1 going through 

Whitehall, compared to an EU average 

of approx. 50%. 

After the panellists had given their 

speeches, the debate was opened out 

to the floor and audience members 

invited to ask their own questions. 

We asked of all the panellists “Why 

is it that no political party will be 

drawn into the debate surrounding 

tuition fees?” The response that we 

received was a little less than illuminating. 

Chris Huhne restated the 

standard Liberal Democrat line that 

his party is committed to “free education” 

for all, and that he thought it 

“basic and sensible” that we should 

uphold this fundamental principle. 

He quickly qualified this with the 

observation that “fiscal constraints” 

prevent this from being possible. 

Charles Clarke, who was a key proponent 

in passing the legislation for 

top-up fees, reiterated the argument 

that “nothing in life is free”. Somebody 

“needs to pay” so it seems fair 

that the individual user pays for that 

service, given that they themselves 

benefit. In Clarke’s view the standard 

loan should not be means tested, 

since what a student’s parents earn is 

irrelevant once you are over 18 years 

of age. It seems that the choice has 

been made to prioritise funding for 

the government’s “Sure Start” policy, 

rather than higher education. 

“The Debt Question” was raised 

by several people, specifically with 

regard to what measures the panellists 

thought would be most effective 

in solving the UK’s debt problem. 

Charles Clarke called for an increase 

in taxes, “not cuts in public spending”; 

he stressed that we must discourage 

spending in the domestic 

sphere, and called for greater “regulations 

for private lending”. Michael 

Brown vehemently opposed Clarke’s 

arguments, remarking that there 

must be “nasty, vicious cuts…that 

will hurt the people”, that “there is 

no way of escaping pain”, and that 

we had better start now or else the 

situation will only get worse. Chris 

Huhne argued that we do not just 

need to increase taxes and make 

spending cuts: we need “the third 

ingredient” growth. He used the 

metaphor of a “lost generation” to 

illustrate the danger of plummeting 

self-esteem in a financially depressed 

period, as witnessed during 

the 1980s. 

Another theme of considerable 

concern to members of the general 

public was a complete ‘disillusionment 

with politics’: how will MPs 

engage with their constituencies 

and the electorate in order to combat 

the increased apathy that voters 

feel in the wake of the ongoing 

expenses scandal and the Chilcot 

Inquiry? Electoral reform seems 

particularly pertinent in light of 

the fact that 40% of all constituencies 

have never changed hands since 

WWII. Michael Brown restated his 

argument that “David Cameron 

simply wants to be Prime minister” 

and that the Conservative party 

are “scared of their own shadow”. 

In Brown’s view, it is a shame that 

the Conservatives will not coherently 

state their views on reform of 

the financial sector, since all voters 

have clear – and often united - views 

about regulating the industry and 

the bankers. 

When polled, the majority at the 

pre-election debate thought that 

there would be a hung parliament, 

and the majority wanted a hung 

parliament. A hung parliament occurs 

when there is no clear majority 

in the House of Commons; the last 

time there was a hung parliament 

in the UK was 1974, and before 

that 1929. Charles Clarke, a staunch 

anti-Brownite, suggested that a new 

Labour leader would have a good 

chance of winning a majority. Yasmin 

Alibhai-Brown called for a 

“new kind of party”, adding that a 

hung parliament was the most preferable 

outcome of the general election. 

Chris Huhne rather unsurprisingly 

remarked that people always 

underestimate the Liberal Democrats. 

Brown closed the debate by 

remarking that the Tories will most 

likely “stumble into office with a 

narrow majority.”


News 

RHUL postgraduate 

running for 

Parliament in 

Anglesey 

Ashley Coates 

Anthony Ridge-Newman, 31, an 

ESRC doctoral researcher has been 

selected as the Conservative Parliamentary 

Candidate for Anglesey, 

the 278 square mile island in North 

Wales. If he succeeds he will become 

one of 3 Royal Holloway alumni sitting 

in the House of Commons. 

He is now living in Anglesey 

where he regularly meets local 

residents and has started learning 

Welsh. It has taken a lot of work to 

get this far. “I first had an interview 

with the South East Regional Director. 

That was just to get the application 

form. A ten page application 

form later, I was called to a Parliamentary 

Assessment Board, known 

as the P.A.B. This is a five hour interview 

which involves a number of 

tasks and assessments. Soon after I 

was told that I had passed my P.A.B. 

I was then placed on to the Conservative 

Party Parliamentary Candidates 

List.” 

The final stage of the selection 

process saw Anthony making a 

speech to the Anglesey Conservative 

Association along with the five 

other short-listed candidates. Like 

the elections for our sabbatical officers, 

a candidate has to gain a certain 

number of votes to win on the first 

ballot, or subsequent ballots will be 

called with the lowest scoring candidates 

being knocked-out at each 

stage. “It gave me great confidence 

that I was the right man for the job 

when I was elected on the first ballot. 

I have been told that the reason I 

won the selection was because I had 

thoroughly researched the local issues 

and I gave confident answers. I 

was able to do so because my fiancee, 

Victoria, and I had spent a good 

amount of time in the constituency 

before the selection meeting - talking 

to local people and getting to 

know the island”. 

Anthony gained a first class bachelor 

of science degree from his studies 

at the University of North Carolina 

and the University of Plymouth 

and a master’s from the University 

of Surrey. Having already been involved 

in student politics at his previous 

colleges, Anthony chose to focus 

his attention on wider political 

issues, founding Runnymede and 

Spelthorne Conservative Future. He 

was later elected as a Councillor for 

Runnymede Borough Council. He 

has enjoyed his time at Royal Holloway: 

“There is something for everyone 

at the College. The College has 

wonderful traditions, but it is also 

open to new ideas. The management 

team were a great support when I 

revived Formal Hall. I think being 

the Formal Hall Founding President 

has been the highlight of my time at 

Royal Holloway. I enjoy getting on 

and making things happen.” 

There are currently two Royal 

Holloway graduates sitting in Parliament: 

Gregory Barker MP (Conservative) 

and Norman Baker MP 

(Liberal). Mark Lloyd, another 

RHUL alumnus is the Conservative’s 

candidate for Bristol South. 

Gregory Barker left Royal Holloway 

with a BA in History and Modern 

Politics and has been the Conserva- 

tive MP for Bexhill and Battle since 

2001. Barker was subject to a media 

furore in 2006 when the Daily 

Mirror revealed he had left his wife 

and children and, a few months 

later, was in a relationship with William 

Banks-Blaney an interior designer 

who counts Oprah Winfrey 

amongst his clients. 

Norman Baker graduated from 

Royal Holloway with a BA in History 

and German. He has been a 

Liberal Democrat MP since 1997 

and has developed a reputation for 

being a thorough and honest politician. 

He stood down from the Liberal 

shadow cabinet in order to pursue 

his own investigation into the 

death of Dr David Kelly, the biological 

warfare expert who committed 

suicide after becoming embroiled 

in the clash between the BBC and 

Downing Street over the presence 

of weapons of mass destruction 

in Iraq. Baker’s investigation “The 

Strange Death of Dr David Kelly” 

was serialised in the Daily Mail in 

2007. 

Anthony has advice for students 

wanting to go into politics: “Think 

long and hard about whether you 

really want to do it. It is a tough 

process and it can be very stressful. 

You need to ask yourself a number 

of questions: (1) Am I prepared to 

have little free time? (2) Am I prepared 

to devote my life to helping 

others? (3) Am I prepared to do a 

lot of reading of documents? (4) Am 

I prepared to go that extra mile? (5) 

Am I prepared to get all the extra 

bits on my CV needed to make it in 

politics? (6) Why do I want to be a 

politician? (7) What do I believe in? 

(8) How can I make a difference? (9) 

Why do I want to make a difference? 

(10) Am I thick skinned enough? 

And if you get past that point and 

still think you would make a good 

politician then my advice is to join 

a local political party, get active in 

your community, have an opinion 

and make things happen. Take all 

the political and civic opportunities 

that come your way and get well 

networked.” 

RAG Week 

tackles bullying at 

Royal Holloway 

Amy Johnston 

& Kamran Kaveh 

RAG Week this year was another 

great success, raising not only money 

but awareness. Deciding this year 

that the money collected from RAG 

week should go to the charity Beatbullying, 

it is hoped that some help 

can be given to children affected by 

bullying, giving them the opportunity 

to dramatically improve their 

standard of life. 

Donations were collected 

throughout the week while stickers 

and wristbands were given out 

to raise awareness of the cause. On 

Wednesday, Rag held a Slave Auction 

in Medicine. Always extremely 

popular the event also proved very 

successful with slaves sold promising 

to do a variety of things included: 

cooking, cleaning and kayaking. 

The slave auction was followed by a 

themed “UV night” at the union. 

Thursday saw “Holloway’s Got 

Talent” showcase a wide variety of 

talent. The acts brought humour, 

amazing songs and raw talent to 

the crowd, until the winner was ultimately 

announced as Dan Wood- 

7 

ruff, a second year Classics student 

who captured the audience with his 

incredible guitar instrumental solo. 

On Friday, Rag held another Students 

Union themed-night entitled 

“Be a Hero” in which many entered 

into the spirit by dressing up as 

superheroes. The night emphasising 

the heroic work Rag has done 

throughout the week to raise and 

give as much for charity as possible. 

This was an enjoyable end to a highly 

entertaining and rewarding week. 

RAG week also raised important 

questions about bullying at university 

which goes on often unreported. 

After questioning several 

students, an alarming number of 

students spoke about how they have 

felt victimised or excluded during 

their time at university. Bullying is 

still an issue and it’s not something 

to be embarrassed about. It is vital 

that you talk to someone close to 

you before it gets out of hand and 

you can no longer cope. If this isn’t 

an option you should speak to your 

personal adviser to perhaps arrange 

some counselling or speak to the VP 

for Education and Welfare in the 

Students’ Union.

8 

Rave reviews for Royal Holloway 

student’s play 

Described by ‘The Times’ as “striking” and 

full of “flair and feeling”, Rex Obano’s first 

full-length play ‘Slaves’ is showing at Theatre503 

in Battersea until February 20. 

Rex, who is studying an MA in Feature 

Film Screenwriting at Royal Holloway, 

drew inspiration from his time working as 

a prison guard. Set in HMP Wandsworth, 

the play looks at prison life through the 

eyes of people on both sides of the bars. 

Rex explains, “I wanted to accurately depict 

and convey the feelings I had when 

I worked in a prison. I wanted to ignite the 

debate between rehabilitation and reformation 

and examine the fear that leads us 

to incarcerate – a fear that makes slaves of 

us all.” 

Rex was selected from 200 of the country’s 

most promising new voices to receive 

Theatre503’s first commissioning award. 

He and four other unproduced playwrights 

will write plays throughout the year to be 

developed and produced at the theatre. 

He says studying at Royal Holloway has 

been extremely beneficial: “Apart from 

learning loads, my writing has become 

more focused because I am writing assignments 

every week. We get to listen 

to many renowned guest speakers and I 

am lucky to be part of such an inspiring 

group of writers and producers.” 

Since the play’s opening at the end of last 

month, Rex has had a great reaction and 

has attracted a wide-range of fans. “Some 

ex-prisoners came to see it last week and 

they said it was an accurate portrayal of 

prison life. That meant a lot to me,” he 

said. 


As for the future, Rex says he will continue 

writing for stage, radio and television 

and then hopefully for film. His is a name 

certainly worth remembering. 

To find out more about the MA in Feature 

Film Screenwriting visit http://www.rhul. 

ac.uk/media-arts/courses/maffs.shtml 

The world of work at your fingertips: 

How one student is making the web 

work for her 

When it comes to securing a job we know 

that work experience is key. The practicality 

however of juggling your commitments 

to find the time and money for a 

work placement can be difficult for many. 

But one student at Royal Holloway appears 

to have found herself a solution – a 

virtual internship. 

Mira Khoury, a final-year management 

student is doing an internship with 

FabriQate, an international digital media 

agency, all from the comfort of her home. 

“It’s the perfect solution and has made 

things so much easier. I don’t have to 

commute into London and I can fit work 

around my studies,” says Mira. 

Mira approached the company in the 

summer after realising she did not have 

any relevant work experience and wanted 

a chance to boost her CV. After an interview 

she was taken on for a three-week 

internship at their offices in Old Brompton 

Road. But once her placement was up she 

wanted to continue developing her skills 

and the company suggested she worked 

with them ‘virtually’ throughout the year. 

“Everything is online, so it’s all very easy 

to do. I log on and check what projects 

they need me to help with and work on 

anything from emailing clients, preparing 

presentations to researching and 

business development. I would definitely 

recommend virtual internships to 

anyone. You can do it on the side but you 

still get a sense of the working world and 

pick up valuable skills and contacts along 

the way.” 

Liz Wilkinson, Head of the Careers Service 

at Royal Holloway said, “This is one example 

of the many innovative ways that 

Royal Holloway students and graduates 

are finding to make contacts and gain 

experience in their chosen career. We are 

very proud of the initiative and creativity 

demonstrated by our students and are 

always delighted to hear from local businesses 

interested in employing them.”

E X T R A

10 

E X T R A 

Avatar: 

The IMAX Experience 

Daniel Collard 

Film Editor 

***** 

When a film arrives surrounded 

by as much hype as James Cameron’s 

Avatar (and let’s face it, no 

film before it ever has), it is hard 

not to react with an air of cynicism. 

Having been in development 

for over a decade, with production 

costs in the rather astronomical 

$280 million region, and having 

been hailed as one of the most 

significant cinematic accomplishments 

in history, a significant part 

of me couldn’t help but feel like it 

might just be one big blue disappointment. 

So, 2 Golden Globes, 7 

Academy Award nominations and 

a record-breaking several hundred 

million dollars profit later (having 

swept away the previous holder Titanic 

– Cameron’s last epic), it was 

finally time to see what all the fuss 

was about and experience Avatar 

through the medium for which is 

was made – 3D cinema. 

I was wrong. So very, very 

wrong. After 12 years in the making, 

Cameron has brought about a 

cinematic revolution, condensed 

into a mere two-and-three-quarter 

hours. The otherwise hefty running 

time seems so paltry because with 

Avatar you are not so much watching 

a film as experiencing a world, 

one that completely engrosses 

your imagination until your cruel 

jettison back into the real world 

upon the story’s conclusion. Sam 

Worthington heads a very engaging 

cast as crippled-marine-turnedgiant-blue-cat-man 

Jake Sully, very 

much the archetypal (yet no less 

likeable) ‘John Smith’ in what is 

for all intents and purposes a sci-fi 

retelling of Pocahontas, 

with Zoe Saldana as feline 

alternative to that stories 

eponymous heroine, the 

captivating, free-spirited 

Neytiri. Cameron-favourite 

Sigourney Weaver is the 

idealistic scientist trying to 

understand the Na’vi (the 

inhabitants of the alien 

jungle-world Pandora), 

Stephen Lang is the ruthless 

army colonel determined 

to destroy them, 

and Michelle Rodriguez 

does her ‘good girl with an 

attitude and a disdain for 

authority’ thang. Story- 

and character-wise, there 

is really nothing new here, 

something which had been 

lamented in several wordof-mouth 

reviews I had 

heard in the lead-up to seeing it. 

Yes, in that regard, the is relatively 

little originality. But is that in any 

way, shape or form a problem in 

this case? Absolutely not. 

The film’s originality lies 

in the experience it provides, and 

in that department it has original 

ideas in spades. It really is very 

hard to describe quite how Cameron 

manages to create such an 

entirely believable and engrossing 

world, even with the visual aid 

of all the movie stills and trailers 

cascading across the interweb. This 

is one of those rare cases (very 

annoyingly, for a film critic) where 

something must truly be seen to 

be believed. Whether it be the epic 

battles between the human warmachines 

and the forces of nature, 

the inspired and often nightmarish 

wildlife and the impossibly expansive 

and intricate junglescapes of 

Pandora, or the little things – tiny 

spinning lizards; plants that light up 

when touched; flecks of ash passing 

before your eyes – no amount of 

descriptive prose could ever do 

them justice. In utilising the highlydeveloped 

performance capture 

technology in his own mo-cap stage 

‘The Volume’ and the digital effects 

wizardry of Peter Jackson’s Weta 

Digital studio, Cameron ensured 

that the epic concept that his mind 

concocted in the mid-90s finally 

made it to the big screen as it was 

meant to be; settling for secondbest, 

it would seem, is something 

Cameron simply does not do. 

The story is, as previously 

stated, predictable – after the first 

twenty minutes or so, you could 


Film 

quite easily anticipate how the rest 

of the film would eventually pan 

out. Yet even this potential weakness 

is in fact a stroke of genius. By 

taking a well-known – and, more 

importantly, well-loved – story 

as his basis, Cameron was able to 

focus all his energies into retelling 

that story in a way no one would 

believe possible unless they saw it 

with there own eyes (through a pair 

of 3D-specs). And, though a fellow 

cinema patron had previously seen 

the film, they admitted that nothing 

compared to seeing it with the 

aid of the all-encompassing sound 

and screen of the IMAX theatre. 

See Avatar, preferably at the IMAX 

(screenings are still running until 

March 4th, but are selling out fast), 

but whatever you do, see it.


E X T R A 

Cult Corner: 

The Room 

Natasha Baddeley 

Welcome, explorers of the Movie 

Cosmos, to Cult Corner. Here dwell 

the films built on ideas too big, 

too extravagant and too bizarre 

to fashion a place in mainstream 

movie history. Instead, they have 

become part of something deeper, 

threads woven into the rich tapestry 

of the cinematic underworld 

that is...CULT. 

To call The Room the worst film 

ever made would undermine the 

immense enjoyment that watching 

it incurs. The script is atrocious, the 

acting is wooden, every aspect of it 

should have led to complete and utter 

failure, but seven years after its 

first release it has become a cult hit. 

Why? Because it has sutccessfully 

navigated the full loop: The Room 

is so bad it’s good. 

The film owes its existence to 

the mysterious and multi-talented 

Tommy Wiseau. Mysterious because 

no one is entirely sure where 

he’s come from. Multi-talented because 

he not only wrote and starred 

in The Room, adapted from his 

novel of the same title, he directed 

and produced it too. 

The plot (knowing it beforehand 

will not detract from your viewing 

experience) centres on a love 

triangle between Johnny (Wiseau), 

his fiancée Lisa, and his best friend 

Mark. Lisa no longer loves Johnny 

because he’s “boring” and didn’t 

get his promotion at work. She 

starts an affair with Mark, which 

leads him to reflect on all women: 

“Sometimes they’re too smart. 

Sometimes they’re flat-out stupid. 

Other times they’re just evil.” 

The sex scenes are all painfully 

long. Lisa and Tommy indulge 

one of the most clichéd bedroom 

scenes outside of the porn industry, 

complete with candlelight, rose petals 

and a water feature. The image 

of Wiseau’s steroid addled bottom 

thrusting towards Lisa’s navel is as 

disturbing as it is comical. Viewers 

have the chance to see it all again as 

Wiseau later recycles the same footage, 

cunningly disguising it with a 

different soundtrack. 

New characters enter at intervals, 

many of whom appear to have keys 

1001 Films to See Before You Die: 

The Breakfast Club 

Tom Watts 

I’m going to level with you: I only 

watched The Breakfast Club for the 

first time on New Years Eve 2009. 

Yes, correct, I stayed in on my own 

and watched The Breakfast Club. 

What I discovered was one of the 

late John Hughes’s masterpieces sitting 

in the DVD rack tantalisingly 

waiting for me. You see, it were 

quite good as it goes. 

The plot follows five American 

high-schoolers who are forced 

to spend a Saturday in detention 

together. Each student represents a 

different clique of society (a brain, 

an athlete, a basket case, a princess 

and a criminal) who come to realise 

that they are each deeper than their 

respective label. It is these realisations 

that create the moments of 

poignancy in a film that outwardly 

appears to be a light-hearted comedy. 

As the audience comes to relate 

with each character, we cannot 

ignore the fact that through the earnest 

and beautifully written script, 

we see ourselves. Even taken out of 

its eighties context, The Breakfast 

Club addresses the problems that 

everyday kids deal with or have 

dealt with: the pressures of puberty, 

losing one’s virginity, a broken 

home, getting good grades, lack of 

social skills or crumbling under 

peer pressure. 

It is these problems that are tackled 

head on in the moving finale of 

the movie, as the gang of kids sit in 

a circle and reveal their underlying 

pressures, motivating each other to 

tears of empathy, tears that are undoubtedly 

shared by the audience, 

even if it is just an up-welling. 

But, don’t let me paint too depressing 

a picture of The Breakfast 

Club, as the soundtrack is classically 

eighties; ‘Don’t You Forget About 

Me’ by Simple Minds anyone? It is 

the razor sharp dialogue, however, 

penned by John Hughes himself, 

that really entrances the audience. 

Take for example a conversation 

between Carl the Janitor and Mr. 

Vernon, the film’s villain per se 

who repeatedly emotionally bullies 

to Johnny and Lisa’s apartment. 

There is man-child Denny who 

Johnny once wanted to adopt. Denny 

gets embroiled in drugs and has 

a nasty encounter with gun wielding 

dealer Chris-R. Lisa’s mother 

Claudette also makes several appearances. 

At one point she casually 

announces to her daughter, “I got 

the results back. I do have breast 

cancer”. Lisa seems surprisingly unconcerned 

and her mother’s illness 

is never referred to again. Michelle 

and Mike claim to be doing their 

homework in Johnny’s apartment, 

even though they are at least ten 

years too old to be assigned any, 

whilst really using the place to 

“make-out” (their words not mine). 

It is unclear why they don’t just 

go to their own houses. Claudette, 

walking in on them, sums it up 

for everyone watching when she 

asks her daughter ,“Who are these 

characters?” – exactly what we were 

wondering! 

Every so often the action is 

interrupted by long panning shots 

across the Golden Gate Bridge 

and other sights of San Francisco 

(although the film was shot in Los 

Angeles). This is presumably to 

show time passing, even though it 

doesn’t. During one party scene, 

Wiseau cuts to these shots at least 

eight times. 

Wiseau originally publicised The 

Room as an “electrifying drama 

with the passion of Tennessee 

Williams” but has attempted to 

the detentionees, in which Vernon 

expresses his worries of today’s 

culture: “Someday these kids are 

gonna be running the country. 

This is the thought that wakes 

me up in the middle of the night. 

Someday, these kids are gonna take 

care of me,” to which Carl replies, 

“I wouldn’t count on it.” Not only 

save his reputation by rebranding 

it as a “quirky black comedy”. Read 

interviews with him and it’s apparent 

that he does not understand 

why theatres full of movie-goers 

spend the full running time in fits 

of laughter but he clearly revels in 

his new-found fame, turning up to 

does Hughes deal with teenagers 

coming of age, but he also examines 

the worries of the older generation 

throughout the movie and questions 

the divide between the young 

and old. 

Although a cult classic in its own 

right, The Breakfast Club paves the 

way for the future Hughes classics 

monthly screenings for Q&A 

sessions and autograph signing. 

Despite containing all the 

elements of a complete flop, The 

Room has managed to make 

itself utterly watchable. Go and 

see it...bring a book for the sex 

scenes. 

11 

Film 

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty In 

Pink and Weird Science. The character 

of Ferris Bueller can be seen 

as a ‘cooler’ version of The Breakfast 

Club’s rebellious and violent 

Bender. So why not hang out in 

detention with the Club and experience 

the true trials of adolescence, 

because Saved By The Bell this ain’t.

12 

E X T R A 

Up In The Air 

Nat Horne 

**** 

At the beginning of every year, 

as the film community becomes 

swept up in the excitement of Oscar 

season, our cinemas exhibit more 

of those films that the critics would 

deem ‘important’. Often dealing 

with modern social issues, these 

films are praised for being not only 

exciting and dramatic, but particularly 

relevant to the lives of the 

audiences watching it. Ten years ago 

we marvelled at American Beauty, a 

film that painted an all too familiar 

portrait of contemporary family 

life. 2005 gave us Crash, which effectively 

showed us that we are still 

struggling to get along together as 

a society, and two years ago we had 

No Country for Old Men, a cold, 

haunting tale of violence and our 

inability to understand it. Due to 

the rather unsettling ‘economic climate’ 

we live in today, it was only a 

matter of time before a film as great 

as Up in the Air came along. 

Directed by Jason Reitman, Up in 

the Air is a study of Ryan Bingham 

(George Clooney), a corporate 

downsizer who flies around the 

U.S. delivering those messages of 

misery, handing the newly unemployed 

guidance packs on how to 

rebuild their lives. On his travels 

he encounters frequent flyer Alex 

(Vera Farmiga) and begins one of 

those ‘casual’ relationships with her. 

Bingham enjoys going through the 

effort of actually visiting these people 

and firing them face to face, so 

when young hotshot Natalie Keener 

(Anna Kendrick) shows up with a 

plan to cut costs by downsizing over 

a video conference feed, naturally 

he feels threatened. Bingham 

decides to take Keener on tour with 

him so she can get the first-hand 

experience of what it’s like to tell 

people they don’t have their job any 

more. 

The persistent theme of unemployment 

is one that will resonate 

with audiences the most. This is 

truly a ‘film of the time’, with Reitman 

actually asking non-actors 

who were affected by the recession 

to open up in front of the camera. 

As a result, these scenes have genuine 

emotional depth, and we feel as 

if someone is prodding us, saying, 

“Hey, this is actually happening to 

people, aren’t times harsh?”. That 

prod, however, is always more 

touching than annoying. Up in the 

Air is just as much a character study 

as a social commentary, though, 

and the film’s screenplay fleshes out 

Bingham as a sad but funny, condescending 

yet charming, 21st century 

man. He only spends fourty-three 

days a year at home, and holds 

that rather unpopular philosophy 

that a man is better off alone, 

best demonstrated by his business 

speech in which he asks workers to 

imagine filling a backpack with all 

the items and people they love… 

and then to try and walk with it. 

Sure enough, the two women that 

come into his life challenge this philosophy; 

Bingham starts to develop 

feelings for Alex and his romantic 

co-worker Keener tries to persuade 

him to pursue this relationship. 

The ‘life lessons’ that the opposing 

characters put forth in the dialogue 

may seem a little contrived for 

some, but as we can all identify with 

such themes, they are constantly 

offering food for thought as the film 

progresses. 

Up in the Air features what is 

possibly the best ensemble performance 

of the year. George Clooney 

might not be remembered as being 

one of the greatest actors of all 

time, but he is certainly one of the 

most reliable. Critics are heralding 

his performance in this picture as 

the finest of his career, and whilst I 

would disagree with this analysis (O 

Brother Where Art Thou? by far), 

Clooney does bring that trademark 

screen presence and charisma to the 

role, imbuing Ryan Bingham with a 

rather touching sense of loneliness 

and misunderstanding too. Vera 

Farmiga also impresses as Bingham’s 

female counterpart (nicely 

illustrated when she tells him “think 


Film 

of me as you, only with a vagina”) 

but the stand-out performance in 

the film comes from Anna Kendrick. 

Playing Bingham’s apprentice 

with a stern assurance, tight-lipped, 

always wearing a suit and a ponytail 

and doing her duty with efficiency, 

Kendrick provides us with one of 

the best portrayals of an ambitious 

woman in the workplace we’ll ever 

see. She creates a character that the 

audience cannot help but support, 

combining cute with confident, 

making it all the more effective 

when her character does start to 

show signs of insecurity due the 

cruel environment she has chosen 

to be part of. 

This is also an impressive feat for 

Jason Reitman. A keen social commentator 

(corporate greed in Thank 

You for Smoking, teen pregnancy 

in Juno), Reitman’s third film has 

an interesting simplicity to it. The 

film displays a variety of beautiful 

birds-eye-view shots of America’s 

finest cities, a hip soundtrack and 

close-ups that give the impression 

that some of the characters are talking 

directly to us. Yet there are no 

odd, ‘artistic’ director’s quirks that 

distract the audience. Reitman has 

matured as a director significantly, 

making his style more subtle but 

still distinctive enough for the film 

to feel unique. He also doesn’t copout, 

even when it looks like he will. 

Without giving too much away, Up 

in the Air is constantly compelling 

but you do begin to wonder how it 

will touch down (sorry) and Reitman 

provides a conclusion that is 

unexpected, yet satisfying. 

Films within the ‘drama’ genre 

are always going to hit a nerve with 

some people, but I sense that this 

examination of work, relationships, 

and the morality behind those 

two factors will affect most of the 

population. The aforementioned 

American Beauty, Crash and No 

Country for Old Men all went on to 

win the Oscar for Best Picture, and 

I’d be pleased to see Up in the Air 

follow in their footsteps.


E X T R A 

Where the Wild Things Are 

James Humphrey 

**** 

Maurice Sendak’s Where the 

Wild Things Are is hardly the easiest 

book to adapt; a fairly simple 

tale of a runaway child, who discovers 

a land of Wild Things, has a 

few adventures and returns just in 

time for tea. While the story told in 

the 1963 picture book certainly is 

lovingly thought out, its shortness 

provokes reactions similar to those 

to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Curious 

Case of Benjamin Button; how 

can you extend a short story into a 

‘Youth In Revolt’ 

Competition Winners 

Last week, the Film Section ran a 

competition to promote the cinematic 

release of Youth In Revolt, where 

The Founder readership had to submit 

dramatic depictions of their own 

acts of teenage rebellion, and where 

were the two winning entries: 

All girl schools have derogatory 

nick-names for each other. Bullers 

called Bromley High ‘The Whores 

on the Hill’ and vice-versa. Being 

the only school of the three mounted 

on a hill, I expected Newstead to 

have a similarly slaggy, slopey title. 

Actually, we were ‘Virgin Megastore’; 

the geeky lot, who pranced 

about like leprechauns in a horrid 

green uniform, with the emblem 

of an acorn emblazoned across 

our chests: ‘From tiny acorns, do 

mighty oak trees grow’. 

These tiny acorns were not expected 

to scatter far from the oak. 

full piece of cinema? But, for what 

could have been a fairly friendlyfamily 

feature (another escapist 

adventure story for kids, similar 

in vein to Narnia or Harry Potter) 

director Spike Jonze delivers an 

adaptation which leaves a strange 

lingering feeling afterwards. 

‘Shades of grey’ seems to be an 

adequate phrase to apply to the 

overarching feeling of the film, 

from its visual palette to the very 

characterisation of the Wild Things. 

Max (played by Max Records) is 

not a clear-cut kid either, neither 

the innocent child that wanders 

unexpectedly into a new world nor 

Whereas my friends and sister took 

regular days off school, it was near 

the end of year eleven and I’d never 

had so much as a sick-day. So, 

when my friend suggested a cheeky 

McDonalds breakfast, missing 

registration and a P.S.H.E lesson on 

how sex was evil (whilst other girlschools 

practiced putting condoms 

on dildos), I was aghast, and then 

rather excited. 

We rushed back on the bus. A 

Fillet o’ Fish on top of my measely 

porridge breakfast! The slice of 

granny’s Eccles cake I’d packed 

for lunch seemed almost bland in 

comparison! Whilst licking our 

greasy fingers, we checked our 

watches, guessing what our separate 

classes would be doing, wondering 

if we would be missed. It was 

probably around this time that 

Mum phoned in, saying that I’d left 

my furry caterpillar pencil-case at 

a spoilt tearaway brat in need of a 

good lesson. Records provides a 

brilliant performance which neither 

makes you entirely sympathetic or 

apathetic to Max, but you certainly 

begin to understand and empathise 

with him. When we arrive on the 

island, after seeing Max’s youthful 

inability to deal with the changes 

in his family, we get the relief of 

freedom as he excitedly explores 

this new-found territory. 

Enter the Wild Things (voiced 

by James Gandolfini, Paul Dano, 

Forest Whitaker, et al), who give 

Max a further sense of freedom and 

friendship, but also bear respon- 

home. However, my absence had 

been noted and mum jumped to 

the logical conclusion that I’d been 

abducted. 

Rocking into the school in time 

for Geography, after a couple of 

hours in the neighbouring park 

singing along to Daz Sampson’s 

‘Teenage Life Song’ (that cringeworthy 

Eurovision classic of yesteryear), 

I was pounced upon by 

school friends and teachers alike. 

The head of upper school had me 

summoned into her office. I had 

the eyes of a thousand leprechauns 

piercing into my traitor’s skull. 

After an hour or so of tears and 

a mortifying hug from the teacher, 

who saw that I was in a fair tiz, 

I was allowed to phone home to 

reassure mum that I was safe. My 

stomach was lodged in my throat. 

Hearing a cracked voice at the end 

of the phone, I felt awful. The local 

sibility upon him and trust. What 

Jonze does in this visually stunning, 

action-packed and amusing 

(yet tainted with sadness) segment 

of the film is introduce our young 

protagonist to the burdens of 

adulthood. Tension and fear don’t 

rise out of facing enemies but with 

the breakdown of friendship and 

trust in his ‘kingdom’, a fluctuating 

mood which changes the film’s 

tone continually. One moment I 

felt we were sitting in a fun-loving, 

optimistic fantasy (where kids can 

do whatever they want) but other 

times I wished for the safety of 

Max’s human family, as the Wild 

Things and Max occasionally failed 

to understand one another, leading 

to disastrous consequences. 

1. Bambi’s mum gets shot 

(this brings children all 

over the world to terms 

with death). 

2. There’s a talking bunny 

rabbit. 

3. There’s a skunk called ‘ 

Flower’ (that’s ironic). 

4. There’s a talking deer 

(several, in fact; I really 

hospitals had all been checked; 

my sister (who was bunking at the 

time) had been phoned and asked 

whether she knew of my whereabouts. 

Best of all, the police had 

been round to take DNA off my 

toothbrush. 

This acorn has learnt its lesson 

but, marred by rebellion, can it ever 

become the mighty oak? With that 

level of expectation, I’d rather be 

a whore on a hill, thank you very 

much! 

By Natalie “Well-’Ard” Woodward 

I am generally a nice girl. And 

when I was a teenager I was just 

as generally nice. I did my homework 

on time, I brushed my teeth, 

and I successfully blagged my way 

through lessons to delight of my 

teachers (and now my lecturers). 

However, as I progressed through 

my teens I 

realised I had a problem. A problem 

that who won’t go away – for 

you see ... I have an evil twin. Her 

name is Evil Ju. She is the bane of 

my life; doing such bad things while 

I get the blame. For example, when 

we were 12 our sister stole my bar 

of chocolate, of course Evil Ju then 

thought it was her duty and 

privilege to cut out the boobs in 

13 

Film 

While the film may not be entirely 

family friendly, the themes are 

certainly family-orientated; Jonze 

brings light to the deeper complexities 

that might emerge within oneself. 

A younger demographic may 

not pick up certain themes, perhaps 

even be frightened by them, but a 

children’s film like this does not often 

come along. It delivers the kind 

of thought-provoking insight that 

a film like Martin Rosen’s Watership 

Down might portray; neither 

glossing over nor dumbing down 

real issues from an adult world for a 

predominately children’s audience. 

Liam’s 6 Reasons Why 

He Likes...Bambi 

Liam Fleming 

like talking animals). 

5. I like to try and find the 

hidden mtessages in Dis- 

ney movies (I have yet to 

find one in this, though) 

6. I didn’t realise Bambi was 

a boy (it was a surprise 

when he showed up near 

the end with massive antl 

ers). 

a number of our sister’s favourite 

tops. Hmm, it might have been funnier 

if it wasn’t me who had to sew 

them all in again! I also remember 

when we were 14, Evil Ju wanted to 

try Jack Daniels and coke (we were 

obviously tired of 

Bacardi breezers!). We couldn’t 

find either Jack or coke so we 

ended up just drinking all of the 

very expensive whiskey that Evil 

Ju stole from our dad’s cabinet. 

It’s alright though, as I puked it all 

back up again...on the pale cream 

carpet in the living room! Strangely, 

from then on Evil Ju always did her 

worse whenever we drank: there 

was the toilet explosion of 2006, 

the police confiscating my bra, 

and of course the naked party at 

Grandma’s...It’s hard, but I tell all 

here in the hope of warning you. 

Evil Ju is still out there; often seen 

at Monkeys and the SU, she is still 

just as dangerous, and of course 

looks exactly like me... 

By Jules “The Pain” Paynton 

Congratulations to the two young 

scamps, who will be rewarded for 

the blatant disregard for the rules 

of society with a Youth In Revolt 

goodybag each, and thanks to all 

who contributed.

14 

E X T R A 

Shaun Beedle, director of this 

year’s fashion show, highlights his 

motive behind his pitch as ‘wanting 

to segregate Royal Holloway’s uniformed 

fashion, and highlight the 

broad range of fashion identities at 

our finger tips’. What better way to 

emphasize this than to move the 

audience through a great spectrum 

of dress, concentrating on the distinct 

styles and fashions of London. 

Using the great pit-stops of the underground 

tube stops as genre titles, 

Shaun implies the audience will be 

‘passengers to a showcase of visual 

delights’, and therefore celebrating 

one of the most fashionable cities in 

the world. 

The show will focus on the following 

districts which thereby 

construct their theme. The section 

labelled Camden is displaying the 

great range of punk and Goth available 

at Camden’s famous market 

and quirky shops. Westminster 

promotes business attire, such as 

tailored suits and the like. Stratford 

presents sports wear, as it is the 

primary location for the 2012 Olympic 

Games. Hampstead Heath is 

representing somewhat toff-like attire, 

if that is a credible description, 

with tweeds, corduroy and other 

pseudo-country-life looks. Leicester 

Square is dazzling with red carpet 

and evening wear, as a top spot 

for premiers, this seems suitable. 

Blackfriars incorporates the couture 

genre, as this is the tube stop closest 

to the Tate Modern, thus swimming 

with modernity and the new 

structural ways of design and dress. 

Tottenham Court Road and Soho 

area displays the wide variety of underwear 

which is both open to the 

masses to purchase, and available to 

observe in ‘shop’ windows. Lastly, 

Oxford Circus completes the route 

by showcasing the many high street 

brands which dress its own walls. 

Chatting to Shaun, it is hard to 

understand his need to use boxed 

fashion genres and to assign them 

to different districts of London, 

as if to confine them to thematic 

pigeon-holes. When I asked Shaun 

this, he explained that it was more 

to represent the genres of fashion 

rather than the people wearing 

them. He continued to establish 

that he liked the way the underground 

system enables us to dip 

away from a certain cloud of style 

and rise up into a separate feel of 

London. In this way he described 

the very campus of Royal Holloway. 

Shaun suggested that through the 

many cliques of populace which 

our campus harbours, there are 

many weaving functions which tie 

everyone together, and prevent the 

harsh division of groups. This is a 

much more anthropological way 

of describing fashion. However, as 


Mind the Gap: RHUL’s 2010 Fashion Show 

Alexandra Kinman (words) 

Arts Editor 

Tom Shore (photos) 

Pictures Editor 

Coco Chanel said ‘Fashion is not 

something that exists in dresses 

only. Fashion is in the sky, in the 

street, fashion has to do with ideas, 

the way we live, what is happening.’ 

Important things to remember: 

- Tickets are on sale in the Box Office 

now. 

- Show dates are 13th, 15th, and 

16th of March 

E X T R A Extra 

extra@thefounder.co.uk 

All Images: Photography: Tom Shore. 

Styling: Shaun Beedle. Makeup: 

Jenna Ryan. 

Want to contribute to any 

section of Extra? 

Arts 

The Founder is always 

looking for new contributors 

Why not drop Camron a line 

at:


E X T R A 

Review: Tom Stoppard and Andre Previn’s 

‘Every Good Boy Deserves Favour’ 

Max Richmond 

It took me a mere one thousand 

five hundred and sixty seven 

strutted strides to arrive at the 

National Theatre’s front door from 

mine in Egham. I went to watch 

without prior knowledge ‘a play 

for actors and orchestra by Tom 

Stoppard and Andre Previn’; Every 

Good Boy Deserves Favour. The 

production dedicates itself to one 

Victor Fainburg and Vladmir 

Bukosky, who, expressing disdain 

for outcomes of Soviet suppression; 

found themselves confined within a 

psychiatric ward; a psykushka. They 

were claimed to be insane whereas 

in fact they were detained as political 

dissidents of the Soviet Union. 

Later each emerged as ones of the 

first to unearth the false imprisonments 

to the public. Here Stoppard 

saw the story that he and Previn 

had sought since 1974, to be inno- 

vatively armed with the Southbank 

Sinfonia. 

On entering The Olivier 

Theatre, the main auditorium, it 

became apparent as to how the tale 

would be construed. The stage was 

scored with sheet music stands and 

seats in orchestral organisation. 

Pitched in front were two beds; 

hospital beds, indicative of a ward, 

or a cell. The musicians mantled 

piece by piece, each taking their 

own seat for a performance of an 

hour and a half. They twined to 

fine tune for the spectators jostling 

crowdedly, then on he came 

clinically clad; Alexander Ivanov, 

played by Julian Bleach. He lay on 

his bed asleep in his ward for five 

minutes or so, he woke and he rose. 

Next he commenced his triangular 

tintinnabulations; he played the 

triangle, and henceforth followed 

the orchestra from his mind. What 

struck me as impressive was the 

way Mr. Bleach accomplished 

Review: William 

Shakespeare’s ‘A 

Midsummer 

Night’s Dream’ 

at the Rose Theatre, Kingston. 

Liam Elvish mystical backdrop of the forest. The 

Sir Peter Hall’s interpretation of 

Shakespeare’s 1595 masterpiece 

hails an impressive cast; despite the 

mass of publicity surrounding Judi 

Dench’s role as Titania, we are treated 

to a production that is rich in 

superbly crafted performances from 

the entire team of actors. Shifting 

the setting from classical Athens 

to the Bard’s own Elizabethan 

England, Hall’s vision of the magic 

of the fairy world is vividly brought 

to life through some colourful staging, 

enhanced by an inspired music 

score. 

Following a polished introductory 

scene at the Duke’s court 

which neatly sets up the theme of 

marriage prevalent throughout 

the play, there are strong dramatic 

portrayals all round as we enter the 

interplay between Oberon (Charles 

Edwards) and Puck (Reece Ritchie) 

is highly entertaining, the former’s 

subtle offbeat mannerisms being 

a true highlight as his servant 

devotedly rushes back and forth in 

the forest, completing his chores 

with childlike quirkiness. Oberon’s 

vindictive rage towards the Queen 

of the Fairies serves up plenty of 

amusement, spitting out words 

like “vile” with true bitterness. If 

Dench’s relationship with Edwards 

is lacking in chemistry a little, her 

“love” for Oliver Chris’ Bottom after 

his transformation into an ass is 

a real joy to behold. Indeed, as the 

pair pour lyrically over one another, 

Titania’s caressing of his ears and 

heartfelt attempts to mimic his vocalizations 

are wonderfully hysterical 

moments. One cannot help but 

impeccable harmony between his 

blazing gesticulations and the (not 

so) intrinsic suites. Not only did all 

his Subito bounds meet punctually 

each beat over stage, but the woodwind, 

brass, bass and string seemed 

to track his thought without lagging 

astray. Through my almost amateur 

eyes I’m sure I saw an actor of 

the utmost dramatic dexterity and 

integrity. Julian Bleach caught my 

constant attention throughout the 

whole of the play… his hands held 

crescendo, his feet fostered consonance. 

Something else in particular 

that shone out to me was 

the refreshing clarity of plot. This 

was largely due to actor Adrian 

Schiller, a character who emerged 

as the leading source of exposition 

through Every Good Boy Deserves 

Favour. Mr. Schiller played an 

Alexander Ivanov… Alexander 

Ivanov? There was an Alexander 

Ivanov times two… coincidence de- 

to gaze in awe at Dench’s physical 

and verbal competency as a comedy 

actress, as one reflects on the sheer 

absurdity of the situation. 

This brings us to the Mechanicals. 

The accuracy of the casting here 

is, once again, something which is 

greatly appreciated. The contrasting 

shapes and statures of Quince’s 

would-be actors together with 

prominent usage of the Warwickshire 

dialect are two aspects which 

stand out in particular to superb 

comic effect. The “play within a 

play” at the story’s conclusion is one 

of the best versions ever presented 

and the players succeed in their 

exaggerated physicality’s without 

resorting to over-the-top silliness. 

The relationship between Lysander 

and Hermia is by far the weakest 

termined the cell. This Mr. Ivanov 

served as an example of how Soviet 

iron of the time deemed dissidents 

as lunatics. He could leave at will 

on the premise that he admits his 

supposed lunacy; Ivanov solemnly 

refuses disgusted at the policy and 

the treatment of his comrades. 

The comical contrast between the 

genuine derangement of Alexander, 

and the fabricated instability of 

Ivanov portrays tyranny’s shocking 

ability at distorting reality. The insanity 

of it all was further affirmed 

by the violin-playing doctor, who 

hopped between his role as the doc 

and a member of the orchestra; 

more meticulous, may I add, as a 

musician. Our participation in an 

orchestrated society seemed to be a 

message conveyed, as well as posing 

queries as to whether inflexibility 

ultimately pays. 

An itchy-footed critic, or 

discerning he may say, may say; a 

conclusion based on a coincidence 

aspect of the piece. Thankfully we 

are spared the overt sentimentality 

between the lovers which has 

marred the impact of so many 

other productions. The complication 

surrounding the two couples 

as a result of Puck’s mischief is 

staged with great care and precision. 

It is Rachael Stirling, however, 

who steals the show as Helena in a 

portrayal that is both engaging and 

funny; we are genuinely moved by 

the sheer desperation of her initial 

unrequited love for Demetrius and 

yet amused by her baffled panic following 

Lysander’s revelation of his 

affection for her. 

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” 

is a dynamic production which is 

both faithful to the original text 

and innovative in its use of the 

15 

Arts 

of name is rather lame. To that I 

would impart that from the very 

start, right through denouement; 

the consistency of the insanity of 

the situation is what led to this 

commendation. Neat is a word 

that sprung to mind throughout, a 

solid unit of a play, a vastly pleasing 

display of total theatre. Each actor 

skillfully spat the salving spittle of 

Stoppardian wit; dry, fluid and philosophically 

fervent. The Southbank 

Sinfonia played to every ear the celestial 

sounds of psychosis, sounds 

of suppression and theatrical ambition; 

succeeding in its mission for 

artistic innovation. To conclude; I 

managed to sustain a single posture 

throughout the entire performance 

(I am a lank man), and I left with a 

stupid fat smile slapped all over my 

face. 

Elizabethan setting. Some energetic 

staging and dazzling scenery create 

an epic quality which, considering 

the relatively small space of The 

Rose is quite an achievement. Nevertheless, 

it is the cast alone who 

bring the piece to life. The beauty of 

Shakespeare’s language is delivered 

by a highly skilful team of performers, 

the sheer calibres of which 

make Hall’s production a memorable 

theatrical experience. 

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ 

is at the Rose Theatre, Kingstonupon-Thames 

until 20 March. 

Evening Performances 7.30pm; 

Weekday and Saturday Matinees 

2pm. Tickets 0871 230 1552.

Katarzyna Bernagiewicz 

Daniel Ellin 

Holloway View

Zoe Blackmore 

pictures@thefounder.co.uk 

Daniel Ellin

18 

E X T R A 

So You Think You 

Can Take Me Out 

Vikki Jane Vile 

With the sheer volume of dance 

programmes cluttering up the 

TV schedule at present, you’d be 

forgiven for thinking that it was 

the height of your split leap and the 

camp-ness of your jazz hands that 

provided you with your free pass 

to stardom. Strictly Come Dancing, 

Got to Dance, Dancing on 

Ice, Dance X ... it all seems a little 

excessive, right? Not according to 

the BBC as they have just launched 

the search for the latest dance 

prodigy... 

The American import, So You 

Think You Can Dance leaped onto 

our screens in the first week of 

January, leaving next to no time 

of our televisions being dance 

free, having just survived the last 

series of Strictly Come Dancing. 

You could sum up SYTYCD as a 

televisual box-ticker, I suppose. Rip 

off ... sorry, take ... just about every 

successful, controversial, seemingly 

unique aspect of your typical reality 

show and mix well for an hour 

and fifteen minutes and you have a 

ratings winner. Comedy auditions 

displaying the tragic, unemployed, 

deluded hopefuls that make the 

Great Britain so Great? Check. A 

splattering of actual dance talent 

to keep the dance purists happy? 

Check. Notorious judge freshly 

poached from alternative BBC 

show? Check. Desired quota of 

stage-school darlings? Check. 

Spangly, sparkly, glitzy Hollywood 

host? Check. 

And, to give the programme it’s 

credit, after all this obvious fresh 

initiative, SYTYCD has been a 

huge success for the BBC, regularly 

beating ITV’s opposing offering, 

the hideously, gut wrenchingly, 

embarrassingly woeful Take Me 

Out in the ratings. Now, I’m not 

suggesting for one moment the 

show is aimed at, say the target 

audience for your average Attenborough 

documentary or Question 

Time viewer but Take Me Out is so 

bafflingly bad it may just be worth 

watching. Imagine, if you will, a 

slightly crasser version of Blind 

Date, however with more aesthetically 

challenged young “ladies” 

who appear to possess the articulation 

skills of Stacey Soloman after 

multiple martinis. This, crème de 

la crème of the female species are 

lined up like pieces of meat while 

an apparently attractive “young” 

male chooses the one he would 

like/is threatened to go on a date 

with. 

Back to SYTYCD, where we have 

moved on from the always fail safe 

entertainment that is the auditions 

process; to the nerve-wracking live 

shows with the fourteen finalists 

chosen by Nigel Lythgoe (Re- 

member him? Popstars? Hear’say? 

Judge? The one you possibly may 

have thought had died? Him!) and 

Arlene Phillips (aka Miss Ageism 

2009 or NOT Alesha Dixon) who 

together make some kind of bizarre 

married couple. It is, however, 

undeniably refreshing to have some 

real dace talent allowed to take centre 

stage on a Saturday night. You 

can tell these guys have worked 

endlessly on their technique for 

years and for some it could be their 

last opportunity to make it into the 

big time. Personally, I find it a lot 

more meaningful to watch talented 

dancers weather they be Balletic, 

Hip-Hop or Latin than whether 

thingy from Eastenders can do a 

Cha Cha or whether whatshisface 

who used to play cricket can master 

the American Smooth. 

The prize for one of the hopefuls? 

The winner will receive £100,000 

and the chance to dance in Hollywood 

for a year, so as you can see, 

unlike some reality shows revolving 

around ex-zelebs, careers really 

do hang in the balance. In terms of 

the programmes presentation, Cat 

Deeley serves as a more than credible 

host for the show. The slightly 

awkward, lanky girl I used to watch 

on SM:TV every Saturday morning 

Six Degrees of Separation 

The Old Vic 

Julia Armfield 

It’s the middle of the night and 

everyone’s wearing silk pyjamas. 

Flanders and Louisa are a 

well-heeled New York couple who, 

as we are given to understand it 

as David Grindley’s stylish new 

adaptation of John Guare’s 1990 

play screeches into life, have just 

narrowly escaped being murdered 

in their beds. “We’re alive!” they cry 

in unison, having first ascertained 

that no one has stolen their prized 

silver inkwell or any of their other 

expensive pieces of tat, all the while 

gabbling to the audience and to 

each other about the evening just 

passed. Gabbling itself, however, 

quickly proves to be insufficient, 

as, the next second, they have both 

shed their dressing gowns to reveal 

last night’s evening clothes, the 

Arts 

Are you in a production? 

Seen anything good at the theatre recently? 

Write to us: arts@thefounder.co.uk 

rotating set has swivelled to reveal 

last night’s party preparations and 

the breakneck series of flashbacks, 

audience asides and set pieces that 

is Guare’s one-act play is set in motion, 

all to try and better explain 

exactly what happened last night. 

Sidestepping, for the moment, 

the possibly dubious reasoning 

behind my having gone so out of 

my way to acquire seats for this 

production in the first place (I’m 

not giving details but the five-foot 

high posters of Anthony Head’s 

face all across the Underground 

may have had something to do 

with it), the premise itself, once 

we got past the strangely Devised 

Piece vibe of the first ten minutes, 

was actually rather compelling. 

Flanders (Anthony Head) and 

Louisa (Lesley Manville), or Flan 

and Ouisa, are a wealthy couple 

attempting to secure backing from 

their wealthier dinner guest for a 

new venture they, as art dealers, are 

hoping to pursue. Into their lives, 

and their living room, comes crashing 

a young black man named Paul 

(Obi Abili), bleeding all over the 

carpet, telling them he’s just been 

mugged and that he knows their 

children from Harvard. Not only 

that but, as they probe him further, 

he reveals that he is actually the son 

of director Sidney Poitier, who he 

is sure would be more than willing 

to give them both walk-on roles in 

his new movie in thanks for helping 

his son. The couple and their guest 

spend a night in with this charming 

new arrival; he makes them 

dinner, tells them stories; until they 

provide him a bed for a night, when 

Flan catches him with a rent boy 

and they shoo him from the house 

in a panic, assuming him to be a 

crackhead. This, of course, is where 

we first came in, though the horrified 

declarations of “we’re alive!” 

may already seem a little ridiculous 

in these enlightened times, given 

the nature of what we now know 

to actually have happened. It is not 

until later that we discover that that 

was only the half of it. 

Grindley’s production, taking 

place as it does within an red velvet 

cocoon of Flan and Ouisa’s stylish 

apartment and presided over by 

a rotating, two-sided Kandinsky 

hanging on the wall, is actually a 

fairly simplistic affair. Characters 

shuttle back and forth between 

humour and emotion, talking over 

one another, jabbering directly at 

the audience and all making a great 

deal of noise around the central 

character of Paul, whose relative 

silence is particularly telling. Paul, 

as becomes clear through various 

friends and acquaintances of Flan 

and Ouisa, is almost definitely 

none of the things he claimed to 

be. He has been halfway round 

the neighbourhood, claiming to 

be Flan’s son, claiming to be rich, 

claiming to be all kinds of things, 

yet in every case, his natural charm 

and apparent artlessness has seen 

him through. “Look at this.” Says 


Arts 

when I was about ten has certainly 

blossomed into the most beautiful 

of swans. She has successfully presented 

seven seasons of SYTYCD 

in the States and so arguably has 

had a good while to work on her 

act. In contrast to some hosts I 

could name, Cat truly does appear 

to care about the well-fare of the 

kids at the centre of this dancing 

circus who are being scrutinised, 

criticised and then put up for 

public vote. Cat is war, empathetic 

and undoubtedly looks good on 

camera. She more than capably 

holds the SYTYCD ship steady. 

So, if you fancy being inspired 

in any genre of dance – Street to 

Broadway (come on, darling, jazz 

hands ...) you could do worse than 

check out So You Think You Can 

Dance next Saturday evening, as 

it more than serves as a positive 

advert for all fields of dance, which 

is always more appealing when 

you discover your alternative is 

Dancing on Ice. This is the show 

where we all wait with prolonged 

anticipation and baited breath 

for “charity campaigner” Heather 

Mills’ leg to break free and attempt 

a triple axel all by itself ... one can 

only hope for this, presumably. 

E X T R A 

Flan, holding up a book once their 

friends have confessed to being 

duped in a similar way “It’s a 

picture of Sidney Poitier. And his 

eight daughters.”. From hereon in, 

the play becomes something of a 

dissection of rich and poor; Paul an 

odd Eliza Doolittle hybrid, shown 

in flashbacks to have schooled himself 

in ways to charm a path into 

these people’s lives, yet with a true 

hankering after art and knowledge 

driving these ambitions. Abili’s 

performance is phenomenal, playing 

a character with so many facets 

– one minute he is a street-tough, 

the next a Harvard graduate, the 

next a spookily note-perfect imitation 

of his assumed father – that it 

becomes increasingly impossible 

to see exactly what lies beneath 

all these layers of social disguise. 

Manville and Head are similarly excellent, 

vacillating between socially 

concerned to shamefully money 

and fashion-minded; we never 

quite forgive them for their grasp-


E X T R A 

The Misanthrope 

Comedy Theatre 

Sophie Yates 

A new and modernised version 

of Molière’s Le Misanthrope has 

hit the West End, and has sparked 

a box-office frenzy, largely due to 

Keira Knightley making her stage 

debut. 

Originally by the famous seventeenth 

century French playwright, 

this masterpiece has been re-written, 

transposed and transformed 

by Martin Crimp. Reassigned 

from seventeenth century Paris to 

modern-day London, the play is set 

entirely in an opulent Claridgesesque 

suite. 

Damian Lewis (Band of Brothers) 

plays the brilliantly cantankerous 

and misanthropic Alceste. Alceste 

is a famous but disillusioned 

playwright who is bitterly against 

the triviality of contemporary culture 

but has fallen for an American 

movie star named Jennifer, played 

by Keira Knightley. Jennifer embodies 

everything Alceste detests, 

yet he still lusts after her. 

With Knightley’s portrayal 

of Jennifer, it’s easy to see why. 

Knightley is both delicate and imposing 

on stage. In 6 inch heels and 

a silky black jumpsuit, she floats 

around the stage tearing Alceste’s 

ing desire for parts in Poitier’s next 

movie, most especially since that 

movie is Cats. 

The play itself is far from 

perfect. First staged in 1990, it’s 

probably fair to say that twentyodd 

years has left it at least a little 

dated; certainly, satires about the 

hypocrisies of prosperous liberals 

and their over-privileged children 

are hardly new ground any more; 

and the dialogue does have its iffier 

criticisms apart and bitching about 

fellow celebrities and people in the 

business. She’s confident and cruel, 

not to mention sexy. Knightley was 

not at all wooden in her performance 

and completely convincing as 

Jennifer. Even her American accent 

did not falter for the whole two 

hours, something I did expect. This 

being her stage debut, Knightley 

has done brilliantly. 

Both Knightley and Lewis were 

brilliant in their roles, as were all 

of the main characters, including 

esteemed actors such as Tara 

Fitzgerald and Tim McMullan. 

Finding Jennifer’s circle of friends 

sycophantic, nepotistic and totally 

false, Alceste begs her to change 

her ways. Her blunt refusal to do as 

she’s told leads to Alceste’s indignant 

whining and bitter jealousy. 

Modern-day popular culture is 

then thoroughly slated for the 

remainder of the play. 

The script is extremely impressive; 

perhaps the most impressive 

part of the show. Some of it 

remains unchanged, and it still 

follows its traditional rhyming 

pattern, as Molière’s did. However 

much of the language and references 

are changed, to suit the modernday 

setting. He’s managed to create 

a whole new world whilst remain- 

moments. Flan and Ouisa are on a 

charm offensive with their affluent 

South African guest, but their 

endlessly repeated asides of “two 

million dollars…two million dollars!” 

seems a rather ham-fisted way 

of reminding us that yes, they are 

a trifle money-minded. Elsewhere, 

their kids, all made up like Northern 

TopShoppers, are really little 

more than caricatures; “I’m calling 

you to tell you I’m wrecking my 

ing faithful to Molière, an amazing 

feat. The wit of rhyme really makes 

this play different to any other. 

It’s rare to find a modern adaptation 

which is written in a similar 

rhythm and form to its original 

counterpart. Just think of modern 

day Shakespeare – most of it either 

keeps the original text or discards 

the form completely and uses 

normal colloquial speech. However 

with Crimp’s version he’s managed 

to keep it relevant and funny by 

throwing in references to modern 

politics, celebrities and events. 

The play interestingly breaks it 

own codes of honour by hiring 

Hollywood starlet Knightley to 

play the glamorous Jennifer. Let’s 

face it, over half the audience will 

be flocking to the Comedy theatre, 

life because it’s the only way I can 

hurt you.”, snipes Flan and Ousia’s 

jeggings-clad daughter, sounding 

like an off-day for the Skins writing 

team, her high-pitched insistences 

that her parents’ investment in 

her education is little more than 

a means to turn her into a little 

corporate extension of themselves 

amusing in their illogicality but 

hardly an attitude that hasn’t been 

done before, and done better, in 

first and foremost, to see Lewis or 

Knightley. A bit of a strange notion 

since the whole basis of the play is 

to deconstruct these celebrity egos 

and the uncultured, vulgar public 

who worship them. This could be 

turning into an attack on that same 

uncultured public who have all 

flocked to see just how flat-chested 

and skeletal Knightley really is (“I 

just want to see Keira up close” 

someone unabashedly gushed in 

the foyer). Packed with ironies such 

as this, and able to laugh at itself, 

the Misanthrope playfully picks at 

its writer, the actors, even its audience. 

“People speak highly of a pile 

of shit if they get dressed up and 

paid £50 to see it” ranted Alceste, 

prompting one of the biggest 

laughs of the evening. At one point 

the Evening Standard is brought on 

stage, and a short article was read 

out from the particular Monday 

that I saw the play. I assume they 

read a current article out every 

night. It’s little simple and amus- 

every teen movie since She’s All 

That. All the same, the play’s overriding 

themes of money and artifice 

are still quietly prevalent. Paul isn’t 

educated, yet his knowledge of 

human nature and his subsequent 

ability to manipulate makes him 

worthy of the most quick-witted 

Iago, yet as his situation gets more 

desperate as his lies get him in 

trouble with the police, he seems 

to unravel further and further. “I’m 

19 

Arts 

ing extras, which whilst not too 

mocking in tone, make this play a 

pleasure. 

Some critics have pointed out 

that Crimp’s version is not quite 

as biting in its criticism of the 

superficial, when compared to 

Molière’s original. In the original, 

Alceste risks social outcast and the 

possibility of being sent to prison. 

In the modern day version, Alceste 

whinges and spouts out witticisms 

all pointing to the superficiality of 

a celebrity obsessed culture, but 

risks little. In fact, people who do 

this kind of thing now fare pretty 

well. Just take a look at a few of the 

Guardian columnists. Although 

critics may be right, a modern day 

Misanthrope seems much more 

appropriate. Although Molière’s 

can be appreciated when you 

know the manners and tastes of a 

seventeenth century audience, for 

the regular audience, the original is 

probably no longer side-splittingly 

funny. What really makes this 

production a delight is its modernisation. 

Perhaps the Misanthrope falls 

short only when it is in direct 

comparison with the original, but 

I’d say it was one of the best plays 

to hit the West end in 2009. A 

must-see for 2010, the Misanthrope 

is clever, beautifully written, and 

boasts a brilliant cast. 

The Misanthrope is on at the 

Comedy Theatre in London, until 

13th March 2010. 

your son.” he says to Ouisa, without 

any sense of doubt, and for all 

Ouisa’s desire to help him, she has 

no idea to begin. 

There is sentimentality here, 

certainly, but there is also a certain 

underlying truth. Just as there two 

sides to Flan and Ouisa’s rotating 

Kandinsky, there are two sides to 

this story. Is it so wrong to assume 

that Paul has any less of a right to 

the art and culture he hungers for 

than Flan, who, for all his education 

and privilege, sees a newly 

acquired Cezanne as little more 

than a commodity? Certainly, he is 

more grateful than Flan and Ouisa’s 

children, more willing to learn 

from his mistakes than their friends 

and more desperate for the lifestyle 

that they all take so for granted. 

Paul is the only character without 

a direct line to the audience, yet as 

Ouisa attempts to explain, we are 

still only really separated from him 

and those like him by six people, 

or Six Degrees of Separation. All 

the same, when it comes to prison 

or freedom, poverty or wealth, it 

seems those six people can make all 

the difference.

20 

E X T R A 

Pink Floyd: 

A take on Rock’s ‘greatest 

break-up’ 

Sara Massoudi 

The genre of Progressive Rock 

has always been an acquired taste; 

not many people have the stomach 

for songs over ten, or even twenty 

minutes in length. Some people feel 

lost without the verse-chorus format, 

and even I; a loyal lover of the genre, 

find some of the strange combinations 

of sounds a bizarre noise rather 

than music. However, Pink Floyd has 

always seemed to bridge that gap. It’s 

Prog for people who don’t like Prog- 

their lengthy solos and concept 

albums don’t reach the weirdness of 

Emerson Lake and Palmer, and carry 

with it a heart and fundamental relatability 

which is absent from most 

of the genre. Barring their jangling 

early Syd Barrett days, their sound 

has always been (mostly) accessible; 

at their best, a smooth and moving 

harmony between lilting guitar and 

personal lyrics. I will nod now to 

Syd Barrett, Nick Mason and the late 

Rick Wright’s invaluable contributions 

to the band- but only nod, this 

essay isn’t about them. This article 

is about the two musical Titans, 

Roger Waters and David Gilmour, 

and whether their signature Floyd 

albums The Final Cut (1983) and 

The Division Bell (1993) are helpful 

in solving the Waters vs. Gilmour 

creative debate. 

As in many bands, Pink 

Floyd underwent an artistic rift 

which then turned into a bitter legal 

battle. The clash both in personal- 

ity and musical direction tore the 

group apart and left behind a Pink 

Floyd minus Roger Waters who 

then raged into his solo work, with 

interesting results. Their difference 

was as follows, with my glowing 

bias held up for all to see: Roger is 

an angry musical genius and I love 

him for it. Controlling and bleak, 

Roger always has a set vision and is 

militaristic in achieving his results. 

He is a character unable to fit into 

the mould of any conventional band, 

and would instead be more at home 

directing a musical army. While 

those traits of his may be negative on 

their own, when combined with the 

work he produces his methods are 

entirely justified. The Wall, bleak yet 

moving, is a perfect example of this. 

A concept album which must be 

viewed not by its components, but 

as the sum of its parts, The Wall is a 

multilayered exploration of Roger’s 

thinly veiled fictional counterpart, 

and his battles with his personal demons 

and the trappings of fame. But 

I will not digress too much with The 

Wall; it was the beginning of the end 

for the classic Pink Floyd line up, 

and lead to The Final Cut, an “album 

by Roger Waters and performed by 

Pink Floyd”. 

The Final Cut is not an 

album for speakers; you are meant 

to listen to it solemnly through 

headphones, pondering each word 

that Roger rasps. The pinnacle of 

the Roger Waters era Floyd, this 

album shows what his unadulter- 

ated control would become, and is 

either loved or hated. All lyrics and 

no sound, there are many valid complaints 

that this is an album which is 

hard to listen to, which is musically 

poor or jarring; there is truth in this. 

Making use more of a brass section 

than the members of Floyd, The Final 

Cut ceases to sound like the band 

at all, and rather sounds like Roger’s 

memory come to life. Much like The 

Wall (and in fact containing tracks 

which never made that particular album) 

this album indulgently dwells 

on his personal and political pain; 

his rage against Thatcher, his life 

long lament of losing his father in 

World War Two and his own emotional 

issues of weakness and insecurity. 

This painfully personal album 

didn’t let the other band members 

in and instead wallows in Roger 

Waters’ long standing grief. All heart 

with nothing to dress it up in, this 

album is uncomfortable listening, 

but it is this searing honesty which 

makes it brilliant. Arguably, this is a 

poor stance to take because music, 

by its very nature, is intrinsically to 

do with sound and thus the album’s 

lack of aesthetic quality could render 

it useless. However, this has always 

been the core of the Waters vs. Gilmour 

debate; soul vs. style, which is 

of more worth? 

Contrasting Roger’s military 

and highly indulgent approach, 

Gilmour’s musical direction has 

a purely aesthetic quality. Admittedly, 

when he first took control 

after Roger’s departure, A Momentary 

Lapse of Reason was a musical 

abomination, but letting that slide, 

Floyd’s final album The Division 

Bell recaptured the musical brilliance 

for which he is renowned. 

Much like The Final Cut, this album 

has both been widely praised and 

panned by critics and fans, as it 

suffers a problem directly contrary 


Laura Marling 

Alas I Cannot Swim 

Laura Jones 

A review of an album that somewhat 

changed my view of music. 

An album I can only describe 

as ‘WOW’, I had heard very little 

about this beautifully talented 

young lady, other than the fact she 

used to sing with Noah and the 

Whale and because she sings with 

defined English dictation she has 

been compared to Kate Nash and 

Lily Allen. However, after stumbling 

across her upon a recommendation 

made to me by a friend via 

spotify (oh! how very new age of 

me) I was intrigued and was horrified 

that these comparisons had 

been made, so she’s English but she 

is not a pop princess she is a god- 

to Roger’s pet album. All wonderful, 

lilting sounds and little meaning, 

this album is much like an entirely 

vacuous beauty. Rising out of the 80s 

dirge, this album truly sounds like 

Floyd again; clear, bell-like melodies 

and Gilmour’s soothing voice creating 

an aesthetic paradise. Yet, there 

is little beneath the surface. Barring 

some thinly veiled references 

to the previous artistic conflict, the 

lyrics are bland, uninspiring and 

more often written by Gimour’s wife 

rather than himself. While listening, 

you are enchanted by the piercing 

guitar, and yet painfully aware that 

there is something missing; that this 

is just bland beauty and nothing 

more. The listener is left nostalgic for 

Pink Floyd’s golden age, when there 

was a fine harmony between Roger’s 

control of content and Gilmour’s 

mastery of sound. 

After listening to both 

Music 

dess of folk. I came across the harrowing 

yet stunning ‘My Manic and 

I’ at first and was enchanted from 

the very beginning. Her album is 

full of folksy roots layered with 

catchy guitar and somewhat haunting 

vocals, coupled with her obvious 

musical talent, vital tempo and 

keys changes are incorporated to 

bring to the table something quite 

unlike anything I’d heard before. 

Her songs stretch from cutesy pop 

(Ghosts and Cross Your Fingers) 

to the slow sultry and seductively 

beautiful (Tap at My Window and 

Night Terror). Her lyrics are original 

and make you wonder what 

she is talking about, she is a truly 

intriguing musician and complies 

her music is such a unique way. I, 

sir, am a true fan. 

albums, you get the impression 

that you are only listening to half 

a thing. Each album with its own 

true merits suffers greatly from the 

lack of a mediating band member; 

both are overly indulgent in a personal 

sense, rather than in the way 

Progressive Rock is known to be. It 

is clear that their music was at its 

best when these two musical pillars 

were in tune- or at least tolerant of 

each other. Dark Side of the Moon 

and Wish You Were Here are two 

such fine examples of this harmony; 

albums rich in content and feeling 

while also magnificent in sound. 

So there is no real answer to who is 

better, Waters or Gilmour, nor can it 

really be said whether The Final Cut 

or The Division Bell is stronger than 

the other; each is half of a whole, fair 

on their own and wonderful when 

together.


E X T R A 

Buraka Som 

Sistema 

Fabriclive 49 

David Bowman 

And so, Fabric brings us the 

forty-ninth instalment in its 

anything but consistent mix series 

Fabriclive, which has boasted 

contributions by DJ’s from as varied 

musical backgrounds as John Peel 

and Andy C. This time Buraka 

Som Sistema are running the show, 

the Portuguese DJ’s specialising in 

kuduro, Angolan electro-house and 

if that sounds like a break from the 

norm it’s because it is. This beast 

of a mix comes in at just over 70 

minutes and excitedly jumps from 

kuduro to dubstep to hip-hop and 

all the way to dancehall without 

ever seeming to take a breath; with 

transitions as unlikely as London 

dubstepper Zomby switching 

straight into Atlanta crunk group 

Crime Mob before taking on Angolan, 

DJ Znobia. The mix itself seems 

to be almost devoid of structure, 

never really taking any kind of 

downtime, as one might expect and 

instead constantly bombards you 

with abrasive and dense sounds. 

On paper this might sound tiring 

but as the record never makes up 

its mind about what it wants to 

sound like, it fully maintains its 

momentum for the entirety of its 

duration simply by the sheer range 

of sounds that are employed. One 

moment you’ll be drowned in low 

end bass before switching up into 

glitchy african rhythms under a 

canopy of electronic chirping laden 

with sirens and filter sweeps. This 

mix certainly won’t be for everyone 

and for those expecting the usual 

hip-hop leaning Fabriclive this may 

well be a disappointment but for 

those of you looking for something 

very different, definitely danceable 

and packed to bursting with sounds 

and ideas, this may well be worth 

investigating. 

Holloway Talent Shines in 

UK’s Biggest Original Music 

Competition 

Emily Sara Smyth from County 

Cork, Ireland has wowed the judging 

panel and sailed through the audition 

stage of ‘Live and Unsigned’. 

She will now be competing against 

the other most talented bands and 

artists in the country at the live 

shows of Live and Unsigned 2010 – 

all in a bid to be signed! She is currently 

a History and International 

Relations student at Royal Holloway, 

University of London. 

Emily battled against hundreds 

of others to secure a spot in the 

live shows and now has the opportunity 

to prove that she is the best 

in the region. Acts that have made 

LIVE: Nickleback 

Live: Wembley Arena, January 19th 2010 

Adam Spinks 

One thing is for certain; Nickelback 

deserve to be here. The stage 

is gigantic, the explosions rattle the 

roof and the band sound incredible. 

Much has been said about Nickelback 

over the last few years and 

yet, like the good old fashioned 

under dogs they keep coming back 

bigger and better than they were 

before. Take for example How You 

Remind Me from 2001’s Platinum 

selling Silver Side Up; the song still 

holds the record for the most radio 

airplays ever in the USA and here 

in the UK, it remained fastidiously 

at Number 2 for what seemed like a 

virtual age. And then the UK went 

into Nickelback overkill. 

Their next studio effort, The Long 

Road (2003), downgraded the band 

from arenas and into the 6,000 capacity 

Hammersmith Apollo. 2005’s 

All the Right Reasons limped into 

the charts even with a strong first 

single and then died a painful chart 

death; barely scraping to 50,000 

sales. That was until Rockstar... 

Now their 6th studio album, 

Dark Horse (2008) has officially 

been certified platinum (for sales 

in excess of 300,000) in the UK 

alone and tonight sees what may 

be their last London performance 

of this current tour, with the band 

hinting in interviews of a year out 

for personal reasons. Opening act 

Daughtry are nothing special tonight; 

with songs like Home striking 

a powerful but overly familiar 

chord and the initial power fades 

as each subsequent song begins 

to sound the same. By the end of 

their short set; those who were fans 

before were still fans and those who 

weren’t have probably failed to be 

persuaded. 

Suddenly, after what seemed like 

hours, a massive series of bangs 

it through auditions will now take 

part in a live head to head battle 

in front of thousands of spectators 

and a professional judging panel to 

progress to the Live and Unsigned 

Festival at the 02 in London. 

Live and Unsigned is the biggest 

original music competition in the 

UK for unsigned bands and artists. 

Attracting over 30, 000 entries in the 

past three years, it has set itself apart 

from its predecessors by offering 

and promoting originality. It’s now 

established as the definitive music 

competition for original acts and 

it’s open to all genres of music from 

Heavy Rock to Rap. 

Chris Grayston, Events Director 

of Live & Unsigned explains “This 

competition really is worlds apart 

shatters the chatting crowd and 

fixes their attention. As the giant 

video screen counts down from 10, 

the roar of the capacity crowd gets 

louder and louder. 3.2.1. Pyrotechnics 

illuminate the stage as 

Chad Kroeger leads the Nickelback 

charge. The set opener, “Something 

in your Mouth” is both sleazy and 

catchy, getting the crowd worked 

up into a virtual frenzy. Through “ 

Photograph”, “Savin’ Me” and the 

moving ballad “ If Everyone Cared” 

from X Factor and other TV talent 

contests – we’re all about originality, 

Live ability and credibility. We 

don’t accept demos or submissions 

and everyone auditions live. We’ve 

got some fantastic prizes up for 

grabs this year in a £60, 000 prize 

pool so there’s lot of opportunity for 

everyone entering and not just the 

winners – that along with the Festival 

means 2010 will be the biggest 

competition yet!” 

The overall winner of the competition 

is offered a recording and 

management contract with Future 

Music with an investment of up 

to £30, 000 to release their single. 

The winners will be crowned the 

UK’s best unsigned act in front of 

a capacity crowd on the main stage 

21 

Music 

the band hold the audience in the 

palm of their hand. 

On rockier numbers “ Figured 

You Out” and “ Burn it to the 

Ground”, you get a sense of how far 

Kroeger’s voice has progressed and 

how big it could still become. They 

close the set with a triumphant and 

tongue-in-cheek performance of 

“Animals”, packed with fireworks 

and visual displays and promise to 

be back soon... 

I, for one, can’t wait. 

of the festival. A&R and celebrity 

judges last year include former Sex 

Pistols Manager Malcolm McLaren, 

pop RnB star Dane Bowers and 

Radio 1’s Annie Nightingale. Radio 

1 DJ Greg James has already confirmed 

for 2010. 

Emily made it through the auditions 

in London and is now preparing 

for the live show on 28th February 

at Beck theatre, Middlesex for 

the opportunity to progress towards 

the Live and Unsigned festival at the 

O2 in London. 

For more information go to the 

website www.LiveandUnsigned. 

UK.com. Or better still come down 

and support local talent; you can 

purchase tickets on the door or from 

Emily Sara Smyth.

22 

E X T R A 

Piers Morgan: 


The Gordon Brown Interview 

Vikki Vile 

You could say Piers Morgan 

enjoys a challenge. He manages 

to make Simon Cowell seem “the 

good looking one” on Britain’s Got 

Talent. In his old job at a tabloid he 

made The Mirror popular and now 

he’s undertaken the challenge of 

making our ever more unpopular 

Prime Minister shown us all his 

emotional side. Car crash TV? You 

bet? But must see TV? Naturally ... 

It was made incredibly clear 

throughout the carefully edited trail 

for the programme that for one 

night only the audience were being 

invited to momentarily forget about 

the deaths of innocent teenage 

soldiers, some of which probably 

even too young to know what 

they’re even fighting for, to forget 

about the dyer state of our economy 

and the embarrassing expenses row 

and instead to positively embrace 

this newfound “human” Gordon 

into our lives ... and, as he probably 

hopes for, into our ballot paper. 

Funnily enough, it has been widely 

commented on how coincidental 

it is that Mr Brown felt that now, a 

matter of weeks before the election 

to “bare his soul” (Don’t you 

dare accuse ITV of spin, will you?) 

in what surely will be the closest 

fought contest that students of our 

generation have known. 

“Oh, please call me Gordon,” 

he panders with that creepy grin 

within the opening minutes. This 

is demonstrating all the early signs 

of being dreadful. You mean I can 

call you by your Christian name, 

Gordon? You’re too kind. That’s my 

vote sorted. What a top chap, let’s 

all go home. Or perhaps not. 

The decision as to whether to 

open the political can of worms on 

whether a politician should talk so 

openly about their private life is 

hugely debated. Is it important to 

like the person at the centre of the 

policies or are they simply there 

do their job? No one can deny the 

death of a child is an appalling 

occurrence, whatever your professional 

position, but the idea of the 

discussing of such a tragic event for 

reasons of political motivation and 

promotion is surely a bit ... sick? No 

one who watched the programme 

can deny that the moments where 

Brown talked about the death of 

Jennifer Jane was hugely sad but 

at the same time, a little uncomfortable. 

I don’t however, believe 

the welling up was to win votes. 

His emotions appeared genuine, 

however, Morgan’s aid of a selection 

of video clips surrounding this time 

all pushed this section of the interview 

relentlessly for emotive ends 

and descended into a slightly crass, 

insensitive and distasteful display 

from the interviewer as opposed to 

the interviewee. 

One can’t help but compare 

Brown’s personal tragedy to the 

similar case of David Cameron’s 

son, Ivan. You cannot help but feel 

it’s only a matter of time until The 

Sun runs a pole asking “Which 

child’s death is sadder?!” Answers 

on a postcard. I’m sure Jan Moir 

would have something to say. 

Morgan may not be able to deal 

with the heavy stuff so well, often 

appearing to deliberately encourage 

his guest to display emotion by any 

means but in complete contrast, 

boy, does he milk the lighter stuff?! 

During the course of the hour 

long interview we saw “comedian” 

Brown; who described falling in 

love with his wife Sarah on a plane 

as being “love at first flight”. It’s 

been reported the tumbleweed was 

visible on the TV screens across 

the UK. We saw “university-stud” 

Brown; A VT depicting Brown’s 

time in higher education showed 

(all very This is Your Life) him to 

have a full head of suspiciously 

dyed looking hair, complete with 

two fully functioning eyes and 

a questionable suit with flaired 

trousers. And finally we had “He’just-like-you-and-me” 

Brown as 

he recounted the “hilarious” tale of 

when he found himself stuck in a 

public toilet only to find Tony Blair 

(of all the people, eh?) to come to 

his rescue. How very Brokeback 

Mountain. 

Despite these undeniably cringe 

TV 

making moments, it’s widely 

acknowledged by many political 

commentators that Brown came 

out of the interview well – dignity 

intact. He demonstrated rather 

admirably he can in fact do emotion 

without resembling a malfunctioning 

robot. (Remember those 

horrific YouTube clips?) Whether 

the exercise proved fruitful remains 

to be seen, I personally cannot help 

but feel the whole performance was 

incredibly well stage managed and 

well thought through, definitely not 

filled with any unexpected questioning. 

What is true for the majority 

of voters, surely, is that they 

would have preferred their leader 

to undergo an evening of interrogation 

from Paxman or Maitlis on 

Newsnight, as opposed to Morgan, 

most widely known for his ability 

to judge a glorified talent contest. 

Maybe next him he’ll let Ant and 

Dec have a go ...

Photo: Tom Shore


tf Comment& 

Debate 

Why is campus so expensive? 

Nikki Samuels 

Browsing in “The Store…On 

Campus” yesterday lunchtime, 

it dawned on me just 

how expensive life here at Royal 

Holloway seems to be. As I glanced 

along the shelves I couldn’t help but 

feel that we, the students, are being 

more than a little “ripped off” by 

our campus amenities. 

One example which particularly 

riled me was the 1 litre bottle of 

Robinsons’ Fruit and Barley Orange 

Squash being sold for well over £3 

by our “competitively priced” store, 

when in Sainsbury’s the exact same 

product costs just £1.29. An absolute 

scandal, you must agree? 

Most infuriating of all is the college 

store’s tendency to sell items, 

with a recommended retail price 

clearly printed on them, at nearly 

double the manufacturer’s recommendation. 

Don’t get me wrong, 

I fully acknowledge the fact that 

these costs are only a guideline but 

it seems unreasonable to sell products 

at such over-inflated prices. As 

students we are one of the least affluent 

consumer groups and spend 

a good portion of our lives battling 

to “stay in the black” and avoid the 

dreaded overdraft, so why is it that 

our local store tries to squeeze as 

much cash out of us as possible? 

In all honesty, I have a feeling 

that the college shop plays heavily 

on its role as a convenience store; 

relying on the fact that sometimes 

we’re just too lazy to tackle the 

mammoth walk down Egham hill 

to the local supermarket. 

The catering outlets at Royal Holloway 

also seem to serve food that 

is, to be blunt, overpriced…and let’s 

be honest here; it’s hardly gourmet 

cuisine they’re dishing up. With 

The Hub proving most expensive 

and Founder’s Dining Hall not fairing 

much better you would at least 

expect a decent meal. Not so, as it 

seems. On many occasions I have 

found myself stared in the face by 

a disappointingly small portion of 

lukewarm food. As one visitor to 

the establishment pointed out, “you 

could get a far superior meal at The 

Monkey’s Forehead for near enough 

the same price”. 

To my annoyance, the kitchens 

seem to have a habit of serving up 

25 

the same food on 2 consecutive 

days under an alternative name. 

Now I’m all for reusing leftovers 

but you’d think that a little more 

creativity could be used to liven 

things up a bit! 

Another bugbear is the tendency 

to be charged for the wrong meal 

in Founder’s. To be overcharged 

once is understandable, and twice 

is still acceptable but I have been 

overcharged countless times now 

because staff have misidentified the 

food on my plate. Some may say it 

is my responsibility to check that 

my receipt matches my food but I 

believe that staff should be briefed 

as to what meals are being served, 

in order to ensure that they can 

confidently identify them at the till. 

It must be noted, however, that I 

understand the university’s need to 

make a profit, and yes an increased 

price on food items in a small shop 

is reasonable when you consider 

that established chain supermarkets 

buy in large bulk, and can thus 

afford to slash prices. And, as some 

people will point out, the food in 

the dining halls can be obtained 

at a lower cost through the use of 

an RCS card, therefore making it 

more affordable. But I can’t help but 

feel that we are parting with our 

money far too easily in the name of 

convenience, and sadly, to a certain 

degree I feel conned. And so I concede, 

maybe that long trek down 

Egham hill is well worth it after all. 

Amazon’s prices Kindle a sense of outrage 

in Macmillan Press, but not much sense 



Amazon, after briefly going so far 

as to take down all Macmillan Press 

books from its US website, has 

given in to their demands: Macmillan 

e-books will not be sold at the 

9.99 USD (which, in my opinion, 

at £6.28, is already pretty steep) 

that Amazon wanted, but at the 

12.99 USD upon which Macmillan 

insisted. 

Macmillan’s chief executive John 

Sargent explained that it is im- 

portant that “intellectual property 

can be widely available digitally 

at a price that is both fair to the 

consumer and allows those who 

create it and publish it to be fairly 

compensated.” This method of 

compensation is presumably one 

that places (and prices) intellectual 

property above production costs; 

Macmillan’s suggested top price of 

14.99 USD (£9.35) is higher than 

that of most paperbacks (especially 

if you know where to look; there are 

bargain book stores in London and 

Cambridge where you can get hold 

of brand new Oxford World Clas- 

sics for £2). I’d always thought that 

the basic business model consisted 

of the following: production costs + 

profit margin = recommended retail 

price. Apparently, once e-books 

have removed the vast majority of 

production costs, Macmillan has 

decided that they are not left with 

savings + profit margin = reduced 

RRP, but with profit margin + profit 

margin = pretty much the same 

RRP. This is hardly fair on consumers. 

The Financial Times Online 

explains the decision as a switch in 

business model: “[Macmillan] pre- 

fers the Apple “agency” model used 

for selling books by Apple for its 

forthcoming iPad device - whereby 

the retailer takes a 30 per cent commission 

- to the “wholesale” terms 

for Amazon’s Kindle, the current 

leader in e-readers. Until now 

Amazon has been selling e-books 

just as it sells regular books - buying 

them for half the list price then 

naming its own price. The publishing 

industry says this has artificially 

devalued books.” I am perhaps lacking 

in economic understanding, 

the mistake both Macmillan and 

Amazon seem to be making here is 

that they are failing to differentiate 

between two very different formats. 

An e-book is not just an electronic 

book, the same way an email is not 

just an electronic piece of mail; 

there are certain expectations that 

go with computerised information, 

novelistic or otherwise. One 

of these expectations is price (that 

is to say, the price I think I should 

to pay, compared to the expensive 

Amazon price, or the extortionate 

Macmillan price). The e-book especially 

will of course be devalued; if I 

Continued on page 26 »

26 


Amazon’s prices Kindle 

a sense of outrage in 

Macmillan Press, but 

not much sense 

» continued from page 25 

have paid for an electronic reading 

device, I EXPECT for there to be a 

saving in the books I then buy and 

read. Otherwise, I will have paid 

more, twice over (once for the tool 

with which to read the books, and 

secondly for the books themselves). 

After all, the book I’m buying is virtual. 

It wasn’t actually ‘made’ in the 

traditional sense. It did not need 

paper, ink, a factory, factory employees, 

a lorry and a lorry driver to 

reach me. Furthermore, its publishers 

never have to worry about or- 

dering enough or too little from the 

printer’s, so as well as removing a 

huge part of the cost of publication, 

e-books have also removed some 

of the risk. Apparently, however, 

these benefits pale in comparison to 

the publisher’s intellectual property 

rights; they own it, they distribute 

it, they overprice it. 

Whether or not it is their right 

to overprice, Macmillan needs to 

show some foresight. The Financial 

Times, in a workshop in 

2006, questioned: “Are intellectual 

property rights defensible any 

more? … If current trends continue 

on steroids will it simply become 

impossible to protect intellectual 

property rights by 2015?” In such a 

climate, I think the practice of pricing 

the law, and not the production 

costs, is a little unrealistic. If people 

feel cheated by over-priced e-books, 

piracy will ensue. Furthermore, 

Macmillan’s comment of compensating 

those who created and published 

the work is laughable when 

we remember how little money the 

authors themselves actually get. In 

the context of e-books, the cost and 

time frame involved in publishing 

a novel is dramatically reduced for 

the publisher. Not so for the author. 

Susan Piver, an author published by 

Macmillan, writes in the Huffington 

Post: “the lowest paid of all in this 

supply chain, [is] the author. Somehow, 

we’re never considered in this 

debate. If the publisher’s prices fall, 

so do our royalties. Which are an 

urban legend anyway.” 

What the e-book calls for, then, is 

not a petty spat between two companies 

that are rolling in it anyway, 

but for an innovation of the entire 

industry. Whilst Amazon and 

Macmillan are squabbling, I predict 

a revolution. Authors and consumers 

are sick of being the ones who 

either get paid the least or must pay 

the most. To publish a book online, 

all you really need is a computer. 

In recent years, more and more 

authors (who at the end of the day, 

truly have a claim of intellectual 

property over their work, however 

undervalued it is in their contracts) 

have chosen to self-publish by 

posting their work online. At the 

moment, this movement is in its 

toddler stage, but with the advent 

of the e-book, I believe that in a few 

years time, a whole generation of 

authors will be publishing, distributing, 

and selling, their own work. 

This new type of publication would 

completely circumvent the need for 

companies like Macmillan. Perhaps 

if Macmillan spent less time being 

greedy about their 70% (of which 

about 10% goes to the author), and 

more time valuing their authors 

and consumers, they’d realise this. 

If they were clever, they would then 

find a way to work it in to their 

business model. If not… well, that’s 

capitalism for you. 


Don’t like what you’re reading? 

Got a different point of view? 

Email David, our Comment & Debate Editor, at comment@thefounder.co.uk 

Please recycle this newspaper 

when you are finished 


Arts Building, The Hub, Gowar 

and Wedderburn Halls, T-Dubbs



The ever elusive peace in the Middle East 

Liam Hoare 

“Both sides — the Israelis and the 

Palestinians — found that…it was 

very hard for them to start engaging 

in a meaningful conversation. 

And I think that we overestimated 

our ability to persuade them to do 

so when their politics ran contrary 

to that.” - - Barack Obama, Time, 

January 21 2010. 

The dream of a comprehensive 

peace in 

the Middle East is 

one that has troubled 

and eluded every 

American administration since 

the State of Israel’s inception in 

1948. Many Democratic presidents 

made important, incremental steps: 

Carter cemented a lasting concord 

between Israel and Egypt in 1979; 

Clinton successfully negotiated the 

Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace in 

1994. However, thus far none have 

managed to satisfactorily solve the 

Arab-Israeli conflict with regard to 

fate of the Palestinians. 

Barack Obama has committed 

himself to finding a workable solution 

to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, 

which encompasses a twostate 

solution. This is by no means 

impossible and it is of course the 

most desirable outcome. However, 

Obama continues to drive the peace 

process down avenues which have 

previously led to failure, primarily 

that of entrusting both sides to 

solve the problems independent of 

external influence. 

Left to its own devices, the State 

of Israel has continued its expansionist 

policies on the West Bank, 

that of the continued construction 

of new settlements. Under the premiership 

of Benjamin Netanyahu, 

development has not abated, and 

the Likud seem as committed as 

ever to the idea of an Eretz Israel – 

the legacy of Menachem Begin. 

For sure, Israeli encroachment 

into lands considered Arab by the 

international community has to 

some extent weakened the foundations 

of the nascent Palestinian 

National Authority. However, to 

blame Israel entirely for the failure 

to form a cohesive second state in 

Canaan would be a fallacy. 

It is evident too that, devoid of 

external regulation, the Palestinian 

Authority has proven itself 

incapable of the act of governance. 

Yasser Arafat was an incompetent 

demagogue, who through corruption 

and lackadaisical leadership 

suffocated any prospect of a 

functioning nation emerging in 

the Palestinian Territories. Further, 

under Mahmoud Abbas, a universal 

deterioration in social conditions 

led to Hamas taking control of 

Gaza in 2006. 

The Palestinians are currently so 

weak that they are in no position to 

negotiate for peace. Thus the key to 

settling the Arab-Israeli conflict lies 

in fostering within the West Bank 

the structures necessary to erect 

an operational Palestinian state. As 

the most politically modern and 

economically dynamic state in the 

Middle East, the burden in theory 

27 

ought to rest with Israel to assist 

this process. However, past indiscretions 

indicate that any hopes of 

Israel changing its mission on the 

West Bank from that of colonisation 

to nation building are but 

fantasies. 

Thus, perhaps the most apt 

and practical path to a two-state 

solution involves neighbouring 

nations – Jordan on the West Bank, 

Egypt in the Gaza Strip – being 

granted internationally-recognised 

mandates to involve themselves 

instigating political stability and 

economic prosperity through incubating 

democratic state structures. 

Of course in Gaza, Egypt, with help 

from the United States, would have 

the additional task neutralising Hamas 

and brokering a truce between 

them and Fatah. 

Although internal and interreligious 

divisions continue to stifle 

the peace process, the Arab-Israeli 

conflict remains at its heart a battle 

over land. The end goal is ultimately 

the formation of two democratic 

nation-states within the Land of 

Israel, in a condition of perpetual 

peace. This can be achieved. First, 

however, the United States needs 

to comprehend that the structures 

of the Palestinian Authority must 

be brought up to parity with that 

of Israel, with assistance from 

neighbouring states. Without this 

fundamental recognition, a comprehensive 

peace in the Middle East 

will be as elusive for Obama as it 

was for both Carter and Clinton. 

A victim’s right and a child’s right: who wins? 

Dina Patel 

There has always been 

something disturbingly 

wrong about the 

British Judicial system 

and the punishments 

they hand out to sexual offenders. 

Just last week, 14 year old Balal 

Khan was ordered only 3 years in 

a young offender’s institution for 

raping a 20 year old woman. Of 

course Khan will probably serve 

only 18 months of that sentence, 

leaving the victim, her family, and 

the public, questioning the reasoning 

behind the lenient punishment. 

Apparently we are to be gentle 

with this child as he did say ‘sorry’. 

‘Sorry’ may mean something when 

you forget to do your homework, 

it may mean something when you 

cheat in an exam, it may mean 

something when you play truant. 

It means absolutely nothing when 

you severely beat a young girl and 

violate her body. 

Khan, who was 13 at the time of 

the incident, grabbed his victim 

as she walked home and punched 

her when she tried to struggle. 

This so called apologetic boy told 

his victim “do what I say or I’ll kill 

you” before he continued to attack 

her. It doesn’t matter if Khan was 

13 or younger, when a human being 

is aware that the idea of death 

is enough to paralyse their victim, 

they should no longer be categorised 

as an immature child. Where 

was the guilt when he stole her iPod 

and phone and went about his day, 

making phone calls on her mobile? 

Where was the remorse when Khan 

answered a call from the girl’s boyfriend 

on her phone and bragged 

about what he had done? How 

could a judge possibly accept an 

apology that was more about selfconcern 

and lenient punishment, 

than genuine remorse? 

Now the Children’s Rights Alliance 

for England is complaining 

about the judge’s decision to name 

Khan as UNCRC (United Nations 

Convention on the Rights of 

the Child) guidelines say a child’s 

privacy should be respected at all 

stages of criminal proceedings. It 

is disgusting enough that a British 

court is giving three years to a rapist, 

but there are people out there 

defending this animal, who indeed 

should be named; he should be vilified 

and the public should know the 

face of the cold-hearted child who 

changed, in a terribly way, the life 

of a young woman. Why should his 

life not change too? 

Katy Swaine, legal director at the 

Children’s Rights Alliance for England 

said: “This was clearly a very 

serious attack. However, [Khan] is 

still a child and this means that he 

is required under UK and international 

law to be treated differently 

from an adult. This principle is 

based on children’s vulnerability to 

outside influence, early developmental 

stage and capacity for rehabilitation. 

He has admitted what 

he has done, which is the first step 

towards rehabilitation. Custody is a 

grave sentence for a child and must 

only be used for the shortest possible 

period of time.” 

Khan may have admitted his 

crime, but keeping away from the 

public eye will only help to hide his 

crime and ease his rehabilitation. 

What about the rehabilitation of his 

victim? Nothing can help ease her 

suffering, but the open denigration 

of her attacker will at least show her 

that the public is on her side. 

The punishment also does not 

reflect the amount of time Khan 

will need to receive the proper care 

for successful rehabilitation. Khan 

clearly needs help from specialists 

who handle young teenagers 

with emotional, psychological 

and neurological problems, and 

18 months in a young offender’s 

institution will not change what this 

boy has learned in 13 years. Despite 

the defence claiming Khan’s anger 

Continued on page 28 »

28 


A 

victim’s 

right and 

a child’s 

right: 

who 

wins? 

» continued from page 27 

management classes (which he had 

been attending prior to the attack) 

had been working, the subsequent 

rape surely proves otherwise. If we 

fail to believe alcoholics anonymous 

is working for someone who 

carries on drinking, surely Naomi 

Perry, defending, must take the 

British public to be fools if she 

thinks she can confidently say that 

Khan’s anger management classes 

have helped him. 

Our Justice System is far too 

lenient on rapists and, considering 

that the crime is an act which leaves 

the victim emotionally scarred for 

life, ordering a rapist three to eight 

years in prison is as disgusting as 

the crime itself. The punishments 

are disrespectful to the victim, to 

their family who suffer with them 

and to women and men everywhere 

who fear they would have no justice 

if ever they were in the same position. 

I recently discovered that the 

average length of sentence for rape 

is seven and a half years, and the 

sentence can vary depending not 

only on the age of the rapist but 

also the age of the victim. I hardly 

get a warm feeling knowing a rapist 

would have got a higher sentence 

had I been attacked at 13, than if I 

were to be attacked now at 22. Why 

are we using age brackets in the first 

place? It is fine to have guidelines 

but not when the guidelines fail 

to reflect the physical and psychological 

effects of sexual attacks. It 

is about time the British Judicial 

System started to issue punishments 

which reflect the severity of 

rape, and then, perhaps the public 

can believe that, for once, justice 

does exist. 


Bilingualism: double 

language, double standard 



The list of the benefits 

of childhood 

bilingualism that 

is posted on the 

National Literary 

Trust website 

includes meta-linguistic awareness, 

increased cognitive flexibility, and 

social sensitivity. It also mentions 

research from Goldsmith’s, which 

shows that multilingual children 

can outperform monolingual 

children in secondary school. 

Behavioural psychologist Dean 

Keith Simonton adds: “Research 

has shown that intensive exposure 

to two or more different languages 

helps build the cognitive basis for 

creativity. ” I can’t really vouch for 

any of these qualities affecting me 

(especially the bit about outperforming 

monolingual children 

academically!), but speaking 

another language enables me to 

communicate with my non-English 

speaking family (so it’s pretty essential… 

although when the family 

nags, complete ignorance of what 

they are saying might admittedly be 

useful), and it is also the medium 

through with I can assert a link 

with my second culture. 

Knowing how precious my language 

is to me (and how my schools 

always applauded and encouraged 

my language acquisition), I was 

horrified when Sonia, a Chinese- 

American friend, described her first 

year at primary school; as a fluent 

Cantonese speaker, she would 

sometimes mix Cantonese with 

English, including when speaking 

to her teachers. In response, her 

teachers told her parents to stop 

speaking Cantonese to her, which 

they did. As a result, her level of 

fluency dropped and as an adult, 

when she moved to Hong Kong for 

postgraduate study, she was faced 

with the task of recovering a language 

that she shouldn’t have lost 

in the first place. The saddest thing 

in this story is that language mixing 

in bilingual children is actually very 

common and very normal; as the 

National Literary Trust explains, 

“children will not get confused by 

learning more than one language 

in the household; up until about 

the age of 10 or 12, children learn 

foreign languages almost as if they 

were one big language.” When a 

bilingual child speaks, they will 

therefore use the first word that 

springs to mind regardless of which 

language it is from. They will grow 

out of this - that is, if an adult 

doesn’t screw it up for them - with 

both languages intact and fluent. 

Remembering her story, I wonder 

if it wasn’t just ignorance that had 

made her teachers react in that 

way; I can’t help but think that if 

she’d been ‘confusing’ English with 

a European language, she would 

have been met with more patience. 

Perhaps she would even have been 

applauded for having a rare and 

valued linguistic talent. 

Stories of other Asian friends in 

England and Australia with similar 

experiences - in which their other 

language was either repressed or 

ignored within formal education 

- have lead me to ask if this is not 

a wide-spread trend, in which a European 

language trumps a Non-European 

one. Muriel Saville-Troike, 

in her book Introducing Second 

Language Acquisition, agrees: 

“Maintenance of indigenous and 

immigrant languages other than 

English is not widely encouraged 

(in the US) and is often actively discouraged. 

Indeed, pride in ethnicity 

along with associated language 

use can be seen as very threatening 

to the dominant group, and as a 

symbol of disunity and separatism.” 

Liberals like to cheerfully remark 

that, despite our train-wreck 

economy, and our PM who sold 

reserves of gold when the market 

slumped (perhaps the hint should 

have been in the name: he’s a reverse 

Midas - everything he touches 

turns to Brown), multiculturalism 

is definitely one thing that Britain 

does well. So perhaps, Saville- 

Troike’s comment doesn‘t apply 

to us…. Sorry kids. No such luck. 

When I asked an Indian friend of 

mine whether his Punjabi skills 

were ever valued in school, his response 

was: “Why should they be?” 

It’s a response that says it all. On 

further questioning, he admitted 

that perhaps this was because Punjabi 

is considered “more primitive” 

(despite being the product of one of 

the most ancient civilisations in the 

world), in contrast to (for example) 

French, which brings to mind high 

fashion, depressed poetry, and cups 

of artistic and/or existentialist coffee. 

A Modern Foreign Languages 

secondary school teacher I spoke to 

agreed, although she was also keen 

to point out that GCSEs in native 

languages are available at special 

request (that is, GCSE as a foreign 

language, resulting in the ludicrous 

situation of, say, a fluent speaker of 

Guajarati taking an exam in beginner’s 

Guajarati). One argument for 

their difference in status may be 

that French is widespread around 

the world (and therefore more useful), 

but so are many Asian languages 

(Sonia’s ‘useless’ Cantonese 

is spoken in Malaysia, Singapore, 

Hong Kong, and China, and Chinese 

is the most spoken language in 

the world). Besides, you can’t look 

into a crystal ball and say: “During 

the course of this child’s entire life, 

we know for absolute certain that 

he/she is never going here, here, 

and there, so he/she doesn’t need 

to learn that language.” You never 

know when a language will be useful, 

or where someone will end up 

in the future. Furthermore, in terms 

of brain development, it doesn’t 

matter which language the child 

speaks in order to derive a benefit, 

yet the opportunities (or should I 

say lack of opportunities) available 

to speakers of non-European languages 

in British education doesn’t 

seem to reflect that. 

English Linguist Kit Fields, in 

her book Issues in Modern Foreign 

Languages, laments: “Why is it 

that a child bringing into school a 

particular skill in music or drama 

or sport will have that skill nurtured 

or encouraged, but that a 

child whose skill lies in being able 

to speak Turkish or Chinese or 

Bengali, as well as English, is likely 

within our education system to 

have that skill ignored? Why is such 

a skill not seen as important for the 

cognitive and emotional development 

of that child and as a resource 

which can promote the language 

and cultural awareness of all pupils? 

Why do we not value an outstanding 

performance in a Gujarati examination 

as highly as a mediocre 

one in French?” I hate to be the one 

to say it Kit, but that sounds like a 

type of intellectual racism to me.


Volunteering 

You only get what you give 

Royal Holloway’s Community Action proves 

volunteering can do a selfish good deed 

As I approach my last few weeks as a university student I have a number of regrets regarding my time here. 

Firstly, I really, fervently wish I had decided to adopt a more proactive work ethic from day one. I also wish 

I had taken anybody’s advice about budgeting and money management, so that I could leave university 

with something more substantial than an empty overdraft in my student account. Finally, I wish I had done 

more with my free time. Although Call of Duty: Modern Warfare seemed a worthwhile pursuit, in retrospect, 

I should have spent more hours working towards my life after university. This is where Community Action 

can help. 

Community Action is focussed on helping those within Holloway’s local area. Volunteering opportunities 

cover different age groups, from children to the very old; they range in activities from conservation work to 

teaching, and include a staggering amount of choice and, importantly, experience. Whilst helping others 

may induce feelings of euphoria or happiness, there are also possibly more tangible effects. Volunteering 

provides a unique opportunity to gain practical skills and understanding in fields where you may be unable 

to rely upon your natural aptitude to get ahead. I personally am currently volunteering on an award-winning 

programme to teach IT skills to refugees, as I am hoping to become a language teacher when I leave 

university (in only FIVE MONTHS), this allows me to gain essential knowledge about communication barriers 

and patience. It is possible that Community Action can prove just as beneficial to you. 

The Community Action projects feature literally hundreds of different volunteering opportunities, and 

importantly, offer flexibility, allowing you to dedicate as much of your time as you can afford. This means it 

is very easy to plan volunteering around your timetable, or extra-curricular commitments. 

If you fancy gaining vital experience in a particular field, or just trying something new, volunteering presents 

a unique opportunity to improve your CV and moral conscience, whilst helping others. So if you want 

to try it out, check out the links above. If you have specific questions you can email the Community Action 

team, or if you want to flick through the volunteering opportunities, check out our website (www.rhul. 

ac.uk/CommunityAction). 

29

30 

Sport 

RHUL Bears Basketball 

ULU Cup Champions! 

Johanna Svensson 

On Saturday 28 February, the Royal 

Holloway Lady Bears ventured 

to North London to play UCL in 

the final for the ULU Cup. After 

a thrilling 40 minutes, the Bears 

could finally proclaim themselves 

champions in the University of 

London Union Cup with a winning 

score of 52-43. 

Royal Holloway took a firm grasp 

of the game from the start, ending 

the first quarter in the lead, and 

kept this throughout the game. 

UCL came as close as a mere point 

away, but the Bears were determined 

to win and after a strategic 

time-out by coach Tasha Green, 

pulled their game together and left 

UCL behind them again score-wise. 

UCL pressed full court most 

of the game but had great trou- 

bles stopping the excellent point 

guards in Vicky Bright and Kristine 

Flyvholm who, together with the 

other players from Holloway, time 

and time again could fast break and 

score easy lay-ups. Meanwhile, the 

RHUL zone defence with a solid 

teamwork in help defence from 

Alice Couten, Anna Dyachenko 

and Sarah Melingo proved successful 

and pressured UCL to difficult 

passes and consequently simple 

mistakes. Also, the Bears could 

control and execute rebounding 

a lot better than at any point this 

season, and this turned out to be 

an important factor in winning this 

final. 

Man of the Match was voted 

Kristine Flyvholm who both helped 

steer the play as point guard, breaking 

the press of the opponents, 

and also for hard work in defence. 

Top scorers: Alice Couten 17, Johanna 

Svensson 11, Kristine Flyvholm 10 

Royal Holloway’s way through the 

ULU Cup: 

Quarter finals: RHUL vs Kings 54-31 

Semi finals: RHUL vs LSE 68-59 

Final: RHUL vs UCL 52-43 


tf 

sports@thefounder.co.uk 

Top 10 

sporting 

moments 

No. 9 – Daley Thompson 

retains his Decathlon 

Olympic gold 

Born in Notting Hill in 1958 

Thompson became Olympic, 

World, European and Commonweath 

champion from 1978 to 

1986, and was the first athlete to 

hold all four titles at the same time 

in the same event. However, it was 

his victory in the 1984 Los Angeles 

Olympics - his competition with 

the West German Jürgen Hingsen - 

which captured the imagination of 

the British public. Although Hingsen 

was the World record holder, it 

was Thompson who was the reigning 

Olympic and newly-crowned 

World champion. Thompson was, 

eventually, utterly supreme. The 

competition’s key skill was the discus, 

the seventh discipline, whereas 

for the Briton this was not the best 

of events. However, by throwing 

46.56m he narrowed the gap on his 

rival. His performance in the pole 

vault and javelin put Thompson 

into the lead before slowing down 

near the finish of the 1500m, which 

meant he did not break the world 

record. Thompson won with 8797 

followed in a repeat of Helsinki, 

with Hingsen second with 8673, 

and Wentz third with 8412. Further 

twists to the story continued as 

changes the rules in 1985 and the 

altered time of Thompson’s 110m 

hurdles time by one hundredth of 

a second made his 1984 Olympic 

score the World record outright at 

8847, beating Hingsen new world 

record of 8798 set in the October 

after the Olympics. A controversial 

but lovable character, he was made 

the BBC Sports Personalilty of the 

Year award in 1982 and awarded 

the MBE and the CBE in 1982 and 

2000 respectively.

Get lost 

Every Thursday 

11th March 

Toga Party 

18th March 

St Paddy party 

25th March 

Wheel of misfortune 

for more info on events go to: 

facebook.com/liquidclubs 

twitter.com/liquidclubs 

liquidclubs.com 

windsor 

Theme nights every week 

STUDENT NIGHT 

FREE VIP booths for 

sports teams or societies 

Book in your team or socity party now! 

Email us to get free booths or free drinks 

windsor@liquidclubs.com 

William street,Windsor SL4 1BB 

Tel// 01753 621199 

offers may not apply to gala sessions

HARBEN LETS HL Fashion Show Preview - The Founder

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