The Future of Britain

Chief editors 

Felix Clarke 

Oliver Northover Smith 

Graphical editor 

Max Beech 

Section editors 

Samuel Lewis - Politics 

Calvin Ngwena - Politics 

Jonathan French - Economics 

Lewis Bizaoui - Finance & Business 

James Wheeler - Society 

Chris Ranson - Media & Sport 

Cover illustration 

Jason Roy 

Written and produced by students of 

The Royal Grammar School, Guildford 

Monarchy 

Scottish Independence 

Free-Market 

European Union 

Republic 

Scottish devolution 

Nationalisation 

European exit 

UNITED 

KINGDOM 

The 

Future 

Cover illustration by Jason Roy 

of Britain

INTRODUCTION 

CONTENTS 

Our world is characterised by prosperity. Stagnant 

yet prosperous in the West, entrepreneurial yet poor 

in the East. One is already prosperous, and one will 

soon be. 

Despite all this, we must not forget that growth is a 

new phenomenon. Global emergence from subsistence 

agriculture is a story of the last two hundred years. 

One of the driving forces behind this emergence was the 

beginnings of the study of a new subject – Economics. Men 

now began to study the most efficient way to allocate the 

resources our societies were blessed with. Adam Smith’s 

1776 book, The Wealth of Nations is seen as the very 

beginning of this process, but people are oft to forget 

David Ricardo, the second great classical economist, whose 

contributions are arguably superior to those of Smith. 

Ricardo’s theories on trade and pricing have founded the 

modern world of commerce and to him we are all in debt. 

This journal is called The Ricardian because we believe 

that knowledge about the processes that allowed us to be 

prosperous is essential for us all if we are to perpetuate our 

prosperity in the face of serious challenges. 

Over the next few years, Britain faces enormous 

challenges which she will have to confront. As senior 

editors of this publication, we have brought together 

some bright young minds to theorise about our 

nation’s future as well as judge her past. Some 

will argue that the free markets promoted by 

the classical economists fail to achieve all of 

society’s goals. Others will try to persuade 

us that we make better decisions left to 

our own devices. The important thing 

is that we gather knowledge to make 

informed citizens of ourselves so we 

can tackle the challenges ahead. 

Felix Clarke and 


Politics 

05 The Best Government Ever? 

06 Is it time to abandon the EU? 

06 In Support of a Spoilt Ballot 

07 The Problem With UKIP 

09 2015 Election: Party Leader Profiles 

10 Britain: New direction or same old? 

12 French Exodus: President Hollande 

12 Where do we go from here? 

14 The End of Two-Party Politics? 

15 American Political System: the problem 

16 A Distinctly Scottish Choice 

17 Scottish Referendum: international 

18 Interview: Chris Grayling MP 

Economics 

22 We live in a meritocracy, right? Wrong! 

22 Mark Carney: One year on 

24 The Case for Fat Taxes 

24 Austerity? What Austerity? 

25 Cost of Living Crisis 

26 The Sinfulness of ‘Sin Taxes’ 

27 Economic recovery: driven by South? 

28 End help-to-buy and start building 

29 Will we regret quantitative easing? 

History 

32 Did Friedrich Engels alter Marxism? 

32 The West: to blame for Middle East? 

34 Pillars of Civilization, Gods to greed 

35 WW2 POW Camp Economy 

35 American economic aggression 

36 The Trolley Cart Dilemma 

38 World War One’s Literary Legacy 

40 Spanish Empire & New World Silver 

53 The Visible 2012 Legacy 

55 Is the UK a Christian country? 

56 Can pro 23 gaming be a real career? 

57 Cannabis debate: the problem 

Media & Sport 

59 The role of finance in county cricket 

60 Dark days for conventional TV? 

60 Why would you host the World Cup? 

61 The Changing Fortunes of Man U 

62 Football: more than just a sport? 

18 

62 

Finance & Business 

15 Is Silver a Safe Haven for Investors? 

19 Pfizer and AstraZeneca 

15 Hit the road, Frack 

19 Aston Martin: an independent future? 

Society 

47 Are we too reliant on the Internet? 

47 A Changing Music Industry 

49 King George? 

51 Urban re-development: US vs. UK 

52 Should Politicians ‘Do God’? 

3 

17

4 

POLITICS 

What is politics? To some it brings about an emotion of apathy. Others become filled with rage and anger 

at the mention of politics. They relate it with upper class elitists who do not concern themselves with the 

issues of ordinary people but see it as a way to further their own selfish aims. 

Admittedly there is a degree of truth to this, but I feel that politics is the most important element of society. It is a 

discipline in either study or real life application which provides a forum for people to express their own opinions, 

challenge and debate each other on key issues which are of significant personal importance. Politics also allows 

for citizens to place other subjects of academia into real world application. Think what impact ideologies such as 

conservatism would have made if there was not a system which allowed these ideas to be presented and implemented 

in a practical manner. As Plato so famously put it, ‘One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that 

you end up being governed by your inferiors’. 

With the General Election here in the UK less than a year away, Britain’s two major political parties must now 

fight hard if they are to overturn the rise of UKIP that was highlighted by the European elections earlier this year. 

Before that there is the Scottish Referendum. The result of this will not only be of great importance in the UK, but 

throughout Europe and the rest of the world as various states try to claim independence themselves. So much now 

rests on the General election and the Scottish Referendum that both can at least be expected to have large turnouts. 

Samuel Lewis & Calvin Ngwena, Section Editors 

The best 

Government 

ever? 

Rupert Fitzsimmons 

Okay, so, the Coalition Government of 

the past four years has not been the best 

government that Britain has ever had: 

one might even say that it has been quite 

mediocre, although mediocrity might 

just have been what we needed back in 

May 2010, in the middle of the economic 

crisis. The Coalition Government has 

been incredibly good for both the 

economy and the democracy of the UK. 

Additionally, it has resulted in what 

might be identified as a significant 

political victory for the Tories, as the 

Lib Dems have been widely considered 

to be the governmental scapegoat. This 

relatively uneventful coalition has been 

an incredible success as a direct product 

of its uneventfulness - it has reinforced 

significant benefactions of politics to 

the state. 

David Cameron and Nick Clegg - the 

‘dynamic duo’ 

The ‘dynamic duo’, as one might 

sarcastically describe the publicly 

chummy prime minister and his deputy, 

have faced much criticism over their 

adventurously passive government 

but this was always going to be the 

case. Naturally, coalitions prevent the 

exploration of election manifestos 

during their period of governance 

due to not necessarily having a truly 

legitimate mandate. Consequently, 

many voters deem their votes to have 

been wasted and their once inspiring 

politicians to be traitors. This mindset 

is easily fallen into by the traditionally 

uncompromisingly partisan electorate 

of the UK and, to the great joy of UKIP, 

presents fertile ground for rigorous 

political conversion. For the following 

reasons, however, one should avoid this 

viewpoint. 

“Thatcherite 

economic 

policies... saved 

the UK economy” 

While it may seem disappointing that 

the politicians have, yet again, seemingly 

failed to deliver, I strongly believe that 

the hung parliament of 2010 was the 

best thing that could have happened 

to our country. We were experiencing a 

period of horrific economic downturn 

following the recession of 2009 and 

none of the major parties, with the 

possible exception of the Conservative 

Party with the fiscal faculties of George 

Osborne, would have really known what 

to do. Labour would almost certainly 

have failed due to its unwillingness to 

make cuts and had, so goes the Tory 

line, already managed to wreck the 

economy. The Lib Dems were proposing 

rabble-rousing reductions in tax which 

certainly would not have remotely 

helped with the deficit. The Liberal- 

Tory coalition, however, resulted in, 

due to the necessity for stability, a very 

satisfying compromise of compassionate 

quasi-socialist social policies from the 

Lib Dems with the Thatcherite legacy 

of neo-liberal fiscal policies from the 

Tories - a match made in heaven for 

a failing country. Furthermore, as an 

obvious result of coalition, the overall 

philosophical outlook naturally drifted 

towards a centrist position. Fortunately, 

in contemporary politics, centrist views 

appeal widely and, thanks to Thatcher’s 

undeniable success, have adopted 

many economically sound principles. 

If we had not had this stable centrist 

government then it is unlikely we 

would be experiencing yearly economic 

growth rates of 2-3%, a significant 

improvement meriting a round of 

applause for Mr. Osborne. The coalition’s 

stable Thatcherite economic policies, 

therefore, saved the UK’s economy. 

A further reason for the Government’s 

brilliant mediocrity is its innate 

conservatism (in the philosophical 

sense). Due to its minor legitimacy 

crisis, the coalition has been forced 

to make only small changes in areas 

beyond economic necessity, no radical 

changes with unforeseen outcomes 

have been enacted. This means that, 

considering Brown’s pathetic period as 

prime minister, we are still living in a 

country that is fundamentally Blairite 

in its infrastructure - an infrastructure 

which, considering the democratic 

reforms of rights, the House of Lords, 

the Judiciary and general transparency, 

is rather good. 

If anything, not with the intention of 

continuing these democratic reforms, 

but with the indirect result of it, the 

coalition government has improved 

the country even more so through the 

introduction of fixed term parliaments. 

This five year period, outlined by the 

government in order to set itself a target, 

is a great addition to the constitution 

which has helped modernise the UK. 

Purely by accident, the coalition 

government has improved democracy in 

the UK. 

The coalition, despite not being 

particularly appealing, exciting or 

influential has been - and continues to 

be - a stable and suitable answer to the 

issues that have faced, and still face, 

the UK. I am sure that no voter is truly 

yearning for a continuation of this safe 

and mediocre period of politics, but the 

coalition really has been the saviour of 

Britain. ƒ 

5

POLITICS 

Is it time to 

abandon the 

EU? 

Tim Foster 

The question of whether 

the UK should remain part 

of the EU has, for better 

or worse, dominated UK 

politics. 

British citizens have increasingly begun 

to question whether being members of 

the EU is in the national interest, and if 

not, then the second question concerning 

leaving the EU naturally follows. In 

order to see how central this debate has 

become, one need not look further than 

the UK’s political party system, which 

has changed to such an extent that, in 

the words of many journalists, ‘three has 

become four’. The Labour, Conservative 

and Liberal Democrat parties are 

now seen to have a fourth major rival: 

UKIP. This party seeks to represent the 

Eurosceptic feelings that many people in 

the UK now have, as demonstrated by 

the recent European elections, in which 

only UKIP can claim to be the winner. 

UKIP, alongside many other Eurosceptic 

organisations, have advanced various 

arguments in favour of abandoning the 

EU. It is my opinion, however, that these 

arguments are fundamentally flawed. 

Whilst the EU clearly has its problems 

and needs reforming, the UK needs to be 

part of this process, and 

react by expelling most if not all British 

citizens back to the UK, causing a 

massive influx of people coming into our 

country (exactly what the Eurosceptic 

wants!). 

On top of this, immigration horror 

stories are almost entirely mythological 

in nature. For instance, it is a lie 

that immigrants are mostly living off 

benefits: European immigrants are 

half as likely as natives to receive state 

benefits or tax credits, according to a 

study by academics at UCL. 

Other fantasies about EU immigrants 

are similarly rebuked by facts: most 

are young and skilled. They come here 

mainly to work. Their so-called ‘nonactivity’ 

rate, which covers pensioners, 

students and stay-at-home parents 

as well as the unemployed, is thirty 

percent. The rate for the UK population 

as a whole is forty-three percent. 

Meanwhile, thirty-two percent of 

recent arrivals have university degrees 

compared with twenty-one percent of 

the native population. The average age 

of the European immigrant population 

in Britain was thirty-four in 2011, 

compared with forty-one for the native 

population. We do not pay much for 

the immigrants’ education since most 

arrive already educated. As most EU 

immigrants are of working age, we do 

not pay much for their pensions or 

healthcare either. Many return home 

after a few years. Finally, consider the 

cultural impact: immigrants import 

different foods, languages beliefs, ideas, 

etc., all of which are worth celebrating. 

The more ingredients a stew gets, the 

better it tastes. Immigration is and 

has always been a powerful tool for the 

enrichment of mankind. 

Ultimately, EU immigrants are largely a 

force for good, not evil, and so leaving 

the EU because of immigration would be 

a massive mistake. 

In fact, leaving the EU at all would be 

a massive mistake. No matter how you 

look at it, be it economically, culturally 

or internationally, all sides stand to 

lose if the UK abandons the EU. The 

arguments put forward by Eurosceptics 

are at best mistaken and at worst 

purely emotional and without rational 

grounding. This is not to say that the EU 

does not have problems; it does indeed 

have huge ones. The solution, however, 

is not for the UK to leave a sinking ship, 

but to help navigate it towards reform, 

and in doing so, help to steer Europe 

towards prosperity. ƒ 

In support of a 

spoilt ballot 

Will Cowie 

2015 dawns fast upon us. 

For the majority of the team here at the 

Ricardian, it is a landmark date – not 

just a general election, but the general 

election – the first one; the first time 

that we have been considered old or 

wise enough to vote by the leaders of our 

country. Finally we have a voice and are 

able to enter into that shared right of 

the great civilisations of human history 

– the right to vote. Like the Athenians 

and Romans before us we have a chance 

to live “the good life” of politics and to 

let our voices be heard. 

So it may surprise you that, come 

Polling Day, with your list of party 

candidates before you, I suggest that 

we spoil our ballots. This may seem 

stupid, a waste of a useful vote, it may 

seem like a refusal to accept society as 

it is and instead seek a perfect political 

system. Spoiling the ballot may seem 

the equivalent to entering that weighty 

and historical theatre (the polling box) 

and resoundingly, defiantly, raising two 

fingers. 

I would argue that this is not the case. 

It’s not just that as young people we 

are utterly unrepresented by political 

parties today – and we certainly are as 

parties seek out the vote of an ageing 

population, scared to significantly 

raise the retirement age but perfectly 

happy to hand out £27,000 of crippling 

debt upon all young people who seek 

higher education. It’s not just the 

centralisation of political power – as 

the safe seat becomes more and more 

common in various regions, the leaders 

of are country are determined by a 

shrinking number of swing seats, to 

the extent that, living in Surrey, the 

votes of anyone who does not support 

the Conservatives are wasted. It’s not 

just the corrupt, expense-claiming 

politicians who do not care for the 

concerns of their local constituents but 

instead try to climb the ranks of power 

as suits them. It’s not just the erosion 

of local politics – with power taken 

increasingly away from local authorities 

into the hands of central government 

our say about our local area is removed. 

It’s not just the increasing celebrity 

culture of political leaders – where the 

vote of the country is based upon not the 

policies represented by political parties, 

but whether Nigel Farage likes to have a 

fag and a pint, or what dress Samantha 

Cameron was wearing at the latest social 

function. And it’s not just the increasing 

impotency of our government – held to 

ransom by multi-national corporations. 

Yes, it’s all that. But most important 

is the real erosion of the true sense 

of democracy – the true sense of the 

Athenian “good life”. We are fast losing 

all sense of debate in our political 

system and this is very worrying. We 

see on the one hand apathy (as voter 

turnouts fast shrink) and on the other, 

blind willingness to follow the ideas of 

a political party – we accept or reject 

the ideas of the government in power 

based not on the merit of those ideas 

but instead upon whether the party we 

like suggested them. Spoiling the ballot 

sends a clear message – we want to be 

involved in this democratic system but 

first there needs to be change. For at the 

moment, change does not appear to be 

on the horizon. Maybe, this way, we can 

alter that. ƒ 

The problem 

with UKIP 

Eddie Mitchell 

If you have not noticed 

the rapid rise of UKIP, 

you must have been living 

under a rock. 

To many people, this rise to prominence 

came as something of a surprise. 

Certainly none of the main, established, 

parties seems to have anticipated it. 

Remember that this was the party that 

the Prime Minister once described 

as “a Bunch of Fruitcakes, Loonies 

and Closet Racists”. Now the party so 

rudely dismissed by David Cameron 

has stormed to victory in the recent 

European Elections. So how and why has 

the rise of UKIP been so spectacular? 

To answer this question I believe you 

have to take account of the economic 

conditions over the last few years and 

the effect of austerity measures. Many 

people in the UK are feeling the effects 

and are disillusioned and angry. Since 

the beginning of the financial crisis 

in 2008, thousands of people have 

lost their jobs, or have suffered pay 

freezes or reductions. At one point, in 

2011, nearly 2.7 million people - some 

8% of the UK’s working population - 

were unemployed. The cycle of ‘Boom 

and Bust’, which Gordon Brown so 

triumphantly announced had ended in 

2008, was clearly still in rude health. 

Of course, the recession was not limited 

to the UK. It hit most countries and the 

cause cannot reasonably be attributed 

to the UK politicians. Whatever Gordon 

Brown said in 2008, there was probably 

little he could have done to prevent the 

UKs slide into recession. 

Unfortunately, it seems to be human 

nature to look for a scapegoat. Most 

people want someone or something 

tangible to blame for why they aren’t 

able to adequately to feed their families. 

You don’t have to look too far back in 

history to see this effect in action - most 

evidently in Germany between the 

World wars, when the cruel Versailles 

powers and weak Weimar leaders were 

deemed responsible for all Germany’s 

ills. 

With the assistance of some of the 

tabloid Press, UKIP targets a convenient 

scapegoat - immigrants - specifically 

those from other parts of Europe. 

Immigrants taking jobs that UKIP 

suggest should be given to ‘British 

citizens’ is something tangible and 

6 

7

POLITICS 

easily understood. Such rhetoric feeds 

the prejudices of the desperate and 

focuses their anger. 

Immigration damaging the economy is 

one of those convenient lies which seem 

almost universally to be accepted, yet 

this evidently isn’t true. Far from being 

damaging to the economy, immigration 

is a solution to many problems that 

would face this country if it were 

further curtailed. On balance, recent 

immigrants make a substantial net 

contribution to the wealth of the UK and 

many take jobs that would be hard to 

fill otherwise. These are the conclusions 

reached by researchers at UCL in 2013. 

“Immigration is a 

solution to many 

problems that we 

shall be facing” 

UKIP’s main thrust is, of course, to 

oppose the UK’s membership of the 

EU. The European Union and its 

Members are blamed for holding back 

the UK’s prospects and thus causing 

hardship. In fact, it’s probably true to 

say that the majority of the electorate 

(myself included) simply does not 

have enough information to make any 

rational decision on the state of Britain 

and the effect of its membership of the 

EU. UKIP is cashing in on that lack of 

understanding. 

Another aspect of UKIP’s popularity 

which cannot be ignored stems from the 

personality of its leader Nigel Farage, 

who is for all intents and purposes, the 

face of the party. Farage is a man with 

whom people feel they can identify 

– a rare trait at a time when trust in 

politicians is at an all-time low. Personal 

charisma is not in itself a bad thing, but 

problems can arise when the electorate 

trust policies simply because they like 

the character of the man delivering 

them. 

Nigel Farage is always keen to show off his alternative approach to politics. 

UKIP now has to be seen as a significant 

player in the forthcoming general 

election next year, but it is hard to see 

that they are going to be around for 

the long run. Their party is so thin on 

policy (aside from the desire for the UK 

to be ‘independent’ of the EU) and so 

dependent on one man - its leader - that 

in my opinion, it will soon disappear and 

with it the bitter and divisive policies it 

espouses. 

________________________________ 

BRITAIN UNDER NIGEL FARAGE 

- Immigration would become pointsbased. 

Nigel Farage’s favourite country, 

Australia, would be the model. 

- Question Time and the PMQ’s would 

be instantly elevated to absolute hilarity 

due to the prescence of such characters 

as Godfrey Bloom. 

- The government would be run like the 

city - caffiene and cocaine in, women 

and poor people out. 

2015 Election: 

party leader 

profiles 

Calvin Ngwena 

DAVID CAMERON 

The Prime Minister. The ‘big-cheese’. 

Whatever adjective you want to use 

there is no denying that Mr Cameron 

has dominated the political arena for the 

past few years. From his often criticised 

austerity measures to his controversial 

attempt to intervene in Syria, he has 

been at the centre of political agenda. 

Some would identify a need to address 

the concerning rise of UKIP who are 

seen to be drawing away traditional 

voters from the Tory Party. Maybe this 

is why Cameron recently gave a speech 

about upholding British values and 

possibly the reason behind Education 

Secretary Michael Gove’s reform of our 

educational system to teach our youth 

more about the work of British men and 

women. By prioritising these polices, it 

may be seen as a way of keeping those 

voters who feel that national values are 

being lost at the expense of a tolerance 

of a wide range of cultures. Only time 

will tell whether this potential method 

will continue and even reward the party 

and Mr Cameron with a majority win in 

the next general election. 

NICK CLEGG 

It seems as if nothing can go right for 

the leader of the Third Party. Four 

years ago people were backing the Lib 

Dems, hoping for an alternative to the 

manifestos of the two main parties. The 

leader of the party, however, is perceived 

to have no integrity as he backtracked 

on his objection to a rise in tuition fees, 

a decision which alienated the majority 

of Lib Dems supporters. That is not to 

say Nick Clegg has not tried to improve 

our political system. A valiant attempt 

to reform the House of Lords by making 

peers elected and more accountable 

was rejected by Tories - a defeat which 

caused the Lib Dem leader even more 

heartache. Nevertheless, the true low 

points came at both the EU debates with 

Farage and the lacklustre, uninspiring 

performance in the European election 

which saw party support fall to record 

levels. This accumulatied in the botched 

attempt by Lord Oakeshott to dethrone 

Clegg as the party leader, making for an 

uneasy period. One must wait to see if 

better prospects are on the horizon for 

the Mr Clegg. 

ED MILIBAND 

Some could say it has been a rather 

passive performance from Mr Miliband 

since 2010. With the current Tory party’s 

‘Long term economic plan’ coming to 

fruition with annual GDP growth for 

2014 being forecast at 2.9%, hard times 

lie ahead for the Labour Leader who 

must convince voters that there is an 

alternative option. But is there really? 

Reportedly the Shadow Chancellor 

Ed Balls even realises that the path of 

austerity is a necessary policy in order 

to keep the economy on track, making it 

even harder for the party to distinguish 

itself from the supposed dark (blue) 

side. So what can Mr Miliband do now? 

In the fall of 2013 it appeared that the 

‘Cost of Living Crisis’ was going to be 

the main driver of their new manifesto. 

It embodied key principles of placing 

priority with the vulnerable and forcing 

the elite rich to pay back their fair share 

to society. Nevertheless reports of a ‘cost 

of living crisis’ have been diminishing 

as real wage growth has overtaken CPI 

Inflation for the first time since 2008. 

The Labour Leader needs to find 

another manifesto pledge to cling onto 

before it’s too late. 

NIGEL FARAGE 

From left: Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg, David Cameron. 

The ‘political earthquake’ predicted 

by Mr Farage may actually be coming 

to fruition. After an impressive display 

against Nick Clegg on the debate on 

EU membership and a historic win in 

the recent European election, it sparks 

the possible demise of the two- party 

dominance which the Conservative 

and Labour Party have held for over 

100 years. So what’s next for the new 

star of UK politics? Reports claim that 

he is planning to secure up to a dozen 

seats in the next general election, a 

plan which will unfortunately gain the 

party no significant power due to the 

harsh reality of the First Past the Post 

electoral system but will aim to push the 

party in the right direction. Although 

there have been damaging events which 

have threatened to de-rail Mr Farage’s 

political ambition including his recent 

remarks concerning Romanians, no one 

can deny the impact he has made in the 

recent months on both voter opinion and 

rival party leaders. If nothing else, he’s a 

master at pandering to the populist antipolitics 

vote. This just might be a string 

to his bow. ƒ 

8 

9

POLITICS 

A new direction 

for Britain or 

the same old? 


May 7th 2015 is the date 

etched into the minds of 

politicians everywhere, 

and ‘change’ is the word on 

their lips. 

The General Election of 2015 shall 

undoubtedly be an extremely interesting 

event in contemporary politics and, as 

does virtually every general election, 

it shall result in change. However, what 

type of change and to what extent the 

changes are enacted are currently 

known only through speculation. One 

thing can be said, however: it is unlikely 

that the election itself shall bring any 

form of drastic new direction. The 

current social undercurrents explored 

in less conformist media outlets and the 

incredible success of UKIP in the recent 

European Elections could point towards 

some serious concerns over immigration 

and cultural identity which could result 

in a new direction in the general outlook 

of the nation depending on how the new 

government intends to deal with issues 

surrounding immigration and cultural 

divides. Each party, both internally 

and externally, finds it difficult to 

come to a definitive set of policies over 

these potentially controversial, or even 

dangerous, topics. 

Unfortunately, this means that the 

precise lines that each party shall take 

in their manifestos are currently still 

very hard to meaningfully specify, but 

in the potential scenarios outlined 

below, an informed proposal for policies 

of this nature shall be presented along 

with its hypothetical outcome. 

Labour victory 

Miliband’s band of merry men 

(and women and transgendered and 

unspecified gendered individuals - as 

every good Labour politician eagerly 

points out) are currently leading 

the polls (June 2014, with a score 

of approximately 35%). This is not 

an overwhelming majority, but it is 

significant enough to suggest that Red 

Ed is in with a chance of moving house. 

One major problem, however, is that Mr 

Miliband has yet to produce a coherent 

outline of his philosophy and his policy 

proposals. The only thing that we really 

know the Labour Party would do if they 

succeed in the General Election is swap 

sides in the House of Commons; that 

said, it is possible to predict some vague 

outline of the future manifesto. 

Policy-wise, it is unlikely that there will 

be a change. Firstly, Jon Cruddas (head 

of policy review for the Party) has said 

that ‘radical welfare reforms’ are on the 

agenda for the Party - unfortunately 

Cruddas clearly fails to comprehend 

what the word ‘radical’ means. He 

states that the Party will increase the 

level of scrutinising carried out when 

determining the payment of benefits so 

that there will be an even greater focus 

on the existing salaries of applicants 

when calculating the payouts - hardly 

a revolutionary approach to welfare. 

Second, based on the European Election 

pamphlets delivered across the country 

by the Party, it would appear that they 

will have big focus on the family. This 

will mean free childcare and reduced 

living costs - living costs being the Party’s 

favorite point-scoring attack on the 

Coalition Government. On the matter of 

Europe and immigration in general, the 

Labour opposition are highly critical 

of the Conservative Party’s approaches. 

Despite this, there are great divides 

within the Labour Party - there is 

no overall set of policies. Hypocrisy 

is the Labour Party’s most defining 

characteristic. One might speculate, 

however, that the Party will ere on the 

side of caution and state that they will 

(without providing any specifics in the 

classic politicians’ vernacular) ‘crack 

down’ on illegal immigration - with 

no reference to legal immigration in 

order to avoid conflict. Labour will also 

promise to prevent further devolution to 

Brussels. 

Analysing this loose and hypothetical 

manifesto, a Labour Government 

following 2015 would be unlikely to 

change the direction of Britain in any 

significant manner - realistically it is 

unlikely that much would change from the 

current approach taken by the Coalition 

Government. That said, looking at the 

unauthoritative nature of the socialist 

ideology that the Labour Party claims 

to follow, it would potentially result 

in a dangerous growth of anti-Islamic 

beliefs amongst the electorate fueled 

by the current terrorist threats being 

raised by the aggressive situation of the 

Middle East and by the way in which 

Islamic communities in the UK often 

fail to embrace British culture. With the 

addition of individual unrepresentative 

cases of Muslim annexation, such 

as the Islamic group of schools in 

Birmingham, being discussed by the 

right-wing tabloids it is possible that 

the public opinion of those subscribing 

to the religion could - as it has across 

Europe, especially in France, Greece 

and Hungary - become mistrusting and 

hostile. This is an issue that could really 

plague a Labour government; it would 

not be a good change in direction. 

Conservative Victory 

As is often the way with being in 

government, making the tough decisions 

day in day out, the Tories are not doing 

too well in the polls. Realistically, unless 

both UKIP and Labour make serious 

mistakes and Clegg (a good old Tory 

boy) remains the leader of the Liberal 

Democrats it is unlikely - and it pains 

me to write this - that the Conservative 

Party shall win the election - however, 

stranger things have happened in 

politics so there is still hope. 

Unfortunately, due to the inadequacies 

of some voters, the Conservative Party 

(the oldest and therefore best party in 

British politics) have been forced, since 

Thatcher’s reign, to bring its policies 

towards a more central position - a 

position that one might argue is being 

represented, aside from the bad policies 

such as on higher education costs, by the 

current government. As a result of this, 

if the Tories win the 2015 election then 

there will most likely be absolutely no 

directional change for Britain. We shall 

remain a country with a high rate of 

economic recovery and world-renowned 

brilliance. If anything, the only change 

of direction that could be a result of 

Conservative victory would be found 

in the outcome of the 2017 referendum 

on the EU - an event too distant to 

meaningfully speculate on. 

Regarding the possibility of Britain 

becoming a nation of hostility - a 

potential result of a Labour victory 

– we need not worry if the Tories win 

in 2015. The conservative ideology was 

born out of a dislike of the anarchic 

developments of the French Revolution 

and the Party was founded, in part, by 

Sir Robert Peel - founder of the Police. 

It has a strong tradition of maintaining 

law and order and a good track record 

achievement, as demonstrable through 

the 15% drop in crime rates since 

May 2010. Racists will, therefore, be 

dealt with. Further, the Tories are on 

the ball over immigration and Europe. 

Ultimately, a Conservative victory 

would be the best thing for Britain, it 

would not cause an immediate change 

in direction, but the country’s direction 

would remain correct. 

Liberal Democrat and 

Labour Coalition 

It is amazing what differences can be put 

aside in the harsh light of post-election 

morning. With Labour currently on 

track for failing to achieve a majority 

it is possible that they shall need a 

boost to legitimise their government. 

The Lib Dems could, yet again, become 

kingmakers. This could be the most 

dangerous direction shift for Britain, 

not only would we see the generally 

airy policies of Labour but also the 

left-wing side of the Liberal Democrats 

UKIP’s advertising startegies often cause controversy - and comedy. 

come out. Because of this, however, less 

has to be written on it as the results 

would broadly be the same as the 

Labour victory. Firstly, and fortunately, 

as discussed above, due to the general 

centralisation of contemporary politics, 

again the policies would be unlikely to 

change the direction of Britain much. 

Speculation as to what nuanced policies 

might result from such an arrangement 

really is futile - coalitions are the home 

of bargaining and bartering, mixing 

and matching. All that can be said is 

that when red is mixed with yellow 

one gets orange. Regarding the social 

consequences of the outcome, they 

would again be potentially dangerous; 

the only addition might be that nuclear 

disarmament will be on the cards thanks 

to the Lib Dems - again, a bad idea that 

would certainly result in great protest. 

So, a new direction? Possibly. It seems 

that we shall either witness the total 

collapse of British society (a significant 

change in direction) or the continuity of 

the current success of the Government 

which would not being a new direction. 

But it would be by far the best option. ƒ 

10 11

POLITICS 

The French 

Exodus: A 

retrospective 

on President 

Hollande 


Confidently denouncing 

the claims of the French 

Ambassador that his nation 

was in better shape than 

Britain, Boris Johnson, 

Mayor of London, exclaimed 

- “Français, Françaises, vous 

êtes bienvenus à Londres. 

Vouz avez voté avec vos 

pieds.” 

The French, voting with their feet, 

had abandoned France in favour of 

the British capital in their thousands. 

According to Mr Johnson, such an 

exodus was a vindication of his party’s 

pro-business agenda, thus condemning 

Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party. 

The first few months of 2014 have indeed 

brought little good news to France. The 

IMF have warned the French that the 

size of their public sector was a danger 

to growth. The far-right Front National 

came in first place during France’s Euro 

election, a sign of growing discontent 

with the mainstream UMP and Parti 

Socialiste. France’s Prime Minister Jean- 

Marc Ayrault was congedié in favour of 

the more popular Manuel Valls – who has 

gone on to anger the die-hard socialists 

in his party and has been named a 

traitor to socialist values. All the while, 

Mr Hollande has been relegated to the 

back seat – the latest opinion polls 

have his approval at a dismal 18%. The 

‘ordinary bloke,’ who in 2012 pledged 

great things to les enfants de la patrie, 

seems to have monumentally failed. 

CityAM this January branded France 

a “socialist failure.” How far is this the 

case? 

Mr Hollande’s 2012 agenda was a 

mixture of populist taxation policies 

targeting the ultra-rich – his 75% rate 

on those earning over 1,000,000€ 

ignited international media frenzy, with 

Gerard Depardieu’s departure welldocumented 

– and populist spending 

policies, reducing retirement ages across 

the board. When commentators like 

London’s Boris Johnson witness the 

migration of the French from France 

it is these policies they cite as the 

cause. “Hard-working Frenchmen,” the 

argument goes, “are no longer being 

rewarded for their efforts.” Indeed it 

is not difficult to understand why – 

French public debt and government 

expenditure as a percentage of GDP are 

at worrying levels. However, there is a 

sense that much of this is structural. Is 

this Mr Hollande’s fault? 

Francois Hollande 

In 2008, as la crise loomed, French 

government expenditure as a percentage 

of GDP stood at an eye-watering 61.1% 

of GDP, at that time among the highest 

in the world. All this was going on 

four years before the accession of Mr 

Hollande. Reporting on France’s public 

finances, The Economist amusingly 

quipped that “the French and their 

benefits are like the Americans and 

their guns.” Despite the obvious flaws in 

France’s long-established statist agenda, 

you just cannot separate the French from 

their allocations. In some senses then the 

situation in France is understandable. 

The aftermath of 2008 saw a swing right 

in European politics – Mr Hollande has 

merely realigned the French people with 

their ideological position. This ideology 

is obviously unsustainable and shows 

signs of breaking down, but the French 

will cling to it until it is completely 

defeated. 

Across Europe, especially in what 

is now known as the periphery, the 

2014 European Elections have seen 

a backlash against austerity. The 

continental psyche is inexorably linked 

with government spending in all sectors. 

This will eventually need to come to an 

end. Britain’s fortunes were turned on 

their head when Mrs Thatcher took a 

hatchet to the establishment, challenged 

unquestioned norms. Above all, France 

needs une dame de fer of her own, or 

the flight of talent, investment and 

prestige from the hexagon will continue. 

Her schools, Universities and museums 

show clearly the potential France holds 

– they are among the best in Europe – 

but without a sharp change in Policy 

away from Mr Hollande’s initial dose 

of Socialism France will be consigned 

to the history books. Mr Valls’s “Plan 

Économique” appears to recognise the 

need for such a change. It is high time 

that the Socialist Party, and the rest of 

France, recognise it too. ƒ 

Where do we go 

from here? 


Reading magazines as a 

child, the schoolboys of the 

19th century would imagine 

the farthest corners of the 

British Empire and envision 

adventures and excitement. 

Often, this would become a reality 

– the Indian Civil Service’s top level 

consisted almost entirely of Oxford and 

Cambridge graduates. Then was a time 

in which Britain knew her role and the 

world looked up to her. Britain was the 

world’s largest trader, largest empire, 

largest economy and largest navy in 

1880. 

Fast forward to 2014. Though in the 

post-Thatcher era we have somewhat 

reversed the terminal decline of our 

nation, with Tony Blair confidently 

siding with the US over the War On 

Terror, Britain still feels unable to find 

her role in the new world. With huge 

choices facing her – on Scotland and 

especially on the European Union, the 

years to 2018 could be pivotal for the 

future of this country. 

The European Union is in many was the 

antithesis of British values and British 

democracy. The Commission, the single 

most powerful body in European 

politics, consists of men whose names 

most Britons have never heard. In the 

European parliament, around two thirds 

of Britons couldn’t even be bothered 

to get out of bed. And yet this body is 

responsible for a substantial amount 

of British law, if not a majority. The 

British, a people of proud heritage and 

a 1,000 year democracy, are proud of 

their traditions and national identity – 

this is in stark contrast to the Germans, 

who would altogether rather the last 

century didn’t happen. 

The monetary union, headed by 

Frankfurt, has led the Eurozone’s 

peripheral nations to become quasislaves 

of the infinitely more productive 

north. With the option of devaluation 

off the cards, the likes of Greece have 

had a very tough time. As Nigel Farage 

comically commented, the “Germans 

and the IMF” fly into Athens to dictate 

domestic policy for the Greeks. The 

idea that this could happen to Britain 

is unthinkable – our national democracy 

supersedes any technocrats the EU can 

throw at us. More worrying is that 

without effective redistribution of 

wealth from core to periphery, the idea 

of a federal Europe with a fiscal union 

appears almost inevitable. I am adamant 

that this should not happen to Britain – 

we have but one thing to thank Gordon 

Brown for, and that’s the maintenance 

of the pound sterling. 

However, in the short run, I favour Ed 

Miliband’s strategy over that of UKIP 

or the Conservatives. The immediate 

benefit of being in the Union for trading 

purposes, while having control over EU 

laws, seems to overshadow the shortterm 

consequences. If a federalised 

structure does turn out to be the 

outcome, on the other hand, Britain 

must vote to leave the European Union – 

the nation state is not dead yet. Britons 

feel British, not European. The Labour 

party therefore, for once, has the right 

idea. I feel the nation would be too 

hasty to leave the Union which would 

leave ineffaceable scars on our foreign 

policy. Hence if any new treaty changes 

were to be made which fundamentally 

alter our relationship with the EU, we 

must leave. A strong Britain can and 

will exist outside the EU – the future of 

Britain lies in ever closer ties with the 

United States and the Commonwealth 

– countries with which we have much 

closer cultural homogeneity. 

The second great challenge in 2014 

is Scotland, whose independence 

vote takes place this September. The 

Scottish, too have a strong sense of 

national identity, which links back to 

the Gaelic language and culture. Many 

Scots, like Trainspotting’s lead, played 

by Euan McGregor, see the English as 

an imperial overseer of the land of the 

Scots. However, the Economic benefits 

of staying together with Scotland make 

the case for independence fall apart. As 

the ”Better Together” union of Britain’s 

three main political parties keep telling 

us, Scotland does more trade with 

the rest of Britain than it does with 

anywhere else in the world. The history 

of the nations, together, has been one of 

the most spectacular on earth, building 

railroads that crossed the country and 

telegraph wires that stretched under the 

world’s seas. Scots were prominent in the 

expansion of Britain – James Watt being 

a clear example of a Scot who punched 

far above his weight. Was is important 

here is that Britain together has more 

influence, a stronger economy, and is 

better equipped to wear the future’s 

waves. Indeed, even the US President 

Barack Obama spoke out in favour 

of a United Kingdom. The Glorious 

Revolution of 1688 changed the history 

of Britain forever, and allowed Dutch 

institutions in finance and business 

to spread to Britain. In 1707 those 

innovations were extended to Scotland 

and over the following two centuries 

the British did astonishing things. If we 

keep together for another two hundred, 

we can accomplish even more. 

The road for Britain was caricatured 

by The Economist newspaper as a 

simple choice between “Great Britain” 

and “Little England.” I don’t see it as 

so simple – the newspaper argued that 

Britain within the European Union gave 

it more influence than it has outside 

of it. This may be true for the short 

run – Europe’s pitifully stagnating 

economy will be overtaken by that 

of the United States this year and by 

China within two or three. The Old 

World is slowly fading away, bogged 

down by Socialism, demographic decline 

and serious problems assimilating new 

ethnic groups. Britain would be taking a 

bold step leaving Europe, but the world 

Great Britain or Little England? 

12 

13

POLITICS 

has so much more to offer in the years 

to come. Oxford, Cambridge, UCL and 

the London School of Economics are 

world-renowned names and have come to 

endow Britain with a very high level of 

human capital. Lawrence Summers, the 

former Chariman of the Federal Reserve, 

has argued that the real equilibrium 

interest rate is under 0% - there is a 

savings glut and nowhere to invest. 

We need to make Britain a hub for all 

the real loanable funds being churned 

out by East Asian savers. Britain is 

unquestionably the most accepting 

and most tolerant society in the world. 

Our immigrants are better assimilated 

than those anywhere else in Europe, 

even in the world. We need to continue 

to do this – a points based system to 

attract the world’s best and brightest 

to come to Britain would do well to 

replace the unrestricted movement of 

peoples in Europe. This would provide 

fuel for the fire of British productivity, 

which has long lagged other Western 

European nations and the United States. 

Moreover, this would go a long way to 

paying for the vast unfunded liabilities 

promised to the old and the sick by the 

government. The answer, in a sentence, 

is that Britain needs to be more open, 

and realise that there’s a world out there 

beyond Europe. 

“British productivity... 

lagged other countries 

reigns supreme. These strengths will be 

the future of Britain, as she carves out a 

place for herself in the world. ƒ 

The End of Two- 

Party Politics? 

Charlie Dransfield 

If you consider the past, 

from 1945 to 2010 the 

government was either 

Labour or Conservative. 

This portrays the country as a two-party 

system and therefore even the slightest 

change to the political precedent would 

appear to show a decline of two-party 

politics. For example it would be very 

easy to argue that, whilst in a coalition, 

the Liberal Democrats had achieved 

power and therefore stated the claim to 

be a major party. But, it isn’t as simple 

as that. 

In the modern world we have learnt to 

be more accepting and open minded in 

terms of all manner of things ranging 

from race to political inclination. This 

has meant there has been an increase 

in choice provided and consequentially 

a wider spread of power. In the last 

general election the Green Party won 

their first ever seat. Whist arguably 

this is merely a speck on the political 

canvas, in the past this would have been 

unthinkable. There are many other 

smaller parties, which whilst they may 

not have achieved any success show the 

accessibility of politics to everyone. One 

party in particular has been making 

headlines recently and that is UKIP, 

after their recent success in Europe 

they hope to carry the momentum 

forward to the looming general election. 

On the surface at least, it appears that 

UKIP’s progression shows how twoparty 

politics is becoming a thing of the 

past. In reality, however, the victory is 

virtually meaningless. There are very 

few actual advocates for UKIP with 

many people simply using them as a 

vehicle to highlight their dissatisfaction 

with the current government and the 

labour alternative presented. These 

protest voters are very unlikely to 

remain loyal to UKIP in the general 

election as it carries more significance 

than the European vote in the eyes of 

the majority of the electorate. Therefore 

despite their progress UKIP are very 

unlikely to challenge any of the larger 

parties in a significant way. 

One of the things which is allowing 

the larger parties to remain large is 

the current electoral system. First Past 

the Post is a plurality system, which 

inherently favours the larger parties. For 

a minor party with the archaic system 

in place currently it will remain very 

hard for them to expand and challenge 

for power. There has been much debate 

over whether or not electoral reform 

should happen but it is up to the party 

in government, which holds power to 

organise the referendum. 

There is a huge flaw in this principle 

because the party in power is the largest 

party, which is favoured by it. 

] 

Therefore the government would be very 

unlikely to implement a referendum that 

could be potentially weakening to it. 

The Liberal Democrats tried to stage a 

referendum but it was not the referendum 

that they actually wanted, it was for the 

Alternative Vote system. The result was 

a resounding no and it therefore remains 

harder than ever for the smaller parties 

to have an impact in national politics. 

There have been some fundamental 

events in UK politics that could show an 

exponential decrease in the traditional 

concept of two- party politics. We have 

seen a coalition last its full term for the 

first time since the Second World War 

and we have also seen a proletariat that 

are willing to show their dissatisfaction 

towards the main parties. With an everapproaching 

general election it will be 

very interesting to see whether voters 

return to the more mainstream options 

after the protest vote that bolstered 

UKIP or whether they will continue to 

show support for the growing smaller 

parties. The Liberal Democrats will also 

hope to make a recovery and challenge 

for power. ƒ 

A problem at 

the heart of 

the American 

Political 

System? 

Calvin Ngwena 

employees who underwent temporary 

leave due to the gridlock between the 

White House and Congress. To people 

not residing in the United States this 

would be the biggest error in the system. 

The separation of powers which aimed to 

promote liberty and dispersal of power 

had created a situation where little to 

no significant laws could be passed by 

Congress. Those from the UK who praise 

our fused executive and legislature 

branches are dumbfounded at how 

hard it is to push through presidential 

proposals for legislation in the US due 

to the many procedures and loop holes 

which exist in the legislative workings 

of Congress. 

However the fundamental mistake 

here is that many of us, when judging 

the American political system, fail 

to perceive it through the eyes of 

the American people. During the 

Constitutional Convention in May 1787 

the Founding Fathers’ goal was to stop 

power from drifting into the hands of one 

person, similar to rule from the British 

king before the War of Independence. 

This has led to the supported notion that 

federal government should not have the 

right to interfere in the day to day lives 

of citizens. To most American citizens 

the prospect of federal government 

having the power to interfere in their 

lives when some citizens live 3000 miles 

away from Washington is comparable 

to the distant rule of a tyrant king in 

Britain. 

So what other significant problems can 

there be? To some, the biggest issue is 

the excessive influence the Judiciary 

holds over government legislation. 

Ignoring the fact that members of the 

federal judicial system are nominated 

by the President…, the main criticism 

is the loss of true neutrality as various 

political ideologies have crept into the 

Supreme Court. Currently there is the 

serious issue of ideological blocs forming 

within the highest court of appeal: one 

originalist conservative bloc which aims 

to treat the constitution arguably as a 

sacred text and the other liberal bloc 

who promote forms of judicial activism 

to enhance the freedom of citizens. 

This has led to one Supreme Court 

judge, Justice Kennedy being termed 

as the swing vote as he tends to vote 

on either side depending on the issue. 

This is alarming for Americans as once 

again this has put too much power into 

the hands of one individual, albeit 

unintentionally. 

Other Americans point to the inability 

of the federal government to address the 

inequality which African Americans 

face today due to past discrimination 

as the most pressing issue. This is not 

Britain’s strengths outweigh her 

weaknesses. Though the public tires 

of foreign intervention, Britain has a 

distinctive place in the world in her own 

right. The British need to find the sense 

of confidence they lost after the Second 

World War. We can bestride the world 

again, but in new ways. 

British media has recognition around 

the world, while in luxury cars Britain 

Congress has failed to meet 

its responsibility to pass 

a budget before the fiscal 

year that begins today. And 

that means much of our 

government must shutdown 

effectively.’ 

These were the words written by 

President Obama to millions of federal 

14 15

POLITICS 

to say there have not been attempts 

to fix the wrongs done through past 

enslavement. During the Reconstruction 

after the civil war, federal government 

tried to implement a number of policies 

to increase the rights of former slaves, 

such as extending the Thirteenth 

Amendment to African Americans 

and implementing affirmative action 

under President Johnson in the 1960s. 

These were however ferociously blocked 

through state government actions 

including Jim Crow policies which were 

utilised by the Southern States in order 

to maintain the idea of white supremacy. 

In some people’s view this has caused 

there still to be severe differences in 

opportunity between African Americans 

and White Americans, characterised by 

a staggering 31% of African Americans 

living in poverty, compared with only 

11% of White Americans. 

Nevertheless these are only two specific 

problems. I have not mentioned the 

problem of pressure groups’ activity 

being possibly elitist, the troubling 

levels of finance which fund election 

campaigns or even the nature for 

Presidents in times of crisis to extend 

their powers and act against the laws 

of the constitution. President Roosevelt 

imprisoning Japanese American 

citizens during the Second World War 

due to ‘military necessity’ showed 

how Presidents have the ability to 

questionably suspend citizens’ rights at 

their own will. 

Maybe nothing can be done. Maybe the 

system of the supposed superpower of 

the world is broken beyond repair. But 

I hope that through reading this, you 

will now look not only at the failings 

of Congress but every other element 

of US system to judge its effectiveness. 

Since the end of the Cold War countries 

around the world have looked to mimic 

the US system. Perhaps it’s not that great 

after all. Fair and reasoned appraisal of 

its effectiveness is what is desperately 

needed. ƒ 

A Distinctly 

Scottish Choice 

Charlie Dransfield 

Thursday 18th of 

September 2014 is a date 

that will remain in the 

memory of the Scottish 

people for decades to follow. 

It symbolises a chance for independence, 

which they haven’t had for centuries. 

This Referendum will greatly affect 

the average Scotsman in everyday life 

no matter what the outcome of the 

referendum turns out to be. According 

to the SNP, on a purely superficial level 

an independent Scotland would result in 

about an extra £1350 for the Scottish 

citizens to spend annually due to the 

reduced taxes. This statistic is the sort 

of thing that, put on the front page of 

a local newspaper, may cause people to 

vote yes. 

This attraction isn’t the only positive 

change that independence would bring. 

For example, the idea that Scotland gets 

the power to control Scotland’s future. 

The idea that Scotland is controlled 

by legislature decided in Westminster 

approximately 360 miles away is one 

that doesn’t sit comfortably with its 

people. 

Scotland is also aggrieved by having 

to accept policies because, as seen 

with the current government, they 

are often policies created by a party 

largely rejected by the Scottish people. 

For example, in 2010 Labour achieved 

forty-two percent of the votes in 

Scotland, which was more than any 

other party, but the country had no 

choice but to accept a Conservative-led 

government. By becoming independent, 

Scotland will be able to take control of 

all manner of things, ranging from fiscal 

policy right through the plans towards 

global warming. The fact that the 

Scottish people would be able to control 

the Scottish future more coherently is a 

vote winning idea. 

It wouldn’t all be positive if Scotland 

chose independence, however. Many 

people predict that it will have a severe 

impact on trade and therefore the 

economy. The rest of the UK provides 

seventy percent of Scotland’s trade and 

this huge proportion is quite likely to be 

reduced as the possibility of separation 

could lead to hostility between 

businesses. 

The Scottish National Party have 

realised the risk they are running 

however and therefore are planning on 

keeping the pound. Alex Sammond and 

his supporters have fought long and 

hard to make the idea of Independence 

not only popular but also politically and 

financially viable, although the idea of 

keeping the pound greatly undermines 

this. 

Arguably, a sterling currency union 

would be a way to preserve the trade 

relations Scotland so heavily relies on, 

because there will be no need for costly 

currency conversion. No matter what 

the outcome of the referendum there are 

going to be changes. 

To simplify such a monumental decision 

into a ‘YES’ or a ‘NO’ is practical but 

flawed Sadly, that isn’t going to stop Mr 

Salmond and the upcoming events this 

September from taking place. We shall 

just have to see how they end up turning 

out, for at this late stage in the day 

there’s little we can do about it. ƒ 

Scottish 

Referendum: the 

International 

implications 

Jonathan French & Will 

Cowie 

The moment will come 

when we find out whether 

the nationalist ramblings 

of Alex Salmond have 

convinced the Scots. 

This has the obvious repercussions 

of deciding the future of the United 

Kingdom. However, there will also be 

effects beyond our shores which many 

people seem to have ignored. 

Scotland is not the only region where 

potential independence is something 

of a talking point. Other regions such 

as Catalonia in Spain and the Basque 

Country in the Western Pyrenees are 

also clamouring for independence 

and we haven’t even mentioned the 

independence issue in the Crimea. 

Nationalist tendencies in these regions 

and the belief that the inhabitants 

of these areas have a right to selfdetermination 

has resulted in cries 

for referendums along the lines of the 

impending Scottish Referendum. What 

people in the UK have not quite grasped 

is that these regions are waiting with 

bated breath for the outcome of the 

Scottish Referendum. 

If voters vote “Yes” in September then 

they will be choosing to break the Acts 

of Union passed in 1706 and 1707. The 

Union of the Kingdom is like a really 

old marriage. Imagine a couple that 

got married in their early twenties and 

have now been married for what seems 

like an age. They’ve been through their 

highs and lows but have a long and stable 

relationship which is the envy of many 

other, now divorced couples like Sudan 

and the former Soviet Union. Gorbachev 

looks at the UK and sees all that could 

have been. 

Now this couple are having a slight tiff: 

maybe Scotland thinks that England 

is taking up too much of the bed or 

maybe it was the way England “said” 

something. Or maybe Scotland’s just 

Alex Salmond’s SNP is causing unrest at the heart of Westminster. 

jealous of the way Dave and Barack 

were looking at each other. But to take 

the advantage of easy divorce laws (aka. 

a referendum) would be the easy way 

out. Think of the children and their 

classmates who look and laugh at their 

parents. Angela and François are finding 

this just too funny. Meanwhile, gossip is 

spreading like wildfire among the other 

married couples. They think divorce 

might be the way for them too. After all, 

if the Act of Union is broken up, what 

hope is there? 

This is somewhat similar to the situation 

in Europe. The other parents, Catalonia 

and the Basque Country, are starting to 

press for their own divorces. The lawyers 

are hired and the legal proceedings are 

about to start. The Scottish Referendum 

is the first of a series of dominoes placed 

around Europe. If the first domino falls, 

it could trigger the collapse of many 

countries throughout Europe and an 

uprising of new independent nation 

states. What might be next, the Republic 

of Cornwall? 

There are regions demanding selfindependence 

that will be eagerly 

awaiting the outcome of the Scottish 

Referendum. It will have effects that 

reach far beyond our own shores. ƒ 

16 

17

POLITICS: FEATURE 

The Ricardian interviews Chris Grayling MP 

Lewis Bizaoui, Felix Clarke and Oliver Northover Smith met Mr Grayling; Oliver writes: 

The Ashtead Conservative 

Party office, tucked in the 

back of the high street 

Conservative Club, is not a 

glamourous place. 

A pre-fabricated, rather dilapidated 

building, this place is where Chris 

Grayling spends much of his time. 

It is clear that Mr Grayling much 

prefers his constituency to the bustle 

of London. Sitting down at half past 

eleven, Mr Grayling had obviously been 

working for a few hours. Indeed the 

brevity of our encounter reflected upon 

his saturated schedule (so much for 

politicians being lazy!) We spoke to the 

Justice Secretary across a put-up table 

in the Conservative Club’s hall. Indeed, 

the photographs of Mrs Thatcher on the 

Chris Grayling, MP. 

walls illustrated the love for hard work 

and individualism so prevalent in this 

leafy, Home Counties retreat. 

We began the encounter on Justice – 

Mr Grayling’s schedule and his plans 

for Britain’s Justice system. The ring 

running through his reforms was clear 

– we need to do more for less. Indeed 

by extrapolation this has been the 

single most prominent theme behind 

this cabinet’s reforms. There was a 

caveat however – we cannot, Mr Grayling 

asserted, stop the courts from sending 

an offender to prison. The key to saving 

money in the justice system, he said, was 

not through keeping dangerous people 

out, but “stopping them from coming 

back.” Successive governments have 

tried to tackle Britain’s embarrassing 

rate of reoffending, and little has been 

done in the past to keep the percentage 

down –two thirds of people who get short 

sentences go on to reoffend. It must be 

said that this has been taking place 

among a broader fall in crime, but the 

problem persists. 

The big problem, Mr Grayling told us, 

was that those who were in prison for 

less than 12 months “got no support 

or supervision whatever when they got 

out.” Hence the Justice Department is 

“changing the way the probation system 

works.” 

Grayling’s answer is a three-pronged 

attack. Bringing out the best of the 

“public, private and voluntary sectors” 

would tackle the problem, Mr Grayling 

said. The young men from poor 

backgrounds, who make up the majority 

of the prison population, “find it 

difficult to get their lives back together 

afterwards.” Mentoring, Mr Grayling 

said, was the answer, rather than mere 

“supervision.” 

Switching swiftly to the issue of legal 

aid, Mr Grayling was confronted with 

the question – should we ring-fence legal 

aid? In the criminal sphere, Mr Grayling 

agreed we should. When a “matter of 

liberty,” one must always be defended 

in court, Mr Grayling explained. The 

matter becomes “more difficult” on the 

civil side. Does it? Should a married 

woman with an abusive husband be 

denied legal aid for court appearances? 

Regardless, Mr Grayling asserted that 

this branch of the law was where cuts to 

legal aid were necessary. Despite all that, 

we spend “twice as much per head” as 

other common law jurisdictions on legal 

aid. It seems crazy to think so when the 

UK faces a much higher burden of crime 

than Canada, New Zealand or Australia. 

The cuts are “difficult but necessary,” 

and have been mostly “on the civil side.” 

What about the government as a whole? 

The Cameron cabinet has pushed 

through a plethora of unpopular budget 

cuts, but we still have a deficit equal to 

5.4% of GDP each year. How do we get 

from there to the “sustainable position” 

Mr Grayling hankers after? In a standard 

party-line response about balancing the 

budget, Mr Grayling underlined the fact 

that it would be us that would inherit 

the debt accumulated by government. 

He, like most of the cabinet, suggested 

the Eurozone crisis was the principal 

reason for Britain missing its deficit 

elimination target, but that we would 

balance the books “eventually.” As 

Keynes said, “in the long run we’re all 

dead” so it’d better come sooner rather 

than later. If this government is to be 

reelected in 2015, it will need to get 

real about the deficit and start giving 

concrete deadlines. Mr Grayling and I 

are in agreement about the necessity of 

spending cuts in order to avoid “taxes 

going up.” This government needs to 

stop talking and start doing. 

Is getting things done even possible in 

Westminster? The left, the teachers’ 

unions and the media have vilified 

Michael Gove, the coalition’s most 

prolific reformer. If reforming means 

getting voted out, how are we going to 

get the necessary reforms underway? 

Mr Grayling told us that nobody who 

is “affected by changes” is likely to be 

happy about them. But as the education 

establishments see the “benefits” of 

“Michael’s reform programme” they 

will come around. The Marxists in the 

teachers’ unions are unlikely to warm to 

Mr Gove any time soon – but if results 

take so long to materialise, could reform 

be impossible in our democracy? A 

common theme of our discussion was 

that lots of things “needed to happen.” 

They do need to happen, but the 

political difficulty involved is likely to 

be incredibly hard to mitigate. 

Mr Gove’s legacy is yet to be seen, but 

how would Chris Grayling like to be 

remembered? As Secretary of State for 

Justice, probation reform was top for Mr 

Grayling. He “hopes and believes” that 

such changes will lead to a “sustained 

fall” in reoffending. As successive 

governments have wrestled with this 

issue, history will tell if Mr Grayling 

did the right thing. In the end, it will 

all come down to how receptive those 

leaving prison are to the mentoring 

programme. Indeed, in a society in 

which manual-labour jobs are being 

progressively phased out by machines, it 

is hard to see a place for unskilled male 

workers in the future. Here’s hoping Mr 

Grayling’s programme can stop these 

circumstances dictating a fall back into 

crime. 

In Mr Grayling’s new Youth Offender 

institution in the midlands, there have 

been allegations that a return to the 

use of corporal punishment may be on 

the cards for misbehaving delinquents. 

Mr Grayling painted a rosier picture. 

This new institution, an £85m “secure 

college” in Leicestershire, would be 

aimed at removing the images of “iron 

bars.” The goal was to achieve, according 

to Mr Grayling, an “educational 

institution with a fence around it.” Yet 

the use of force to keep order may well 

contravene the EU convention on Human 

Rights – if a child refuses to leave a room, 

can a “couple of officers pick them up 

and make them?” That is a choice for 

the courts – but Mr Grayling assures us 

that there are “tight rules” surrounding 

this procedure. The caricature of 

the institution as “Victorian” was an 

invention by a “left-wing pressure 

group,” Mr Grayling explained. They 

want small, communal facilities of 20 

people for young offenders – obviously 

that’s impossible, as Mr Grayling 

explained. “You can’t build a serious 

educational institution for 20 people.” 

In the adult prisons, the “books for 

prisoners” issue caused quite a stir 

18 

19

POLITICS 

last year. “I’m afraid it’s the invention 

of a left-wing pressure group,” Mr 

Grayling told us. The regime tightening 

in prisons, including the removal of 

SkySports and the ability to remove 

televisions from cells, have enflamed the 

left, Mr Grayling said. His idea of prison 

is not “watching the Sunday afternoon 

match.” When confronted with the idea 

of there being televisions at all, however, 

Mr Grayling was decidedly for the 

access to leisure for prisoners. Prison 

is a balance, between “punishment, 

rehabilitation and humanity.” Is this not 

a truism, though? It seems difficult to 

discern what new ideas Mr Grayling has 

brought in to the prisons’ debate. 

Moving on to his previous work as Shadow 

Home Secretary, we discussed the rise 

of UKIP and the issue of immigration. 

“Immigration is a big concern” was 

Mr Grayling’s opening to his response. 

On the other hand, he feels that the 

“anti-politics protest vote” formerly 

attributed to the Liberal Democrats, 

is the reason for UKIP’s popularity. 

The discussion then veered to a debate 

about immigration from outside the EU, 

which Mr Grayling explained was at the 

“lowest level for a number of years.” He 

subtly blamed Tony Blair’s New Labour 

for the upward trend by explaining the 

principal extra-EU immigration took 

place between “1999 and recently.” 

The principal debate however should be 

on intra-EU immigration. Mr Grayling 

told us that the free movement issue 

would be on the cards in talks about a 

reformed EU. We were skeptical – the 

free movement appears to be central to 

the European Union as an institution. 

“We don’t want to concede defeat before 

kicking off,” Mr Grayling said. It’s hard 

to be confident that Britain would be 

able to obtain an opt-out from the freemovement 

clause. Does this effectively 

consign us to a Brexit? 

Speaking on the issue of voting and 

the Conservative Party, Mr Grayling 

was dismayed by the European Union 

election’s turnout, but didn’t appear to 

offer any tangible solutions. He merely 

asserted the politicians’ standard 

Chris Grayling sparked protest over his attempts to cut legal aid. 

response that “our work matters to you.” 

When asked whether the Conservatives 

have a problem with the young, Mr 

Grayling told us that in the Universities, 

the Conservatives are “going very 

strong.” As of the latest figures, there 

are 18,000 members of Conservative 

Future while Young Labour has nearly 

40,000 members. At the adult level, 

however, membership is almost equal to 

both. 

A Conservative Britain in 2020, Chris 

Grayling explained, would have “sensible 

finances, the tax burden is eased, the 

school system has genuine results.” We’ll 

have to see about that one. “Labour 

could tear it all up,” Mr Grayling said. 

Whether the necessary austerity will 

take place under a second Conservative 

government (or indeed coalition,) is yet 

to be seen. I fear that this government 

doesn’t have the conviction to see this 

through. Delthat, the Conservatives are 

the only people who can and will get 

Britain back on track. ƒ 

ECONOMICS 

When one stops and thinks about the modern world, it is clear that Economics plays a critical role. 

After a decade and a half of prosperity, high rates of economic growth are no longer a given and the economic policies 

of various governments will play a vital role in their futures. One only has to look at the various issues currently 

facing the UK to see this: the debate over a rise in the base rate of interest, the apparent housing bubble and the UK’s 

role in Europe are all economic issues. 

20 

Moreover, it is not only national and international issues that are connected to Economics. At an individual level, 

Economics is the study of how best to allocate your resources. This is especially relevant in the UK with nearly £1.5 

trillion of household debt. In a society where households are increasingly reliant on payday lenders to pay their bills, 

an appreciation of Economics is an increasingly advantageous asset. Economics plays a vital role in everyone’s lives, 

whether we like it or not. Hence, a recognition and appreciation of this can only be beneficial for individuals and 

for society. 

Jonathan French, Section Editor 

21

ECONOMICS 

We live in a 

meritocracy, 

right? Wrong! 

Will Cowie 

It may surprise you to find 

out that 21 st Britain is in 

many ways the opposite of 

a meritocracy. I’m going 

to use three figures – just 

three simple figures – to try 

and set out my case. 

The first figure comes in the form of a 

ratio. Here it is: “149:1”. This figure here 

is called the “pay ratio”. It represents 

the multiple of chief executive pay to 

average pay for FTSE companies. Or, in 

laymen’s terms, the man at the top will 

earn one hundred and forty nine times 

as much as an average worker for his 

company in a single year. Shocking? Yes. 

Why? Three reasons. 

One: this is a comparison with average 

pay – not the pay of the poor Eastern 

European person cleaning the floors at 

sub-minimum wage but the average pay 

– so this is really a staggering difference. 

Two: this figure has more than doubled 

in the last ten years. It has more than 

doubled in a period which has seen 

the worst economic slowdown since 

the 1920s. Clearly the pay of these 

executives bears no relation to their 

performance, and this is in no way 

fitting with the ‘meritocracy’ in which 

we apparently live. Three: there is more 

failure for the meritocracy here. If, as 

the meritocracy dictates, we live in a 

society where our salary, for example, 

is determined on merit, can we account 

for such large differentials in pay? Is an 

executive really worth so so much more 

than other workers? There is a line 

between meritocracy and oligarchy, and 

this figure betrays how we are moving 

towards the latter. 

The second figure is a much smaller 

number: 0.5. This represents the UK’s 

intergenerational earnings elasticity. 

What on earth is that? Simply put, it 

is a measure of how likely our children 

are to earn the same salary as we earn. 

Will poor kids become poor adults? Will 

rich kids become rich adults? 0.5 might 

seem like an alright score – there’s a 

50% chance that a poor kid will become 

a poor adult, but there’s the same 

chance that the kid will be rich. Fair? 

Well, no. It may surprise you to know 

that UK’s intergenerational earnings 

elasticity is worse than countries like 

Norway, Denmark, Germany, Spain, 

France, Switzerland, the USA. Oh, and 

Pakistan, that well known champion 

of equality. The UK’s 0.5 is the same 

as Chile. In other words, whether our 

kids will be poor or will be rich will 

be determined not by their own ability 

or merit but by how much money their 

parents have. We cannot claim that 

our society is a meritocracy if, clearly, 

ability plays only a limiting factor in 

where we go in society. We do not live in 

a meritocracy. 

Finally, a figure much closer to home. 

28. The number of RGS students who 

received offers from Oxbridge last year. 

None of us would be arrogant enough to 

admit that we could get into Oxbridge by 

our own ability alone – the whole school 

pulls together to get so many people in, 

what with Mr Dunscombe’s seminars; 

mock interviews and Oxbridge classes. 

Yes, ability plays its part, but we would 

be nowhere without the help we are 

privileged to receive. How does this 

relate? Well, just by living in Surrey 

and just by going to this school, we 

have massively increased our chances 

of going to a good university, getting 

a good degree and then getting a good 

job. This is great news for us – but we 

have to accept that this is because we 

are here, now, at this school as opposed 

to being purely on our own merit. Even 

for us Guildfordians, the laws of the 

meritocracy do not quite apply. ƒ 

Mark Carney: 

One year on 

Jan Thilakawardana 

Mark Carney has begun his 

assignment to fix the UK’s 

economy but how does it 

look one year in? 

Mark Carney is a winner. He went to 

both Harvard and Oxford, earns over 

£500,000 per year and is the first 

foreign Governor of the Bank of England. 

In the eyes of many he seemed a dream 

appointment, if slightly unexpected. 

Carney already possessed a wealth of 

experience since he was appointed 

Governor of the Bank of Canada 

in 2008. Although he had received 

criticism in Canada for being overly 

optimistic about financial forecasts as 

well as not being completely transparent 

with the bank’s view on rates, Carney 

was able to win over his critics through 

his handling of the credit crisis and 

recession. 

Canada was the first G7 country to raise 

interest rates after the crisis through 

his detailed guidance on maintaining 

interest levels at previously record low 

levels for a period of time. Emergency 

loan facilities were also introduced to 

work in tandem with Carney’s advice 

to lead Canada forward through the 

recession. Although the Canadian 

economy is smaller than the UK’s, the 

transformation of the economy caught 

the attention of the high powers at the 

Bank of England. No wonder he seemed 

like the perfect candidate to repair the 

UK’s economy. 

Carney introduced a new style of setup 

for the Bank of England which seems 

to portray his fresh view on banking 

while also showing that he is happy to 

make changes. It was widely unexpected 

that two deputy governors would be 

appointed but during March 2014 

Carney began his shake-up. Nemat 

Shafik and Ben Broadbent would take 

care of the cleaning up of the markets, 

reintroducing government bonds back 

into the market without compromising 

economic and taking charge of the 

monetary policy (from Charlie Bean who 

retired in June) respectively. I applaud 

Mark Carney for choosing to modify and 

alter the setup at the Bank of England. 

It was his way of stamping his character 

and authority on both the Bank and his 

policies to create the perfect platform to 

begin his rebuilding and strengthening 

of the English economy. 

‘One Mission. One Bank. Promoting 

the good of the people of the United 

Kingdom.’ - this cheesy strap line 

advertises his transformation of the 

Bank of England covers the simple and 

fundamental aim of the Bank: protect 

the economy from future financial 

shocks without hindering current 

growth. 

House pricing instability is an area in 

which Carney has received criticism 

since the beginning of his tenure. The 

problem aroused since he had to admit 

that he had no direct control at all over 

soaring house prices in prime central 

London. The knock-on effect was that 

the increasing property prices could 

see other Londoners taking mortgages 

which would be unaffordable with the 

expected increase of interest rates. 

The rich who cash-buy their properties 

would be unaffected but the average 

home owner who used a conventional 

mortgage based system would be under 

threat. The matter was further worsened 

when Carney admitted to Teresa Pearce, 

Labour MP for Erith and Thamesmead 

(an affected London borough), that the 

rising house prices could spread to the 

rest of the country. House price increases 

accelerated in April 2014, rising by 

9.9% compared with the same month a 

year ago (according to the ONS). 

“The UK’s economy is 

rebounding... 

Mark Carney, 

Governor of the Bank of England 

The shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, has 

tried to defend Carney’s projections that 

interest rates could rise to 2.5% over the 

next five years. The early rise in interest 

rates would affect millions of home 

owners due to the distorted housing 

Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England. 

market. The coalition government 

should take the blame for placing low 

rates at risk. Carney may have to, in 

the worst scenario, rein in the housing 

market and there will be rising interest 

rates for everyone across the country. 

The UK’s economy is rebuilding; for the 

first time since August 2009 the Pound 

Sterling broke over $1.70. Carney is 

laying the foundation for the large 

scale reconstruction process. His plan 

has been developed for the future with 

Nemat Shafik a likely candidate to 

take the reins after Carney’s departure. 

Sir Mervyn King (former Bank of 

England Governor) described Carney 

as, “an outstanding choice to succeed 

me” so there will always be a sense of 

expectation on Carney’s shoulders along 

with criticism it carries; the welfare of 

the British econ omy is in his hands but 

winners always find a way to deal with 

the pressure. ƒ 

22 

23

ECONOMICS 

The case for fat 

taxes 

Matt Phillips 

In the UK at the moment, 

approximately a quarter 

of adults are considered 

obese. 

Obesity is a growing problem, with 

health risks such as a stroke, heart 

disease, type-two diabetes and the risks 

of certain forms of cancer all enhanced 

by obesity. The problem is clear to see 

in this country – the number of obese 

people that you witness every day, say 

while out shopping or at the cinema, has 

considerably increased over the last ten 

years. Since 1993, the obesity rate in 

the UK for adults has almost doubled; 

the current measures of combatting the 

issue are evidently not being effective – 

are fat taxes the answer? 

By imposing a higher tax on unhealthy 

and fattening food and drink, the 

government pushes people to purchase 

cheaper and healthier alternatives. 

Yes, arguably, people suffering from 

obesity would continue to purchase 

their favourite, unhealthy foods. 

However, a tax would help to stem the 

problem amongst the younger members 

of society. When out and about with 

friends, the cheap and quick solution 

for a meal is a stop off in a fast food 

chain – it doesn’t take too much out of 

your spending money, it’s easy and it 

tastes good. However, if this food became 

more expensive, thus taking it out of 

the ‘cheap’ bracket, younger people may 

turn to an alternative – a supermarket 

salad or sandwich would be better than 

a burger and chips. 

The morbidly obese need serious 

help, just making their favourite foods 

more expensive will not make them 

into a healthier person; they may be 

beyond help in some sense. The way to 

tackle this problem is from the roots, 

preventing further obesity should be the 

aim, and fat taxes can be the solution. 

They will stop the youth of today being 

reliant on the foods that will turn 

them obese. Of course, there are other 

measures that will support the fight 

against obesity – for example, more PE 

lessons for school children and better 

education about the values of having a 

healthy life and a balanced diet. These 

are already present in the syllabus of 

primary education today, however, in 

order to aid the work of the fat taxes, 

there needs to be more of this. This 

is not about encouraging everyone to 

have the perfect body image, as being 

ridiculously thin is equally unhealthy, 

but that is a separate issue. Having 

said this, certain issues like obesity 

cause great health risks and can result 

in early death. In 2011-12, there were 

11736 admissions to hospital because of 

obesity, this is more than eleven times 

higher than ten years previously. This 

illustrates the grand scale of the health 

risks that can be caused by being obese 

and consequently it is certainly best 

avoided. 

Fat taxes would be beneficial in the 

UK due to how taxing an unhealthy 

/ life threating substance in the past, 

in particular smoking, has greatly 

reduced the number of people who 

smoke. Obviously it is not this tax 

alone that has reduced the number of 

smokers, although the increased price 

has been instrumental in the reduction 

of smokers. Consequently, if fat taxes 

were to be introduced, there would be 

a disincentive to consume these types 

of food and drink, and this combined 

with more exercise and knowledge of 

what you are eating and drinking, the 

number of obese people in the UK would 

be reduced. 

The problem of obesity in the UK needs 

to be prevented for the future. The 

battle is currently being lost, and the 

fight to combat the obese members of 

the older generation is not going to be 

won. We must, therefore, try to stop the 

children of today from following in their 

footsteps - fat taxes are the solution. ƒ 

Austerity? What 

austerity? 

Felix Clarke 

Growth may have returned, 

but the debt crisis is only 

worsening. 

Despite all the tough talk, UK 

government spending is still wildly 

out of control. The coalition is falling 

spectacularly short of its target of a 

balanced budget within five years, with 

our deficit-GDP ratio still the highest in 

the European Union. The government 

continues to overspend by around one 

third of a billion pounds every day, and 

the magic milepost of a net debt greater 

than annual GDP rapidly approaches. To 

put the debt in perspective, the average 

tax-payer is already burdened with 

£38,000 of public debt. Every year, 

seven percent of government spending is 

used to repay the interest on this debt – 

a figure that is only increasing. 

Our politicians show no signs of really 

grasping this nettle, all too happy 

to equate the return of economic 

growth with a resolution of the debt 

crisis. It is utterly dismaying to hear 

David Cameron boasting on the Today 

programme (26 May 2014) that his 

government is ‘paying down the deficit’. 

As all sixth-form economists will realise, 

this comment is absurd and misleading: 

while the deficit (Government spending 

less taxation) has decreased, the overall 

fiscal debt rapidly increases. One would 

love to excuse this remark as a slip of 

the tongue, but such language is sadly 

commonplace. The government’s onethird 

dent in the deficit is, naturally, 

welcome, but to predict a surplus any 

time soon is fanciful. The general mood 

seems to be that austerity has simply 

been a means to recover from recession, 

so ceases to be relevant now that growth 

has returned. 

Such a crisis should be a cross-party 

issue, but while the Tories at least 

pretend to tackle it, Labour prefers 

to ignore it all together. When asked 

by Andrew Marr (26 January 2014) 

whether spending was too high under 

the last government, Shadow Chancellor, 

Ed Balls, responded ‘No I don’t. Nor our 

deficit, nor our national debt.’ What 

hope have we of resolving this urgent 

crisis when a man who may just be 

running the economy this time next 

year is so hopelessly deluded? 

A Keynesian approach to public finances 

is all very well, but forever conveniently 

putting our faith in the notion that all 

government spending will eventually be 

returned as tax revenue (in the face of 

years of disproof) is utterly reckless. One 

would at least expect the Left to propose 

to resolve the crisis by increasing tax 

rates – although such a move would be 

detrimental to the recovery. Instead, 

anti-austerity groups such as The 

People’s Assembly rally against the socalled 

brutal cuts with not even an 

acknowledgement of the reasons behind 

austerity. What seems to be forgotten 

is that the more debt interest the 

government is required to pay each year, 

the less money can be spent on welfare 

and the NHS. A stance truly supportive 

of the welfare state would recognise the 

need for cuts now, to avoid collapse 

later. The reason the government is so 

reluctant to make the case for its own 

austerity package is because once the 

issue is raised, it quickly becomes clear 

that it does not have the deficit under 

control, as it would have the electorate 

believe. 

Of course austerity has been a painful 

process for people who have had benefits 

cut, but some far more severe measures 

are necessary in order for the country to 

live within its means and stop burdening 

future generations with vast interest 

bills, unavoidably causing further pain. 

The profligacy of successive previous 

governments would be to blame for this 

pain, not the politician brave enough to 

seize back control over the budget. ƒ 

Cost of living 

crisis: A real 

issue or just 

left-wing 

propaganda? 

James Eggington 

The financial crisis has 

provoked a somewhat 

predictable response from 

the two main parties in 

British politics. 

David Cameron’s well-advertised 

“Long-term Economic Plan” of cutting 

corporation tax, building infrastructure 

and creating work incentives to 

encourage growth seems like a reasonable 

conservative strategy to deal with the 

slump. The response from Ed Miliband 

was inevitable: that the poorest have 

suffered the most in this crisis and it is 

the Tories’ fault. If that was not enough, 

he even claims that “the Government is 

making the situation worse - the cost of 

living crisis will not go away even when 

24 

25

ECONOMICS 

the economy recovers.” Such criticism is 

not unexpected from the leader of the 

opposition, especially when Cameron’s 

plan appears to be working: in May 

2014 CPI inflation fell to 1.5% - its 

lowest level in five years. In the same 

month it was announced there were two 

million more private sector jobs than 

in 2010 and the EEF reported that UK 

manufacturers are more confident about 

growth than at any time since 2007. 

These figures suggest that Britain is 

finally on the right track to recovery. 

But could Miliband actually be 

pointing out an unnoticed flaw in the 

Conservative policy? Will the whole of 

Britain really benefit from their plan? 

It must be remembered that the facts 

given above are generalisations about 

the whole UK, which run the risk of 

leaving some groups with a lack of 

representation. 

The Resolution Foundation’s report on 

Living Standards supports Miliband’s 

concerns. If Cameron’s plan is creating 

jobs and encouraging investment, then 

surely incomes should be higher than 

in the 2007-2010 period, the very 

pitfall of the crisis? Not only have 

they not improved for low-to-middle 

income earners, but they have made 

a significant decrease of £1400 per 

person from 2009 to 2013. Given that 

real national income actually increased 

in this period, it is clear that those two 

million extra private sector jobs, which 

the Prime Minister boasted about, 

mainly benefitted the wealthier Brits. 

Decreases in income still have no 

significance until we consider how 

prices have changed. Unfortunately, 

the stats reveal no silver lining. During 

this decrease in incomes of £1400 for 

working class people, CPI inflation rose 

as high as 3.7% and never dropped below 

1.3%. Additionally, from April 2010 to 

April 2014 fuel prices have collectively 

gone up an average of 11.9%. Surges in 

energy costs disproportionately hurt the 

working class - as energy bills take up a 

higher percentage of their income than 

richer citizens. 

Moreover, The Resolution Foundation’s 

report revealed something even more 

worrying: goods and services mainly 

bought by the poor have inflated more 

than products which the rich spend 

money on. So not only have living costs 

risen for the whole of society, but they 

have gone up more for those who can 

afford them least. How does a low income 

earner deal with a decrease in salary and 

more expensive bills at the same time? 

Surely the government will intervene 

and relieve some of the damages? 

This hope is optimistic at best. 

Government debt was roughly £1.3 

trillion as of 2014 and Cameron has 

stated that his plan is to reduce that in 

the coming years. The BBC predicts us 

to have no budget deficit by 2018 due to 

the forthcoming cuts. There can be no 

doubting that a Tory government who 

wants to give people as much incentive 

to work as possible is going to have little 

remorse in shredding the Job Seeker’s 

Allowance. With UKIP winning the 

European Election and an underlying 

concern among their supporters that 

immigrants are off the system rather 

than adding to it, this policy may 

even win the Conservative party votes. 

All we can be sure of is that, unless 

Cameron’s long-term economic recovery 

starts paying its dividends to the poor 

of Britain, Miliband’s fears of a deep 

cost of living crisis seem frighteningly 

realistic. ƒ 

The sinfulness 

of ‘sin taxes’ 


Textbook economic theory 

tells us that the market has 

a tendency to fail and that 

explains government action 

to combat it. 

Without doubt, some behaviours so 

rife in our society could really do with 

being cut back. Smoking, Alcoholism, 

Gambling – all are direct causes of 

serious strife and social upheaval. 

On the face of it, the government has 

had, traditionally, a very small policy 

toolkit. The failure of outright bans, as 

seen by illegal gambling in the US or 

the failure of the Prohibition, has led 

most governments to the consensus that 

indirect taxation is the best solution 

to the problem. However, as with all 

government actions, there was a serious 

cost which overshadows the benefits 

in terms of reduced consumption of 

dangerous goods. 

A shocking statistic which truly shows 

the shocking extent to which these taxes 

are a scourge is this: for low-income 

smokers, according to the Institute of 

Economic Affairs, a staggering 20% of 

one’s disposable income goes straight to 

the Exchequer in the form of sin taxes 

on tobacco. Moreover, as The Economist 

has pointed out, tobacco is an inferior 

good. Not only are low income earners 

poor, but they are much, much more 

likely to smoke than their richer, better 

educated counterparts. This is a crime 

for all to see, and a serious tool for 

deception. 

The effect is that for these people, the 

government smiles and gives with one 

hand in the form of benefits payments, 

while silently stealing back that money 

through hidden indirect taxation. 

Moreover, it’s not just the true ‘sins’ that 

are taxed at such a heavy rate. Any of 

this group that own a car also contribute 

to this figure, with astronomical taxes 

on petrol. James Delingpole, a climatechange 

sceptic, points to such taxes as 

serious constraints on growth and points 

it out as a specifically regressive tax. 

The disingenuous nature of taking to 

give back places an enormous weight on 

people – most of whom pay little to no 

income tax – means they are indirectly 

feeling the squeeze. 

The Labour party, bolstered by the 

spin-doctor that led Barack Obama into 

office in 2008, will place the majority 

of their emphasis on the ‘cost of living 

crisis’ that the party sees taking place in 

the country. The real driver of poverty 

is the overburden of taxes. For the very 

poor, who are overwhelmingly more 

likely to consume ‘sin’ products, these 

are the taxes that hit hardest. 

More generally, we need a bonfire 

for taxes in the UK. But in a political 

system in which social justice and 

equality are taglines trumped out by 

party leaders, we need to recognise 

that real impoverishment does not 

come from direct taxes or a lack of 

welfare benefits. The horrific effects of 

regressive taxation deprive poor families 

of £1,286 per year on these taxes. 

This is in addition to the £1,165 they 

pay in VAT. All this despite massively 

lower rates of car ownership or alcohol 

consumption among the poor. This is 

the sign of a regressive taxes if ever they 

existed – for some poor families (those 

with a car, who smoke and drink heavily) 

spend an eye-watering 37% of their 

income on sin taxes. This is compared 

to just 15% for the top quintile. We are 

putting an unnecessary burden on those 

who cannot afford it. It’s time to take a 

hatchet to regressive taxation. We need 

to stop being aggressively regressive. ƒ 

Is this economic 

recovery too 

driven by the 

South? 

Samuel Lewis 

The UK’s post-recession 

recovery is now in full 

swing. 

In the first three months of 2014, the 

economy expanded at its fastest annual 

rate since 2007, with estimates now 

suggesting that it has finally surpassed 

its pre-recession peak. The recovery 

has even been blamed for the current 

backlog at the Passport Office, which 

has seen more applications for new or 

renewed passports between March and 

May than at any other stage in the past 

twelve years. 

Recent figures also indicate that the 

economy is diversifying, which will help 

to ease fears that a sudden end to what 

some believe is a house price bubble 

could ruin the entire recovery. Whilst 

consumer spending is still one of the 

main contributors to economic growth in 

the UK, business investment is picking 

up rapidly. This has now increased for 

five consecutive quarters (the longest 

run since 1998), at a rate of 8.7% on an 

annual basis. In addition, manufacturing 

levels have risen by 4.4% in the year to 

April 2014. With business optimism 

close to a fifteen-year high, these areas 

are likely to continue improving, along 

with other areas such as exports, once 

the Eurozone recovery takes hold. As a 

result, barring a dramatic short-term 

crash in house prices, the recovery looks 

set to continue at a relatively sustainable 

level. 

However, in the North of the country, the 

argument that the recovery is well under 

way seems extremely questionable. A 

major driver of the economy has been 

house price growth. In the year to 

March 2014, house prices in London 

rose by a huge seventten percent. The 

corresponding figures for the North- 

West of England, Scotland and Northern 

Ireland were 3.1%, 0.8% and 0.3% 

respectively. These figures show an 

alarming differential between the states 

of the economy across the UK. Not only 

does it make it even harder for people to 

move from the North of the UK to the 

South, but as some of these figures are 

lower than inflation rates, home-owners 

in certain regions are actually becoming 

poorer in real terms. Becoming poorer 

is certainly not something generally 

associated with an economic recovery. 

The disparity of house-price growth in 

the UK means that consumer spending 

levels have hardly changed in large 

swathes of the country. In Scotland, 

26 

27

ECONOMICS 

levels were negative in the year to 

March. It must be noted that the biggest 

improvement in the whole of the UK 

was in the North-East (1.9%), although 

this is partially due to the fact that the 

region started in a much worse position 

than areas such as the South-East which 

still saw consumer spending growth 

of 1.7%. This point demonstrates that 

the economic recovery is being driven 

by the South and very slowly feeding 

through to the North. 

The Southern-dominated recovery has at 

least fed through to the manufacturing 

sector which is predominantly based in 

the North of England. This should be 

good news for firms as bigger revenues 

will result in more money available 

for investment that can allow greater 

production levels in the near-future 

Is London creating false hope for the rest of the UK? 

or increased productivity, which is 

currently a major drag on the recovery. 

Workers will also benefit: wages will 

increase gradually and unemployment 

will fall. This is especially good news 

in the North-East of England, where 

unemployment levels were still in 

double figures at the beginning of the 

year. The problem is that the growth 

of manufacturing is almost entirely 

down to increased demand within 

the UK, especially in the South. With 

virtually no extra demand from abroad 

manufacturing simply cannot continue 

to rise at such a rate for more than a 

few years. This means that the recovery 

is currently highly dependent on the 

South and will soon become dependent 

on the North. A sudden recovery in 

the North is, therefore, necessary but 

unlikely. 

The need for recovery outside of the 

South is, therefore, clear. Whilst it 

seems fairly clear that the economy as 

a whole is improving, it is not possible 

to have sustainable growth without 

improvements elsewhere. We have little 

say on the recovery outside of our 

borders. Therefore, we need the North 

to recover soon so that the country does 

not end up both unable to recover and 

even more divided in terms of wealth 

and the general standard of living. ƒ 

End help-tobuy 

and start 

building 

Felix Clarke 

At the start of June, the 

European Commission 

released a report, calling 

on George Osborne, among 

other things, to rein in his 

help-to-buy scheme. 

As much as one resents such nosey 

interfering from Brussels, our 

Government would do well to heed the 

Commission’s warning. 

The old Conservative vision of a 

‘property-owning democracy’ is a noble 

ideal. Allowing more people to own their 

own homes increases self-reliance and 

gives people more of a stake in society 

– which can only be good things. More 

cynically, however, such policies are real 

vote-winners, as Margaret Thatcher 

experienced after giving council tenants 

the ‘right-to-buy’ their council houses in 

the 1980s. 

However, in the case of help-to-buy, the 

benefits do not outweigh the potential 

costs. The government’s help-to-buy 

scheme, announced in March 2013, is 

two-fold. The first aspect is the period 

of interest-free loans for buyers of newbuilds. 

The UK has a chronic shortfall 

of house-building, so any stimulation 

here is very welcome. Stage two of helpto-buy, 

the ‘mortgage guarantee’, means 

that the government guarantees up to 

fifteen percent of the property value, 

if the buyer provides a five-percent 

deposit and the house is worth less than 

£600,000. By easing mortgage access, 

the scheme further pushes up house 

prices. 

Adding heat to the housing market is a 

particular concern because house prices 

are prone to bubbles. House-price 

inflation is often self-perpetuating, as 

consumers see rising prices as a call 

to buy, boosting demand. The housing 

market can soon spiral out of control in 

a series of destabilising boom-and-bust 

cycles – just what our fledgling recovery 

does not need. Like conventional 

inflation, house-price inflation leads 

to fiscal drag. As pointed out by the 

European Commission’s report, rising 

house prices have pushed low-income 

families into higher council-tax brackets. 

The Government assures us that house 

price inflation is driven by market 

influences, rather than help-to-buy. 

Indeed, only seven thousand mortgages 

were completed using stage two of the 

scheme in the first six months of the 

scheme. More significant than help-tobuy 

in boosting house prices are factors 

such as insufficient house-building 

despite a growing population, low 

interest rates and growing consumer 

confidence. Furthermore, in London, 

the influx of wealthy foreigners looking 

for luxury houses and apartments has 

seen prices in the capital soar far above 

the national average. 

The real, unseen damage of help-tobuy 

is in its encouragement of the 

same culture of reckless lending that 

in America sparked the global financial 

crisis of 2008, from which we have only 

recently emerged. Commentators warn 

that banks are now promoting riskier 

mortgages in order to compete with 

help-to-buy. The scheme itself only 

encourages buyers to get into debt. The 

interest-free loans expire after five years 

and the government’s contribution to 

mortgage deposits may leave consumers 

with unaffordable repayments. 

Consumers and the Government will 

have to accept that it is often preferable 

to rent. Home-ownership is often more 

constraining than liberating when 

accompanied by a huge mortgage. 

If the Government really wants to help 

people onto the property ladder, it 

needs to start encouraging building on 

a huge scale. The Government would 

not necessarily have to develop on the 

green-belt, angering the shire-Tory vote, 

as many commentators would have us 

believe. Indeed, there is space for two 

and a half million homes on the UK’s 

brownfield sites. Significant subsidies 

of house building would take some 

pressure out of the housing market, 

lowering prices and allowing first-time 

buyers on to the housing ladder without 

being lumbered with debt. ƒ 

Will we live 

to regret 

quantitative 

easing? 

Phil Haggart 

The Monetary Policy 

Committee’s recent decision 

to expand the money supply 

through large-scale asset 

purchases shifted the focus 

of monetary policy towards 

the quantity of money as 

well as the price of money. 

With Bank Rate close to zero, asset 

purchases should provide an additional 

stimulus to nominal spending and so help 

meet the inflation target of two percent. 

This should come about through their 

impact on asset prices, expectations 

and the availability of credit. However, 

there is considerable uncertainty about 

the strength and pace with which these 

effects will feed through. That will 

depend in part on what sellers do with 

the money they receive in exchange 

for the assets they sell to the Bank of 

England and the response of banks to 

the additional liquidity they obtain. If 

used successfully, quantitative easing 

can be used to fuel economic growth, 

since money funnelled into the economy 

should allow people to more comfortably 

make purchases. This can have a trickle- 

28 

29

ECONOMICS 

down effect on both the consumer 

and business communities, leading to 

increased stock market performance 

and GDP growth. However, quantitative 

easing forces investors to step into everriskier 

investments which could cause 

an enormous blow in a subsequent 

recession. 

Back in 2001, the Bank of Japan adopted 

the unconventional monetary policy 

tool to fight domestic deflation. Interest 

rates at the time were close to zero and 

could no longer influence the economy 

to promote economic growth. The BOJ 

increased the commercial bank current 

account balance from ¥5 trillion to 

¥35 trillion (approximately US$300 

billion) over a four-year period starting 

in March 2001. With quantitative 

easing, it flooded commercial banks 

with excess liquidity to promote private 

lending, leaving them with large stocks 

of excess reserves and therefore little 

risk of a liquidity shortage. However, 

how successful was this? 

Nearly a decade after Japan’s central 

bank first experimented with the policy, 

the country remains mired in deflation, 

a general decline in wages and prices 

that has crippled its economy. At first, it 

appeared the programme had succeeded 

in stabilising the economy and halting 

the slide in prices. But deflation has 

returned with a vengeance over the past 

two years, putting the Bank of Japan 

back in the spotlight. 

cautions of the many consequences that 

can arise from such a risky monetary 

policy. Should QE achieve a temporary 

lift in economic growth through higher 

credit extension, inflation expectations 

will rise immediately as the enormous 

amount of money created flows into the 

real economy. Investors in bonds will 

anticipate this, and will begin selling 

bonds – they lose more value the higher 

inflation expectations – so there is a 

high risks that interest rates rise even 

more than inflation. The result is that it 

becomes increasingly expensive for the 

both the government and the private 

sector to refinance debts. 

Due to the great power and nature of 

quantitative easing, I believe that it 

should only be adopted as a ‘last resort’ 

policy when other conventional means 

of stimulating the economy have failed. 

If it becomes the norm with changing 

interest rates, the global economy could 

collapse. They say that desparate times 

call for desparate measures. QE was one 

such measure. We shall have to sit back 

and see how the results of the experiment 

unfold to truly assess whether or not is 

was a success. The Japanese example 

isn’t enough - the US and UK provide 

more of what we need. ƒ 

HISTORY 

30 

So why didn’t quantitative easing work 

in Japan? Critics say the Japanese 

central bank wasn’t aggressive enough 

in launching and expanding its bondbuying 

program—then dropped it too 

soon. In 2006, prices had just started 

rising - a sign that quantitative easing was 

beginning to work. But some indicators 

were already signalling a slowdown in 

the economy. BOJ officials also seemed 

half-hearted as they launched the policy, 

failing to explain it sufficiently or 

making a strong case for public support. 

If the bank of England decides to follow 

in the BOJ’s footsteps, they must be 

Chancellor George Orborne 

1707. This date, obscure to many perhaps, illustrates perfectly why history is so crucial to consider 

regardless of the field, be it politics, economics, finance or even sport. 2014 sees a referendum on Scotland 

seeding from the Union, the very Union they joined in 1707. 

History perhaps unravelling, history perhaps repeating...regardless, this subject is a vital pursuit for any academic. 

Through studying the past we are able to trace patterns, themes and ideas through to the current affairs and events 

discussed elsewhere within these pages. 

Confucius, the great Eastern thinker, once said one ought to ‘study the past if you would define the future.’ This is the 

perfect spirit for one to approach history with, an open mind willing to embrace the past in order to make sense of 

the present. In a year that commemorates the start of the First World War, the bloodiest conflict in the history of the 

entire globe, it is apt that we take a serious look at history. Sometimes brilliant, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes 

terrifying, history always has something to show us; be it something that we ought to do or to be, or something that 

should never again be done. 

Ed Creedy, Section Editor 

31

HISTORY 

Did Friedrich 

Engels seriously 

alter Marxism? 

Sam Norman 

Co-author of The 

Communist Manifesto, 

Friedrich Engels is often 

overlooked, in favour of his 

more famous partner, Karl 

Marx,) when it comes to 

the foundation of Marxism. 

Yet, Engels himself had a significant 

influence not only over the works of 

Marx but over the ideology itself. His 

writings, organisation of Marx’s ideas 

and his own comments on the works of 

Marx may well have altered the focus 

of Marxism and changed the meanings 

of many of Marx’s writings, if modern 

historians are to be believed. 

An area where this can clearly be seen 

is in the Marxist interpretation of 

history: historical materialism. This 

term describes the Marxist view that all 

history is based on the changing of the 

dominant class- capitalists overthrowing 

Friedrich Engels 

aristocrats, the proletariat (workers) 

overthrowing the capitalists, and so onnot 

only this but also how humans must 

work to produce the means of subsistence 

(food and so forth). This interpretation 

of history was put forward by Marx 

himself but it was not until Engels’ 1878 

work ‘Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution 

in Science’, commonly known as ‘Anti- 

Düring’, that this interpretation was 

outlined clearly. Engels did attribute 

the ideas of historical realism to Marx 

himself, however, but it was Engels who 

formalised them and make them clearer 

– the ideas were gathered by Engels from 

various writings by Marx and made into 

one coherent interpretation of history. 

Indeed, it was not until 1880, three 

years after the death of Marx, that 

Engels accepted the usage of the term 

‘historical materialism’ to describe this 

interpretation, again showing his role 

in establishing what has come to be 

known as the ‘Marxist interpretation of 

history’, i.e. historical materialism. 

It can therefore be seen that Engels was 

incredibly important in the foundation 

of the Marxist view of history. Even 

in Marxist economic thought, Engels 

was key. The publications of Marx’s 

posthumous works were mainly done 

by Engels, who organised the ideas and 

commented on them, such as was the 

case for the posthumous editions of 

‘Das Kapital’, an incredibly influential 

critical analysis of the capitalist system, 

which became a key Marxist text. 

But his influence was wider reaching, 

although perhaps in more general terms. 

Take, for example, ‘The Communist 

Manifesto’, the most famous Marxist 

work, which was written by both Marx 

AND Engels. The fact that Engels coauthored 

this key text shows that his 

ideas were incredibly important to both 

Marx and to the early followers of him. 

His ideas became part of the foundations 

of Marxism with his co-authoring of The 

Communist Manifesto and while these 

ideas may not have been drastically 

different from those of Marx himself, 

the fact remains that his ideas (or at 

least a compromise between his ideas 

and those of Marx) would have been 

included within the manifesto, the most 

well-known, perhaps most important, 

work of Marxism. 

In even more general terms, his influence 

can be seen simply as a supporter and 

financier of Marx. Engels came from a 

wealthy background- his father was a 

wealthy German cotton manufacturerand 

as a result he provided financial 

support to Marx for when he was writing, 

such as in the years preceding Marx’s 

1867 work ‘Das Kapital’. Because of this 

financial support, Engels spent time 

with Marx, checking his writings, and 

sharing ideas and comments. While this 

may well be speculative, it would not be 

too surprising if he influenced Marx’s 

ideas in this period. 

Without delving too much into 

speculation, it should be clear that 

Engels’ ideas are integral to Marxism. 

But those ideas did not alter Marxism 

because they were a fundamental part of 

it from the start, from the writing of The 

Communist Manifesto itself- perhaps a 

more accurate term for the ideology is 

Marist-Engelism. Or perhaps that term 

is just too difficult to say... ƒ 

The Melting Pot: 

Why the West is 

in part to blame 

for the woes of the 

Middle East today 

Euan Middleton 

The Middle East has always 

been a turbulent place, 

from the rise of Islam, to 

the Crusades and to the 

political conflicts of the 

20th and 21st centuries. 

Today, however, we are in an even worse 

situation than in past, in part down to 

the greed of Britain and France at the 

Treaty of Versailles over 90 years ago. 

At the close of the Great War, Britain 

and France were still the great Imperial 

powers. For them imperialism was not 

yet in decline; in fact, the British Empire 

did not reach its peak until 1922, when 

it annexed the majority of what few 

colonies Germany had. Along with the 

German land came mandates over large 

areas of the Middle East. During the 

Great War, British and Commonwealth 

forces advanced north from British 

controlled Egypt to fight the Turks, who 

were at the time allied with Germany 

and Austria-Hungary. They allied with 

several Arab tribes, who were promised 

independence if they assisted in the 

fight against the Turks. 

When the war came to its end in 1918, 

the Allies promptly reneged on their 

promises; the Arabs were not considered 

advanced enough to run states along 

the lines the West wished. Britain and 

France essentially gave themselves vast 

swathes as ‘mandates’. Britain took 

Palestine, Jordan and Iraq, while the 

French took charge in Lebanon and 

Syria. These countries, still in existence 

today, were drawn by European planners 

so they would look neat on a map; they 

did not take into account the people who 

lived there. 

Nearly a century on and the effects of 

these partitions are beginning to be felt 

in full force. Syria has been embroiled 

in a vicious inner-conflict for over 3 

years. It is home to diverse ethnic 

and religious groups, including Kurds, 

Armenians, Assyrians, Christians, 

Druze, Alawite Shia and Arab Sunnis. 

The country has been under the rule of 

the Alawites Ba’ath party since 1963, 

with presidents staying in some cases 

for as long as 30 years. They represent 

only 12% of the population. The sheer 

number of different religions which 

exist in Syria have shaped the civil war 

there from a struggle for freedom to a 

sectarian-orientated civil war. Arguably 

the meddling of the West in places 

they did not understand has led to an 

increased ferocity in the nature of the 

fighting in Syria today. 

However, a much longer conflict has 

engulfed the Middle East, that of the 

creation of the state of Israel. Having 

cut the state of Palestine out in 1919, 

the West of 1945 decided that the 

Jews really did need a home. Without 

any consultation of the Arabs living 

there, nor the wider community, they 

redrew the lines; more than half the 

land mass of Palestine became, in an 

instant, an entirely separate nation. As 

soon as the British withdrew in May 

1948, the two sides were instantly at 

war with each other. The Arab nations 

stood by Palestine, particularly Syria, 

Egypt, Jordan and Iraq. Two major wars 

followed in 1967 and 1973, from which 

Israel emerged victorious. In the present 

day Israel has been expanding with 

illegal settlements into what remains of 

Palestine. The Western planners simply 

did not foresee the social impact that the 

changes they made would have on the 

Middle East, with dire consequences. 

The diverse social mix of peoples in what 

are considered ‘nations’ in the middle 

east do not allow them to have a single 

identity and thus a “general will.” This 

limits their ability to truly be nations. If 

only the West had understood this, the 

problem may have been averted. 

“The west’s retreats... 

have been a disaster 

George Galloway, RESPECT MP 

Fresh unrest has arrived in the Middle 

East. An Al-Qaeda affiliated Sunni 

militant group known as ISIS has taken 

control of much of Northern Iraq, with 

the demoralised army fleeing before 

them. This has led to the vast majority 

of northern Iraq being removed from 

central government control. In the north 

east, the Kurds have practically achieved 

independence. All this turmoil, and the 

massacres and fighting that surrounds 

it, can invariably be traced back to the 

rushed planning of the borders of the 

Middle East post World War I. Fed by 

oncoming ideals of socialism and antiimperialism, 

the west’s quick retreats 

from the Middle East since 1918 have 

been nothing but a disaster. ƒ 

32 

33

HISTORY 

Pillars of 

Civilization 

Ed Creedy 

What begun with the 

glory of the ancient 

Greeks ended with the 

hiss and whirr of the great 

machines of the industrial 

revolution? 

These changes encompassed vast 

swathes of history, from the Classical 

Mediterranean to the Renaissance 

papacy of the sixteenth century, a single 

process which has snowballed through 

the narrative of the past c. 3000 years. 

Unnoticed by many, it is only with the 

benefit of hindsight that we can truly 

consider the monumental nature of this 

unseen process. 

This process has shaped the culture 

and society of our own lives today, as it 

regards what is most instrumental and 

central in the very way we act and live. 

(Perhaps then this relevance suggests 

that a study of history is imperative in 

allowing us to understand our own times, 

indeed our own selves.) It is a process of 

transformation, from civilisations and 

cultures based around belief systems in 

the divine, to those based around a sense 

of economic gain and self-promotion. 

As is clearly observed throughout the 

span of the Classical World, religion 

was of paramount importance within 

society. It pervaded all aspects of life and 

provided each and every citizen, slave 

and foreigner with an understanding 

of both how one should, and how one 

wanted, to act. 

Belief in the deities of Greek or Roman 

mythology provided the drive and 

purpose for each and every act, be it 

observation of feast days, festivals and 

rituals, or the inordinate amount of 

wealth and time accorded to either 

one of these religious pursuits. There 

were deities for all manner of everyday 

and extraordinary objects, events and 

feelings. One for each of war, peace, 

love hate dreams or even riches. Yes: 

even money was subordinate to religious 

observation and adoration. 

Famously, for example, the Siphnian 

treasury at the important sanctuary 

of Delphi was known for its elaborate 

building and even more elaborate 

and rich treasures stored within. 

Silver, gold, ivory and precious stones 

were all offered within in accordance 

with religious belief, religion truly 

dominated all aspects of the ancient 

world, subjugating even the power of 

wealth and riches. 

Yet gradually this began to change. 

Chronologically, the course of the 

development of a ‘greed of gods’ to a 

‘god of greed’ can be mapped through 

the progression of time. Hints of this 

natural subjugation to the divine being 

questioned can be observed through 

the biblical account of Judas, turncoat 

against his beliefs for 40 silver coins, 

and this was already occurring in merely 

the first century AD. 

Further on from this we can see the 

wealth and corruption of the Renaissance 

Papacy in Rome (and for a time Avignon) 

during the fifteenth and sixteenth 

centuries. The pervasive desire for the 

worldly had, even then, the capacity 

to overwhelm the supposedly pious. It 

was the nineteenth century where this 

development found its completion. The 

Industrial Revolution of this time lead 

to cultures of greed as the rich and elite 

found new ways to pursue greatness, no 

longer via any religious means, but now 

through the acquisition of wealth. 

Finally civilization had shifted from 

a spiritual to an economic quest. No 

longer were the divine the pinnacle: 

man had taken their place, and it was 

simply the next wealthiest man who 

was able to usurp the former. This 

desire for economic benefit, this greed, 

has continued into today’s world, the 

financial disaster of 2008 epitomising 

how far men will go these days to serve 

their greed 

“Belief in deities provided 

purpose for every act 

Ed Creedy 

Voltaire, who lived during the eighteenth 

century, was a man who recognised this 

monumental shift was taking place. 

He pithily commented that ‘when it is 

a question of money, everybody is of 

the same religion’. He may well have 

recognised the change that was taking 

place, the shift from the subservience 

of money to religion, to that of religion 

unto money, and this comment alludes 

to that. Perhaps even he is suggesting 

that in shifting to what is an inherently 

selfish worldview, we have in some way 

sold our soul, abandoned our principles, 

and deserted our spiritual nature. Or 

maybe we can satisfy ourselves with the 

cripsness of a new dollar bill. 

Suffice to say, we’re addicted to greed.ƒ 

WWII POW 

Camp Economy 

Harry Jones 

Robert A. Radford, an 

economist who was taken 

prisoner during the Second 

World War observed that 

markets may appear 

spontaneously, evenly 

during the worst of times. 

However, can a POW camp 

really be seen as a simple 

economy? 

Radford wrote in ‘The Economic 

Organisation of a POW Camp’ that he 

found similar trends in the camp as to 

a market stating ‘a POW camp provides 

a living example of a simple economy’. 

This idea initially developed because 

prisoners wanted comfort from goods 

as they were going through horrific 

times. Prisoners were not aware of 

what was unfolding within the camp; 

such a market simply arose due to the 

circumstances they faced. Each prisoner 

was given a ration pack by the Red 

Cross, which included basic foods and 

cigarettes as well as private parcels 

containing personal items. Prisoners 

began to trade food and cigarettes and 

it wasn’t too long before different foods 

were priced in terms of cigarettes. 

Thus cigarettes became a type of 

currency in POW camps. They could be 

seen as a perfect substitute for money as 

they were desirable (as most people were 

addicted through stress), very light and 

convenient in size. Even if a prisoner 

did not smoke, he knew that the other 

prisoners would be willing to trade for 

the cigarettes. This helped to cause a 

driving demand. In addition, there is 

no risk of hyperinflation as even when 

more cigarettes were introduced into the 

market, the ‘money’ supply was always 

limited by smokers’ consumption. This 

made it a deflationary currency in the 

same manner as Bitcoin. However, this 

also caused problems because cigarettes 

would decrease in circulation as more 

were consumed, before a huge injection 

of cigarettes at one time caused prices to 

change dramatically. This shows how the 

market was actually working properly 

with reactions to changes in supply 

and demand. The prisoners could easily 

alter the amount of tobacco in each 

cigarette, which would lead to each one 

being examined before the exchange. 

Gresham’s Law states that bad money 

will drive out the good money. In the 

case of cigarettes, it was hard for the 

currency to be completely uniform and 

any good money was driven out. This 

shows how even though cigarettes seemed 

to be a currency, there were many faults 

with it – cigarettes were not suitably 

fungible, causing Radford to state that 

‘the market was not yet perfect’. 

However, the POW camp could be seen as 

a very simplified example of how some 

exchanges used to take place in different 

parts of the world. In Virginia in the 

1700s, cash was so scarce that farmers 

would use tobacco as a cash crop to 

exchange goods and buy the machinery 

they needed. This was very similar to 

the POW camp ‘tobacco mentality’, 

albeit with the quality of tobacco under 

study. In Virginia, however, the market 

was regulated more as if the tobacco 

was not of a decent quality, it would 

be burned. This shows how they tried 

to correct the market failure unlike in 

the POW camp. This was only because 

there was no intervention to correct the 

market failure within the POW camp. 

Even though the German guards and the 

Red Cross (providing and monitoring 

rations) acted as a type of state, they 

did not regulate what happened within 

exchanges. However, the POW camp 

could be seen as an economy in this 

sense because even though there was 

no intervention, exchanges were still 

taking places and the prisoners found 

ways to get around any problems that 

occurred. 

Even though it may seem that the 

POW camp is an example of a simple 

economy, we can’t forget that it was in 

fact a Prison Camp. This meant that 

the all-powerful state of the German 

guards and Red Cross were able to 

control everything within the camp, 

thus creating an entirely separate world 

of its own. Therefore, the conditions of 

the camp had already been set up and 

prisoners were simply carrying out what 

they already knew. Each prisoner had 

no way of determining the resources 

available to other prisoners and 

therefore equality was created within 

the camp. Cigarettes may have developed 

into the currency only due to the fact 

that German guards could be bribed 

with them. If this was not the case 

then there could have been a different 

situation. The POW camp then, may not 

be as similar to an economy as we first 

thought, and therefore Radford’s article 

must be taken lightly as simply a useful 

insight into the world of economics. ƒ 

American 

economic 

aggression 


How history explains the 

United States’ economic 

psychology. 

American Economic policy is often 

criticised for being aggressive and, on 

some occasions, violent. There is little 

doubt that Bush’s war in Iraq was 

somewhat motivated by the Middle 

East’s monopoly on oil. Indeed many 

argue that the whole of the Cold 

War was - aside from a mere clash of 

ideologies - the classic American spirit 

of ‘Coca-Cola-capitalism’ ‘kicking up a 

fuss’ about not being able to continue 

spreading, sucking up and dominating 

34 

35

HISTORY 

the world’s markets. Hence the 

historian must ask himself where this 

reckless desire to paint the world with 

greenbacks actually came from. Was it 

(as is widely believed) a result of the 

free market reforms known commonly 

as ‘Reaganomics’? Clearly not, Reagan 

is too modern to explain this Cold War 

mentality. Thus we must look earlier to 

find the origin of this idea. 

If one is willing to accept that this 

economic outlook has been in existence 

throughout the entirety of American 

history, then such a cause should be 

identifiable. This cause, I am willing to 

suggest, is to be found in the land; quite 

literally, in the geographical extent and 

plentiful resources of the USA itself. For 

the first immigrants to the vast lands, 

in the form of Dutch settlers, were given 

free reign over their ‘New World’ – it 

was open for exploitation. As the years 

progressed too, the settlers travelled west 

in search of more arable land or mineral 

deposits - the whole way, driving out 

the forest, the buffalo and the Indian. 

The land cost nothing, yet had value 

beyond what the poor settlers could ever 

have hoped for when embarking on this 

voyage from Europe. This, I propose, 

fuelled an obsession in the collectiveconscious 

of the Americas for capital 

gain at the expense of no personal loss. 

Subconsciously, money grew on trees 

and was ripe for picking, irrespective of 

the damage that it caused. As the land 

ran out, however – as the settlers had 

sucked the life out of the East’s forests, 

hunted the buffalo of the Great Plains 

to near extinction and the lands of the 

West met rampant agrarianism – the noregrets, 

proto-Coca-Cola-capitalism that 

had been born out of circumstance had 

to turn elsewhere in order to continue 

feeding the demands of the greedy. 

It had to turn on both the American 

immigrant inhabitant himself and the 

wider neighbours of North America at 

large. This psychology can be tracked 

especially well in contemporary 

America; great industrial powerhouses 

such as British American Tobacco or 

the many oil companies have, as a result 

of their financial excellence, the ears 

of both federal and local governments 

throughout America and, due to their 

lack of respect for the individual, have 

no problem causing great anguish both 

at home and abroad. It seems that so 

long as a profit is turned, the damage 

caused is nothing more than a minor 

annoyance as it may diminish, if only 

slightly, future profit and credibility. 

A disgustingly immoral approach to 

business that can only really be blamed 

on the original plenty that faced the 

European settler. 

One further consideration to the 

concept outlined above is found in 

the very creation of the USA as a 

sovereign state; it is fair to say that 

prior to the establishment of the 

Union by the founding fathers after 

the Revolutionary War, the aggressive 

economic expansionism was firmly in 

place, as demonstrated above. However, 

the war itself, surely, helped develop 

this questionable mind-set. All is fair 

in love and war, so the post-chivalric 

code of dishonour states, and perhaps, 

as the United States were begotten 

in this climate and the wars – both 

Revolutionary and Civil – touched so 

many of the American people that this 

conscience-free approach to war has 

become engrained on the American 

psyche at large. (Perhaps also, the reason 

why the United States appears always be 

so eager to engage in conflict – be it the 

foreign War on Terror or the domestic 

War on Drugs – is in order to justify, 

at some deep psychological level, the 

continuation of this motto in everyday 

life.) 

So, the American economic psychology 

continues, created out of the pseudoutopian 

impression enveloping the early 

settlers of the United States and then 

perpetuated out of their fixation on 

conflict. The infamous dollar bill carries 

the curse of America’s history in every 

citizens’ wallet. ƒ 

What, if 

anything, does 

the Trolley Cart 

Dilemma show 

us? 

Tim Foster 

A trolley cart is careering 

out of control. Up ahead are 

five workers, who are about 

to be killed by the trolley 

cart. 

But on a spur to the right stands a lone 

individual. You, a bystander, happen to 

be standing next to the lever that could 

divert the trolley, (a move that would 

save the five, yet sacrifice the one). Do 

you pull it? 

If you would pull the lever, then you are 

not alone: most people when presented 

with this scenario would do so. Consider, 

however, a second example: you are no 

longer next to the switch, but on a 

bridge. The only way to save the workers 

is to push a fat man onto the track. This 

is certain to stop the trolley killing five 

people, but again, at the expense of an 

innocent life. Is it morally permissible 

to push the man off the bridge? At 

this point, many people are inclined 

to change their mind, and let the five 

workers die. But is this logical, given 

that the outcomes of both scenarios is 

mathematically identical? 

Both of these situations make up the 

trolley cart dilemma, a moral problem 

first posed by Phillipa Foot in her 1967 

paper, ‘Abortion and the Doctrine 

of Double Effect’. It is a problem that 

plays into thousands of economical and 

historical issues, such as capitalism: 

many may gain, but a few suffer as 

a result. Or perhaps humanitarian 

intervention, such as in Iraq in 2003, 

or even now in 2014. Historians might 

try to justify many wars, policies, 

decisions and events by using the wellknown 

Vulcan phrase: ‘The needs of the 

many, outweigh the needs of the few’. 

Or, indeed, the one. The idea of ends 

justifying means that can be traced 

back to at least the Greeks, and maybe 

further still. People’s answers to these 

problems, and others like them, help to 

identify whether their ethical outlook 

is mainly teleological or deontological. 

Teleological ethics locates moral value 

in the consequences of an action: if an 

action produces favourable outcomes 

overall, then it is justified; in short, ‘the 

ends justify the means’. 

This is in stark contrast to a 

deontological approach to ethics, where 

actions are believed to have value in 

and of themselves, regardless of the 

consequences that they produce. In other 

words, actions have intrinsic value, and 

are not morally justified or condemned 

by their consequences. When one 

applies these moral outlooks to the 

above dilemmas, the fault line is clearly 

shown. Consequentialists (i.e. those 

who subscribe to a teleological outlook) 

would likely kill the one person in 

both scenarios, arguing this is justified 

as more lives are ultimately saved by 

killing the one man. By contrast, most 

deontologists would submit that murder 

can never be justified, as it is always 

wrong irrespective of the consequences. 

Therefore, deontologists would likely 

allow the five workers to die. 

Whilst this analysis is illuminating on 

an academic level, it fails to account for 

the gut instinct of many, which is pull 

the lever but not push the fat man. Is this 

inconsistent, or can this differentiation 

The Trolley Cart Dilemma - would you kill one to save four? 

be ethically justified? The main attempt 

used to try and justify this discrepancy 

is to advocate the doctrine of double 

effect. This notion, first discussed by 

St. Thomas Aquinas, gives a name to the 

reason why many have trouble accepting 

that it’s permissible to push the man 

off the bridge. The doctrine states 

that, for an act to be moral, it must 

produce good outcomes that are at least 

as important as the action taken, and 

which are governed by good intentions 

(i.e. you cannot push the fat man for 

fun). By these criteria, both acts seem 

to be justified, however, there is one 

final condition: the good effect must be 

produced by the action, not by the bad 

effect. This is why, for many, pulling the 

switch is preferable to pushing the man 

onto the tracks. By pulling the lever, 

we are taking an action that indirectly 

results in the death of the man on the 

track. In the second example, we are 

intentionally pushing the man to his 

death. Based on the doctrine of double 

effect therefore, whilst the former is 

moral, the latter is not. 

Does this really solve the problem? 

Consider a final twist: you are back next 

to the switch, like in the first scenario. 

The problem remains identical, but 

this time the person you are killing is 

not a stranger, but the person you love 

the most. Suddenly, things become 

unclear again. The doctrine of double 

effect cannot obviously defend killing a 

stranger (who is probably an innocent 

victim with his own loved ones) but 

sparing a loved one. Is this reason to 

doubt logic? Or emotions? Or both? 

One thing is for sure: it is clear reason 

to doubt that this dilemma will ever be 

‘solved’. This, by extrapolation, says 

much about most ethical problems. 

Subjective preference even plays a part 

in how much people value different 

outcomes vis-a-vis decisions. The lack of 

a straight distinction between emotions 

and logic in problems like this will keep 

us flummoxed for generations ƒ 

36 

37

HISTORY: FEATURE 

World War One’s Literary Legacy 

Alex Goodchild 

How the Great War 

redefined attitudes to 

war in poetry. 

As we approach the 100th anniversary 

of the outbreak of World War One, much 

attention will doubtlessly be centred on 

how it reshaped the balance of power in 

Europe and, more pertinently, its role 

as the greatest human catastrophe ever, 

with over 37 million casualties recorded. 

Yet one of the war’s most enduring 

legacies has been its effect on poetry. 

Changing war from a heroic notion to 

one of despair, it was in the destructive 

fire of conflict where the famous poems 

of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, 

two of England’s favourite poets, were 

forged. Conflict has of course often been 

the subject of poetry as long as swords 

and styluses have existed. 

Two renowned classical writers, for 

instance, Homer and Virgil, gained fame 

through their epics, the Iliad and the 

Aeneid respectively. Both narratives 

revolve around warfare with ideas of 

heroism in the characters of Achilles 

and Aeneas woven into the lofty verse 

with the Aeneid immediately setting 

this tone by famously commencing with 

the Latin word ‘arma’ (arms). A more 

recent work that comes to mind on this 

theme is Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s ‘The 

Charge of the Light Brigade’, which 

commemorates the event of the same 

name that occurred during the Battle 

of Balaclava in the Crimean War, raging 

from 1853 until 1856. Historically a 

disastrous engagement arising from poor 

communications, it describes the ride of 

600 men into ‘the valley of Death’. In 

the aftermath of a devastating loss of 

men, it offers a moving tribute to the 

courage and heroism of the cavalry and, 

similarly to classical notions, it lauds 

the combatants with vocabulary such as 

‘honour.’ 

Yet the attitude in the writings of those 

who experienced the human atrocity 

of 1914 onwards could not seem, by 

comparison, further removed. Interesting 

this should seem as, at the start of the 

war, the efforts of poets were not used 

to deplore the brutality but rather to 

promote enlistment as a form of jingoist 

propaganda. Jessie Pope, notoriously the 

addressee of Owen’s famous ‘Dulce et 

Decorum Est’, a biting condemnation of 

the idea that it is proper to serve and 

die for one’s country, perceived World 

War One as something of a ‘game’ and 

even, shockingly, compared it to a game 

of cricket (‘They’ll take the Kaiser’s 

middle wicket’). Controversial certainly, 

but this was not a view atypical of the 

British public. 

Indeed, the crippled persona of Owen’s 

‘Disabled’ recalls how he enlisted 

because he thought ‘he’d look a god in 

kilts’ and to please ‘giddy’ women. It 

took place, ‘after football, when he’d 

drunk a peg’ as was common of those 

in the pals’ battalions. The choice of 

joining the army was motivated by 

glory but it was the brutal reality that 

changed attitudes entirely. ‘Disabled’ 

presents a negative perspective on the 

Great War and its victims; the speaker 

receives no glorious welcome upon 

return, his vitality is ‘poured down 

shell-holes’ and he metaphorically ‘waits 

for dark’ to release him from his trauma. 

Such despair is perfectly captured in 

‘Futility’ also, when the soldier tending 

to a casualty wonders ‘Are limbs… too 

hard to stir?’ In posing this question, the 

poet makes a riposte to Julian Grenfell’s 

‘Into Battle’, which had shown Nature as 

giving a pastoral warmth to the troops. 

Instead, ‘Futility’ perhaps suggests that 

even Nature has abandoned man. 

Owen is perhaps the more celebrated of 

the two but it was Sassoon’s influence 

that accounts for the bitter tone of Owen’s 

verse after the men met and shared ideas 

at Craiglockhart. Sassoon, who was to be 

a victim of shellshock, is clearly scathing 

of war and at times daring in his war 

poetry. This is best illustrated in the 

controversial ‘Base Details’, in which he 

reproaches ‘puffy-faced’ and ‘petulant’ 

commanders, who, after ‘guzzling and 

gulping in the best hotel’ return home 

to die safely in the comfort of their own 

beds. Whilst spurious in plausibility, 

this entirely fabricated perception of 

those behind the lines does show the 

great antipathy felt towards those at 

the top. Consider, for instance, Douglas 

Haig, commander at the Somme, and 

his nickname of ‘Butcher Haig’. More 

acerbic still is ‘On Passing the New 

Menin Gate’, where Sassoon derides the 

memorial as a ‘sepulchre of crime’ that 

celebrates ‘the world’s worst wound’ 

‘with pride’ as the ‘unheroic dead’ 

remain ‘nameless’, exemplifying the 

view that there is no heroism in warfare. 

Meanwhile, ‘Everyone Sang’ expresses 

the unparalleled joy at the close of war, 

with the Armistice, 11th November 

1918. Sassoon’s comparison here is an 

extremely effective one: ‘I was filled 

with such delight / As prisoned birds 

must find in freedom.’ The joy conveyed 

here is born of the relief analogous to 

that of the caged bird as it flies away 

yet, unlike for the bird, World War One 

has left an indelible mark on mind and 

body of each soldier. 

As shown, attitudes to war have 

changed, yet how is the experience 

actually presented in poetry and what 

is Sassoon escaping from? His aptly 

named ‘War Experience’ gives a taster 

of what he described as ‘the foul beast… 

that bludgeons life’ (The Dream). After 

enlisting as a young man and putting 

himself through ‘demented strife and 

ghastly glooms of soul-conscripting 

war, mechanic and volcanic’, Sassoon 

considers that ‘Not much remains of 

the hater/ Of purgatorial pains.’ The 

veteran is but a spectre of his former 

self, just as the persona in ‘Disabled’ 

is vividly pictured as ‘Legless, sown 

short at elbow.’ It is the aforementioned 

‘Dulce et Decorum Est’, though, which 

provides the most graphic and terrible 

image of a gas attack. Without his gas 

mask, one man is left with ‘white eyes 

writhing in his face’ that hangs ‘like a 

devil’s sick of sin’. ‘At every jolt’ his 

comrades can hear ‘the blood / Come 

gargling from the froth-corrupted 

lungs’. His state is ‘obscene as cancer, 

bitter as the cud’ and he is left with 

‘incurable sores’ on his tongue. Everyone 

should rightly remember World War 

One for its lasting effect on European 

politics and, of course, the tragic human 

losses, but one of its greatest effects was 

to change the concept of war in poetry. 

Notions of heroism previously seen in 

classical poetry have vanished for one 

that laments warfare as the ultimate 

bringer of death and despair. As this 

is nowhere better reflected than in the 

poems of those contemporary fighters, it 

is somewhat appropriate to end with the 

words of Wilfred Owen’s preface. 

This book is not about heroes. English 

poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. 

Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor 

anything about glory, honour, might, 

majesty, dominion, or power, except 

War... My subject is War, and the pity of 

War… All a poet can do today is warn. 

That is why true Poets must be truthful. 

Said Preface was to precede a collection 

of war poetry Owen intended to publish 

in 1919. Perhaps the greatest tragedy 

of war, certainly in terms of literature, 

was the perishing of this masterful, 

powerful poet exactly one week before 

the Armistice was signed. It is hard for 

us to tap into the wealth of literature 

from the war because it is abstracted 

from our time. ƒ 

38 

39

HISTORY 

The Spanish 

Empire and New 

World Silver: 

The Downfall of 

the Empire? 

Sam Norman 

1604. The Spanish Empire 

was the richest in Europe 

in the late sixteenth and 

early seventeenth centuries, 

due to the massive influx 

of gold and, particularly, 

silver from the Americas. 

Which Spain had colonised, more so 

than any other European power. Potosi, 

a Peruvian city, for example, became 

famous due to its massive output of silver, 

being called a land of ‘extraordinary 

riches’ by Miguel de Cervantes in Don 

Quixote. Things were thus looking very 

positive for the future of the empire, 

holding the equivalent of 1.5 trillion 

dollars in gold and silver by 1600. 

Despite this great wealth, economic 

mismanagement led the empire into a 

spiral of decline from which it could not 

recover. 

The influx of silver and gold into Spain 

led to multiple problems. Perhaps the 

biggest problem was that of inflation; 

levels of which, in Spain, amounted to 

1-1.5% per year, a figure that seems 

low by modern standards but which 

was actually rather devastating as the 

currency was based on a silver metallic 

standard; and thus inflation would only 

be caused by debasement of the coinage 

(replacing the silver or gold within it 

with a cheaper metal) or by an increase 

in the number of coins made due to an 

increase in the amount of silver or gold. 

The latter was the reason behind the 

Spanish inflation, which led to prices 

being almost 500% higher by 1650. This 

price increase had not been seen before 

in Europe and it did not just affect 

Spain- England saw similar inflation as 

did much of Europe. This led to higher 

food prices and, more importantly, 

higher arms prices, which was especially 

devastating for the Spanish who were 

fighting multiple wars in Europe 

almost constantly through the sixteenth 

century, usually against the French. 

Even when not directly involved, Philip 

II Hapsburg, king of Spain and the rest of 

the Hapsburg lands, which encompassed 

Austria, the Netherlands and the Holy 

Roman Empire, would siphon off money 

from Spain to fund wars in other parts 

of his kingdom.To make the situation 

worse, this inflation made ships far more 

expensive for Spain. Since so much silver 

and gold had to be exported to Europe 

from America by the Spanish fleet, a 

strong navy was incredibly important. 

But the fleet was incredibly expensive 

for the Spanish and thus they were open 

to raids, both by privateers and other 

countries. Sir Francis Drake alone stole 

fifteen tons of silver in 1571- 1573 and 

numerous Spanish coins, worth over 

twenty-five million dollars. This piracy 

significantly damaged Spain, who 

needed the constant supply of Silver for 

their coinage. 

The influx of precious metals proved a 

disaster for Spain. The Spanish Empire 

went bankrupt several times in the 

sixteenth century: 1557, 1560, 1576 and 

1596 all saw Spain declare bankruptcy. 

By 1600, Spain had amassed a debt of 

over 85 million ducats, whereas their 

annual income was only just under ten 

million. Spain was in economic turmoil, 

with the American bullion being used 

as loans to Genoese merchants, who soon 

had great control over the economy of 

Spain. 

The Empire could still maintain itself if 

the only economic issue were inflation. 

However, other problems furthered 

the poor economic situation. Much of 

Spain’s manufacturing was done by 

the artisan classes of the Jews and the 

Moriscos. However, both these classes 

were expelled from Spain, the Jews 

in 1492 and the Moriscos in 1609, 

and as such, Spain became incredibly 

dependent on foreign manufactured 

goods, which, due to their high inflation 

rates, became very expensive for them. 

The Spanish Empire did survive all this, 

however. Despite the pirate raids and 

the foreign wars, the huge inflation and 

the lack of manufacturing, the Spanish 

Empire saw a recovery in the eighteenth 

century, gaining lands in India and 

stabilising their economy 

The empire really started to face 

difficulties in the early nineteenth 

century, when the colonies in the New 

World began seeking independence. But 

despite this resurgence, the problems 

caused by the silver and gold were still 

deep wounds for the Spanish Empire. 

The debt and expensive military 

upkeep led the Empire to defeat in wars, 

reducing their European territories, 

losing valuable areas such as Naples 

and the Netherlands. By no means were 

these wounds caused by the silver and 

gold fatal, but they were still a disaster, 

the beginning of a spiral from which 

Spain could not escape. ƒ 

________________________________ 

A TURN FOR THE WORST - WHY 

SPAIN SHOULD GO BACK TO GOLD 

The impression given in this article is 

that inflation and deflation under a 

gold standard are driven by the supply 

of gold or silver. 

The housing boom experienced by the 

Spanish from 2002 onwards was driven 

partly by high demand driven by the 

fundamentals. However, the ECB’s low 

rate policy drove speculative booms in 

housing. The results can now be seen. 

Spain should learn from Austrian 

School theorists like Ludwig von 

Mises and Friedrick Hayek that a fiat 

currency can lead to serious problems 

when the central bank feels like going 

on a printing spree. 

FINANCE & MARKETS 

Perpetually changing and subsequently altering our daily lives in one way or another, the financial sphere 

holds a prodigious influence over society and societal practices. 

Yet, many don’t take notice of this factor of preeminent importance due to its seeming lack of relevance to daily life. 

My personal interest in the topic lies within this general consensus of disinterest, as I have become intrigued in its 

news and relevancy over the past few years. Looking at specific markets such as commodities, manufacturing and 

pharmaceuticals as well as the future outlook for our natural resources, I hope you’ll find our writers have portrayed 

a brief introduction to the world of business as well as the future of Britain, encouraging you to further explore this 

area of the world economy. 

Lewis Bizaoui, Section Editor 

40 

41


Is Silver a 

safe haven for 

investors? 

Lewis Bizaoui 

For thousands of years, 

silver has been traded and 

considered to be a viable 

store of value. Silver was 

replaced as legal tender 

by gold, when the gold 

standard replaced the 

silver standard in 1935. 

Therefore, its sole modern purpose 

is manufacturing, as well as being 

traded as a commodity. The price, 

which is driven by the usual factors 

such as consumer speculation, supply 

and demand is relatively volatile when 

compared to its alternatives. 

However, long term it seems to be a good 

investment when one considers that its 

nominal value in the marketplace has 

tripled over the past nine years. This is 

mainly due to its huge demand within 

retail and manufacturing. Silver is not 

Could silver be safe? 

only used in jewellery: it is also used for 

components in photovoltaic cells and in 

medical products, due to its antibacterial 

properties. When one considers its wide 

use, one starts to understand the scope 

of demand for this product, despite its 

marginal market size when compared 

with the likes of Gold. 

Consequently, for the investor looking 

for a long-term upward trend, who is 

willing to ignore the constant shifts in 

market value, silver is a good option. 

Furthermore, with gold prices so high, 

one can purchase a much larger volume 

of silver product for the same cost as a 

relatively insignificant volume of gold. 

This too adds to the appeal of silver as 

the ‘poor man’s gold’. 

Yet, dispute this ‘long term’ safety, 

Silver has been subject to colossal 

scandals throughout its history. In the 

late twentieth century, the infamous 

Hunt brothers gave birth to what is 

known as ‘Silver Thursday’. Billionaire 

boys who seemed to consider themselves 

kings of the stock market decided to 

accumulate a total market share of one 

third of all non-governmentally owned 

silver, in turn cornering the market 

due to the lack of available product 

and influencing a spike in prices. 

Their initial investment soared 712%, 

catapulting them into the exclusive club 

of multibillionaires. Despite this initial 

huge success, once market regulations 

were changed and regulations were 

placed on the trade of silver prices 

plummeted, this time due to consumer 

speculation leading to the immediate 

loss of their overnight fortune. 

Almost crippling the entire 

American investment banking system 

singlehandedly, unable to pay back 

debts amassing to billions of dollars, the 

Hunts certainly had a major impact on 

the silver market. It is this uncertainty 

of demand and huge volatility that 

still detracts investors from trusting 

this commodity to hold its value with 

minimal risk. 

Therefore, although it may be a viable 

option unfortunately its history goes 

against the possibility of ‘safety’. With 

fewer and fewer options to consider 

following the crippling collapse of 

the financial markets in 2008, we are 

still searching for the new safe haven 

commodity that we can all trust and call 

our best friend. I predict this search to 

be unfruitful. ƒ 

Pfizer and 

AstraZeneca – 

The infamous 

takeover that 

never was 

James Fairley 

Whilst Pfizer and 

AstraZeneca may not be 

household names, the 

planned takeover, by Pfizer, 

of AstraZeneca, was widely 

discussed through many 

different media platforms. 

This takeover would have seen the 

creation of the world’s biggest drug 

company, which would have seen 

Pfizer and AstraZeneca controlling the 

pharmaceutical market, a market which 

is valued at around $300 billion a year, 

and is set to increase in value to around 

$400 billion in the next three years. A 

terrifying prospect indeed. 

For Pfizer, AstraZeneca was attractive 

due to its experimental immune 

cancer therapy drug, which has been 

estimated to help raise AstraZeneca’s 

sales by seventy-five percent, to around 

$45billion. Moreover, certain tax 

laws mean that, with AstraZeneca’s 

headquarters being in London, if 

New York based Pfizer completed the 

merger, they could move the official 

headquarters to London, where they 

would have to pay a lower tax rate. So, 

what went wrong? Why was there such 

an ‘epic fail’? 

This merger fell apart because the 

price offered for AstraZeneca by Pfizer 

was too low. In order to complete the 

merger, Pfizer had to offer a valuation 

of AstraZeneca, using a value-per-share 

evaluation of AstraZeneca’s stocks. At 

first, things proceeded as they normally 

do in a merger, with Pfizer offering at 

first low, and then increasing valuations 

for AstraZeneca. However, as AstraZeneca 

refused the offers, and as the price rose 

and rose, Pfizer became less confident, 

their valuations became less frequent, 

and they started to backtrack slightly. 

Finally, after offering a value per share 

at around £50, they made a final bid at 

£55 per share, which values the company 

overall at around £69-70 billion. 

AstraZeneca, who were demanding a 

bid of around £74 billion, commented 

that this valuation was not enough, with 

their market capitalization of around 

£55 billion. Although the board at 

AstraZeneca were not comfortable with 

this bid, some shareholders wanted 

AstraZeneca to complete the deal, with 

many, such as the AXA Group, calling 

for the board to pass the decision onto 

shareholders with a vote to decide the 

outcome of the merger. However, there 

was significant support from many 

shareholders for the board’s decision 

with notably the largest shareholder, 

BlackRock, supporting AstraZeneca. 

So, the merger fell apart. So what does 

this actually mean for the UK? Primarily, 

the merger would have created many 

much needed job opportunities for the 

UK, which at the moment has relatively 

high unemployment of around 2.16 

million people (ILO). With this merger, 

a larger pharmaceutical company 

would have been created, and with this 

expansion, more people would have been 

needed to complete more jobs, leading to 

an increase in job opportunities. 

However, there was worry amongst some 

that Pfizer would relocate most of the 

work back to the States, and instead 

use the UK-based AstraZeneca in order 

to reduce their tax bill. Therefore, this 

could have in fact lead to a reduction 

in available jobs as Pfizer closed down 

valuable research and development sites 

in the UK. 

There was also a very significant 

political angle to the takeover. All three 

political parties were concerned about 

the takeover, notably this impact on 

jobs, and the effect on the much needed 

investment in research and development 

in the UK There is a significant lack 

of investment into the R&D industry 

in the U.K., and if Pfizer were to move 

AstraZeneca’s facilities away from 

the UK, this would have an extremely 

detrimental effect on the already lacking 

R&D industry in the UK. 

Finally, there was worry that, due to the 

magnitude of this takeover (the largest 

takeover in British history), there were 

not enough checks and balances in place 

to help protect the British interest, 

particularly since one of the drivers of 

the deal was the reduced tax rate that 

the company would have to pay. 

Although there has been talk of a renegotiation, 

with many shareholders 

encouraging AstraZeneca to reconsider 

the proposal in the long run, British 

law means that Pfizer cannot make 

another merger offer for at least six 

months. Therefore in the short run, we 

can expect little news of this merger, 

but we can expect significant pressure 

on AstraZeneca to achieve the ambitious 

performance targets it has set for itself 

in defence. ƒ 

Hit the road, 

Frack - and 

don’t you come 

back 

James Acomb 

Surrey is next on the ‘frack 

list’. Is fracking worth the 

fuss? 

Fracking is no doubt the most 

controversial technique to extract 

energy today. Fracking is the technique 

of drilling down thousands of metres 

into the Earth’s crust and injecting a 

high-pressure mixture of chemicals as 

well as gallons of water that fracture 

the rock to release the gas. In France 

it is banned, in the UK there has been 

large opposition but the US are one of 

42 

43


the most active users of shale gas in the 

world. 

In America it has, to an extent been 

successful, and since the 1970s there 

has been a significant increase in the 

growth of the fracking industry, with it 

now being worth forty percent of their 

Natural Gas Production. For example, 

Consol Energy based in the US shut 

down five coal mines to concentrate on 

the use of shale gas production in West 

Virginia. There are 650 trillion cubic 

feet of shale gas reserves in America. 

It definitely is a way forward but is it 

the only way? The Global Sustainable 

Institute, based at Anglia Ruskin 

University, states that the UK only has 

5.2 years left of oil reserves and three 

years of gas reserves. This means we 

will have to rely on Norway, Qatar and 

Russia for oil and gas in the future. 

In the North Sea, Britain’s oil and 

gas fields are declining fast. By 2025, 

production of oil and gas will fall from 

1.7 to 1.2 million barrels per day. In the 

long term, Britain will have to consider 

alternatives. 

Fracking is not popular with the media. 

In America there have been reports of 

polluted water supplies, opponents have 

blamed fracking for earthquake tremors 

in Blackpool 2011, some scientists 

Could this be the future for the rolling hills of Surrey? 

claim that 260 chemical released in 

fracking are carcinogenic. There are also 

fears that the energy will be sold to the 

European market as exports rather than 

being used domestically. In Balcombe, 

West Sussex, there was considerable 

opposition at the fracking site, with 

protestors camping outside, claiming 

the water supply will be polluted. A 

year on, there is no evidence to support 

this claim. 

Reports from the British Geological 

Survey show that although the areas of 

proposed fracking are large (the total 

is 1,300 trillion cubic feet) only one 

tenth actually contain recoverable gas. 

However, this tenth is the equivalent 

of a century of North Sea Gas supply. 

Another advantage of using fracking is 

that it could attract £3.7 billion per year 

of investment along with 74,000 jobs. 

The government has now said it could 

represent a huge part of our energy 

supply, meaning we can keep up with 

demand and the global energy crisis. 

After the latest BGS report, the Weald 

Basin is the next area companies want 

to start drilling for gas, so Surrey is set 

to be fracked. Some other areas which 

have seen fracking have include Dorset, 

Sussex, Hampshire, and Lancashire ( 

IGas drill here with a future venture 

in East Midlands with GDF Suez who 

will invest £30 million when they 

commence drilling in 2015 after permits 

are given). The Weald Basin contains 4.4 

billion barrels of shale gas but further 

investigations are needed as only one 

percent might be extracted due to the 

shale rock not being mature enough. 

However, the BGS report should be 

taken with caution. Fracking is another 

way to ‘drill for dirty fossil fuels’ and 

according to Friends Of The Earth 

what is really needed is new ‘renewable 

energy solutions to help UK’s energy 

challenge’. Renewable Energy has to be 

the long term goal but fracking could be 

the short term solution. The government 

has three years before our gas reserves 

run out to sort out fracking, and its 

community opposition. 

So would you like drilling to occur 

outside your house? Would £820,000 

of compensation to your community (as 

well as one percent of profits) persuade 

you to allow it in your back garden? 

Unfortunately for those of us who 

fear the environmental and aesthetic 

consequences, it seems we may not have 

a choice. ƒ 

Does HWM 

Aston Martin 

have an 

independent 

future? 

Lewis Bizaoui 

Bloomberg has suggested 

that Aston Martin’s 

independence acts as a 

hindrance rather than 

being advantageous to its 

marketing model. 

Aston Martin DB9 

With a bright future ahead of the 

firm due to increased research and 

development within the sphere of hybrid 

technologies for its models such as the 

famous DB9, one would expect Aston 

Martin to be barely keeping its head 

above the surface of the tempestuous 

waters that are the motor vehicle 

markets. 

However, it seems that Aston has 

missed the ‘green’ boat with producers 

such as Tesla expanding globally and 

surpassing Aston Martin in orders 

by the thousands. Furthermore, with 

rival supercar producers shaping their 

businesses to satisfy growing demand in 

the east, it seems Aston’s business model 

is simply too rigid for this market. 

It does not help that Aston stands alone 

without funding from larger ‘father’ 

corporations, such as FiatSPA and 

Volkswagen. The only option for a standalone 

producer is to rely on increasing 

debt. ‘Borrow’ the way out seems to be 

the solution for Aston’s head honchos. 

What does that mean for the consumer? 

In the short term, we should expect 

increasing vehicle prices. Yet, in the 

long term, developments in vehicle 

production and cost efficiency should 

lead to more competitive pricing. Also, 

with the new eco-friendly Aston Martin 

vehicle, continual costs such as petrol 

consumption and congestion charges 

will also fall, in turn hopefully launching 

Aston Martin back into the big leagues. 

The key word in that previous phrase is 

‘hopefully’. 

It seems as if Aston Martin is relying 

on a huge consumer reaction to a 

relatively small alteration to their 

product, with CEO Dr. Bez claiming 

‘Despite challenging market conditions 

the company has increased its research, 

development and investment activity’, 

following a recent technology sharing 

deal with German based Daimler. 

Moreover, along with this ‘hope’ comes 

colossal debt and a poor credit rating. 

Many argue that instead of this risky 

route into the future alone, the company 

desperately needs an experienced, wellresourced 

firm to become a majority 

shareholder in order for HWM to absorb 

potential losses and move forward. 

This would, indeed, potentially be 

detrimental to the British economy as it 

would most likely result in production 

moving out of Gaydon in England, 

causing a massive drop in employment 

opportunities due to the almost two 

thousand British people AM employs. 

Although that number doesn’t sound 

dramatic, due to its specificity of 

location, the population of Gaydon 

would be in serious trouble, with much 

of the local community employed 

at the factory. Britain needs to be 

moving in a positive direction in terms 

of employment opportunities and 

following the unsuccessful takeover of 

AstraZeneca by Pfizer, there is obviously 

much opposition to the net leakage of 

investment within the UK. 

HWM Aston Martin needs to seriously 

reevaluate its business model and image. 

Currently, with ties to luxury and Bond, 

their consumer loyalty and desirability 

should be high. Instead of aiming to 

lower pricing and make the vehicles 

more available to all consumers (shown 

when their small city car, the Cygnet 

was released), they should emphasise 

their invaluable brand image to new 

heights, following in the footsteps of the 

impressing One-77. Keep it British, keep 

it raw and keep it luxurious. ƒ 

44 

45

SOCIETY 

The world around us is changing incredibly rapidly, with new technology being produced virtually 

yearly, new discoveries weekly, and with it, the way we, as humans, is having to change. 

For instance, as I am writing this, merely this week we have discovered a diamond in space the size of Earth, an 

“unfeelability” cloak has been invented, and scientists have simulated time travel using photons. Society as whole 

is affected by these developments, and must be incorporated into many different areas – The government must 

debate some new ideas and plans, religion is changing and becoming seemingly less influential, and the many of the 

things that we do to enjoy ourselves may not have existed this time last century. 

Society is one of the few things that people cannot escape. By definition, society involves all the people in a ‘more 

or less ordered community’. The things involved are not limited, and indeed there are many controversies that fall 

into it, and is where the infamous crossover between religion, science, and politics lies. There may be no right or 

wrong answer; it is all up to your own personal opinion. But society will affect you, it is (in my opinion), leading 

in the right direction, towards a cleaner, greener, less restricted future. However, I invite you to make up your own 

mind about many of the issues discussed herein. As the author Henry David Thoreau summed up, ‘What is the use 

of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?’ 

James Wheeler, Section Editor 

Are we too 

reliant on the 

Internet? 

James Wheeler 

Nowadays in the world 

of smartphones, ipads, 

laptops, and many more 

other internet-connected 

devices, it is difficult 

to avoid the use of the 

internet virtually daily. 

Studies have shown that Brits spend 

forty-three hours – almost two whole 

days – online every month. Surely this 

is too much? 

The internet is clea rly a wonderful 

invention. Smartphones again have 

changed the way we live – now we have 

vast amounts of information in our 

pockets, whether it be the BBC News and 

Wikipedia, or Snapchat and Instagram. 

You just need to get on a tube during 

rush hour to see how many people are 

on their phones at any one time: it is 

simply accepted that you cannot have 

a conversation with anyone else, as 

people are engrossed in their screens. 

There are huge benefits to having this 

sort of information at your fingertips: 

the football can be quickly checked, 

any arguments can be (relatively) easily 

settled, and you can easily keep in touch 

with friends across the world. 

However, this comes at a cost – it seems 

that real, face to face conversations have 

been declining. It is certainly a sad 

state of affairs to see a group of people 

together, but not actually talking to 

each other, prioritising their phones. 

The fact that families have had to resort 

to banning phones from the dinner table 

indicates a serious, widespread problem. 

But it’s not just phones. Virtually 

everything can be controlled remotely 

nowadays, and one thing going wrong, 

one experienced hacker, and there can 

be catastrophic results. Watchdogs, a 

recent game by Ubisoft, has picked up 

on this: as Aiden Pearce, the protagonist, 

you can control anything connected to 

the Chicago ctOS (Central Operating 

System), giving you the ability to 

control traffic lights, hack ATMs, or 

steal all the information you could ever 

want about a person. Although only a 

game, the developers have made sure 

that everything that you can do in the 

game can be achieved in real life with 

the right equipment, skills, and a bit 

of time. It seems like only a matter of 

time until someone manages to use the 

interconnectivity of, well, everything, 

and who can exploit it in any way they 

please. 

But the benefits of the internet and 

interconnectivity of data cannot 

be argued against. Productivity has 

improved tenfold; jobs have been 

created which were previously hadn’t 

existed; and globalisation has meant 

that businesses, such as Amazon, have 

reached sizes which could never have 

been even dreamed of before the internet 

– Amazon makes $83,000-worth of sales 

every minute. Furthermore, information 

can be shared virtually instantly to 

anyone in the world; the lives of millions 

of students worldwide have been easier 

due to Google and Wikipedia, and the 

days of trawling through pages and 

pages of books for a quote are over. 

Even simple things such as online 

banking have saved time and money, and 

have enabled millions of people across 

Africa and other third world countries 

to set up bank accounts, where the 

money they have earned is safe. 

In reality, the internet has benefitted 

virtually everyone, both in the 

developed and developing worlds. It has 

revolutionised many, if not most, of the 

small daily acts we do, and it is virtually 

inescapable in the UK. However, we, as 

a society, are in danger of becoming 

addicted to our phones (especially 

among teenagers) and to the internet, 

and we need to realise that phones are 

no replacement for actual face-to-face 

contact. ƒ 

A Changing 

Music Industry 

Sam Clarke 

Guildford is a record 

collector’s dream. Dusty 

copiers of yesterday’s hits, 

misses and just about 

everything in between can 

be acquired, second hand, 

for between 50p and £500. 

Ben’s Collectors Records, one such 

retailer, is jam-packed every weekend 

with enthusiasts of all ages, rummaging 

in the boxes for that elusive copy of 

Rubber Soul or, in the case of one of 

my friends, Marvin Gaye’s Love Songs. 

That music has changed over the past 

thirty years is a given. Few could have 

foreseen the impact of the internet on 

an industry that was once dominated 

by bloated record companies. The 

differences, however, run deeper than 

this. 

We have not only changed how we 

purchase and listen to music but also the 

way we react to it, the way we appreciate 

it and the way we let it impact our lives. 

I’ll begin in East Greenwich, on the 

21st June 2014, in block U10 of the O2 

46 

47

SOCIETY 

Arena. On stage was perhaps one of the 

most famous bands of the seventies, The 

Eagles. A beautiful acoustic rendition of 

Saturday Night had just been met with 

rapturous applause and Glenn Frey, one 

of the band members, was introducing 

the next song. Suddenly, I was hit with 

a realisation. No modern equivalent of 

The Eagles exists. Of course many bands 

have tried to copy them stylistically, 

but the dinosaur bands of the seventies 

and eighties, with record sales in the 

tens of millions, are a thing of the past. 

The most recent to ship more than ten 

million copies in the US was Adele’s 21 

in 2011. One has to look back to 1997 to 

Shania Twain to find the last album to 

sell over fifteen million copies. 

The internet is largely responsible for 

this rapid change. Record companies 

used to be able to make huge profits 

by investing in a number of bands and 

peddling a narrow range of genres. 

Nowadays, anyone can make and 

distribute their own music through 

programs such as FL Studio and Logic 

Pro. Since the early 2000s, hundreds 

of new styles have emerged. Ever since 

Aphex Twin’s experiments with electro 

in the early nineties, genre after genre 

has emerged. House music, a style 

originating in America in the 1980s, 

gained popularity as the works of 

new artists began to spread. Dubstep, 

another electronic style, became 

popular in the early/mid 2000s. Glitch 

hop, electroswing, trap and hundreds of 

other styles have taken off within the 

last twenty years. And where new styles 

meet old classics, mash-ups and remixes 

provide interesting listening. 

This diversification has been a problem 

for many record labels. Artists, no longer 

compelled by record labels to stay safely 

within popularity’s boundaries, are 

freer to experiment. Listeners find a 

style they like, a niche is created and 

the genre stays. Whereas in the 1980s 

electro fans listened to electro, anyone 

with an internet connection can find, 

sample and enjoy the almost infinite 

sub-genres. Producing ‘electronic music’ 

is no longer viable, since ‘electronic 

music’ no longer exists as a single genre. 

Listeners are spread out; more artists 

produce, but their music is less listened 

to. Glitch Hop Community, a YouTube 

channel which uploads different artists’ 

songs, releases a new track almost daily. 

Most go a year without passing 10,000 

views. A record company would not 

be able to sign such artists profitably 

(besides, many artists offer free 

downloads of their work). 

And yet, music is still made and paid 

for by listeners. Bandcamp, a website 

that allows artists to charge for songs 

without signing to a label, has made 

$2.8 million for artists in the last thirty 

days. It also provides real time sales and 

analytics data. When a package like this 

is offered for free to artists, it’s not hard 

to see why record labels are falling out 

of favour. 

The way music is released has changed. 

Albums used to be the mainstream, 

with singles serving more as samples 

for full works. Nowadays, the opposite 

is true. Streaming services and 

abundant smartphones have made it 

a lot easier to pick out single songs. 

Most electronic artists now release EPs 

and LPs. Whole albums have become 

the exception instead of the rule, 

certainly with newer styles (see chart). 

Indie and rock bands have continued to 

release albums. However, they are less 

structured. It’s very hard to find works 

with a progressive structure and song 

order such as Pink Floyd’s Dark Side 

Of The Moon or The Who’s Tommy. For 

all intents and purposes, mainstream 

albums have become collections of 

singles and LPs. 

The way artists release music has 

changed dramatically. Have our attitudes 

towards it changed? 

I jump now to Sweden, to a small, stuffy 

room somewhere in Stockholm, the 

capital. Stacks of servers with blinking 

lights whir gently day and night. Inside 

this building a revolution is happening, 

as users connect to The Pirate Bay to 

download just about any type of digital 

content imaginable for free. 

Since music existed, people have always 

tried to listen to it without paying, and 

piracy has made it easier than ever. 

Illegally downloading or ‘torrenting’ 

music is a popular way to get the latest 

tracks for free, particularly among cashstrapped 

teens. Between January and 

June 2012, ninety-seven million torrents 

were shared in the US alone (Statista, 

2014). This figure is set to increase, 

as faster internet speeds mean whole 

movies can be downloaded in minutes. 

Piracy is a controversial topic, not least 

because it takes income directly from 

artists and producers. It’s been attacked 

by publishers, record companies and 

governments alike for destroying 

creativity and discouraging talent. 

Piracy is a crime and its continued 

proliferation is certain to have 

detrimental impacts on music and film. 

That said, piracy has had some benefits. 

The once bloated record labels of 

yesteryear have seen their profits 

tumble by sixty-four percent from their 

peak in 1999 (Degusta, 2011). They have 

been forced to trim up or risk going out 

of business. This has made them more 

sensitive to changes in trends and tastes. 

Large record companies now produce a 

wider range of popular styles. Newer 

labels release newer genres. People have 

more variety to listen to. 

Artists and producers have since tried 

to reduce piracy themselves. So far, they 

have been successful. When Radiohead 

released In Rainbows in 2008, they 

allowed fans to pay their own price. 

Three weeks later, the album had 

rocketed to number one in the UK and 

the US. A report by Warner/Chappell, 

Radiohead’s label, claimed that “the 

publisher was able to generate far more 

money for both themselves and the band 

than would have been possible under the 

traditional system.” Smaller bands, who 

lack the funds to pursue such a scheme, 

have released songs directly onto piracy 

websites, along with a plea to purchase 

the song legally as well. Bandcamp 

advertises specifically on torrent sites, 

and can cite thousands of users who 

ended up paying for music they were 

about to download for free. 

That people are willing to pay for 

something they could easily get for free 

is surprising. It also highlights how our 

relationship with artists has changed. 

Constant connectivity means fans 

feel closer than ever to their favourite 

singer or band. Thus, they are willing 

to spend their money supporting them. 

Governments and record labels have 

failed to control piracy because people 

don’t sympathise with them. Music is no 

longer just a thing people listen to. It 

has become a relationship between fans 

and artists. 

Ben’s shuts at 6:00pm. At the right time 

of year, the sunlight streams through 

the dusty windows as the last punters 

make their purchases. The old posters 

and sleeves which cover the walls and 

ceilings are briefly illuminated. In this 

light, their age becomes apparent, their 

curling edges and bleached colours take 

on an almost wistful sheen. In many 

ways, they signal the end of an era 

in which superstars and mega-labels 

dominated music. Further down the 

street, the same setting sun lights up 

another shop. Inside, the rays reflect 

off the freshly wrapped CDs and vinyls 

of this year’s latest releases. The music 

industry has changed dramatically. 

Styles and genres have come and gone. 

Music continues to push the boundaries 

of creativity and ingenuity in a way few 

other art forms can. ƒ 

Will Baby 

George ever sit 

on the throne? 

Felix Clarke 

The popularity of the 

British monarchy is the 

highest it has been for 

generations. 

In recent years, the public has been 

swept up in royal mania first for the 

royal wedding, then for the Queen’s 

diamond jubilee and then again for 

the birth of Prince George. According 

to recent polling, three quarters of 

Britons support the monarchy. Contrast 

this situation with other European 

monarchies, and one understandably 

feels confident of the health of our 

monarchy. The abdication of Juan 

Carlos has reignited the case for 

republicanism in Spain, with 51% of 

Spaniards now supporting a referendum. 

In this light, there seems to be no reason 

why our monarchy should not remain in 

good health sixty years or so from now, 

when the now nearly one-year-old Prince 

George would come to the throne. 

Revellers brave the rain for hours 

to catch a glimpse of the Queen at 

her Diamond Jubilee pageant, 2012. 

However, this sustained, and indeed 

resurgent, popularity of the monarchy 

owes itself to one individual: Queen 

Elizabeth II is eighty-eight years old and 

not getting any younger. Elizabeth is 

warmly viewed as a distant, yet caring, 

matriarch. The Queen has a spotless 

record and, after sixty years of reign, 

represents continuity and stability – she 

will be a very tough act to follow indeed. 

Soon after Charles becomes King, the 

monarchy will start to look vulnerable. 

The Queen’s political reticence has been 

crucial in maintaining her popularity: 

Elizabeth has taken great care never to be 

seen to be in conflict with her ministers. 

Each year the Queen dutifully reads out 

her speech to parliament, with which 

she must have sometimes profoundly 

disagreed, without a hint of dissent. 

Prince Charles, on the other hand, is 

rightly seen as politically meddling, 

far too easily overcome by the urge to 

speak his mind. Charles has spoken out 

on countless political issues, criticising 

Tony Blair’s plans to ban fox-hunting, 

to name one example. Charles once 

even referred to the Chinese leaders 

as ‘appalling old waxworks’; when one 

considers that the Queen was recently 

48 

49

SOCIETY 

called upon to meet the Chinese 

premier on his official visit to the UK, 

it is easy to see how Charles’s previous 

crass outbursts will cause problems 

when he is King. The Prince is known 

to often write long, disapproving letters 

to ministers and even hold private 

meetings with members of government. 

In their times as Prime Minister, 

both Margaret Thatcher and Tony 

Blair complained to the Queen that 

Charles’s numerous interventions 

were ‘becoming unhelpful’. Charles’s 

stubborn approach in this domain could 

not be more different from the Queen’s 

universally popular political aloofness. 

As prince, Charles’s comments have 

irritated politicians and the public, 

and he shows no signs of reining them 

in as King, pledging not to be ‘confined 

to cutting ribbons’. An unelected head 

of state must be apolitical; otherwise he 

would quickly become viewed by the 

British public as just another resented 

politician. 

Queen Elizabeth is removed from 

the close scrutiny of the media and is 

surrounded by a fond mystique. The 

Queen’s public image is always pristine: 

over the whole course of her sixty-year 

reign, she has never once put a foot 

wrong. Charles, on the other hand, is 

a known adulterer and husband of a 

divorcee – making him , among other 

things, hardly the ideal candidate to 

lead the Church of England. Charles’s 

association with the Saudi royal family, 

one of the most brutal autocratic regimes 

in the world, shows, if nothing else, 

that he has a lack of regard for his own 

public image which may prove fatal as 

King. The contrast between Elizabeth’s 

grandmotherly image and Charles’s 

tainted public perception is huge. 

Elizabeth is also admired for her 

perceived thrift: the Queen is a warbaby 

who knows the value of money. 

This image is invaluable in quelling 

public criticism of royal extravagance. 

This image, however, is one that the 

next generation of royals sadly cannot 

be said to share. Charles and Camilla 

were widely criticised for their overly 

extravagant renovation of Clarence 

House in 2002 and the younger royals 

are known to take luxury summer 

holidays, at the expense of the tax payer. 

The damage of perceived extravagance 

to the popularity of a monarch was 

dramatically shown in Spain in 2012. 

King Juan Carlos had previously been 

lauded for dismantling Francoism in 

favour of democracy and later heroically 

using his power as Commander-in-chief 

of the armed forces to stop a coup 

attempt in 1981. However, the King’s 

immense popularity took a permanent 

blow when, in the middle of Spain’s 

painful recession, he went on a lavish 

Prince Charles in traditional Saudi dress for a sword dance with the Saudi 

royal family in February this year. 

elephant hunt in Botswana. So great was 

the public outrage that Juan Carlos was 

eventually forced to apologise. 

The length of Elizabeth’s reign 

reinforces the sense of continuity and 

stability through generations, on which 

the monarchy depends. Any successor 

to the Queen will feel unfamiliar: after 

sixty years of Queen Elizabeth, anyone 

else on the throne would be an alien. 

The hand-over of the crown to the 

Queen’s successor will create damaging 

instability and immediately fan the 

embers of a long-absent republican 

debate. Indeed, despite William and 

Catherine’s immensely popular recent 

Australian tour, the Australian and 

Canadian governments have announced 

all but officially that they intend to 

move to republicanism after Queen 

Elizabeth’s death. The other thirteen 

overseas Commonwealth realms are sure 

to follow. 

Monarchy already seems an outdated 

concept. Britain is a hugely more 

egalitarian society than a hundred years 

ago. Meritocracy is now held up by 

many as a fundamental British value, 

making hereditary power unpalatable. 

The monarchy is an old linchpin of the 

traditional class system whose gradual 

dismantling is welcomed by many. 

Most Britons now tolerate the political 

unpalatability of the monarchy because 

they like the current Queen, but once 

she is gone, they will be far less forgiving. 

Furthermore, the institutions 

constitutionally close to the monarchy 

are under fire. 

Reform of the House of Lords is an 

urgent need: the chamber is growing 

at a wildly unsustainable rate. Once 

reform of this part of our constitution 

begins, and visions of a more modern 

and democratic system are drawn up, 

the monarchy too will come under 

scrutiny. Once hereditary titles, for 

example, are abolished for Lords, the 

innately hereditary monarchy will seem 

even more out of place. As Britons 

become increasingly secularist, the 

current position of our head of state as 

the Supreme Governor of the Church of 

England looks evermore unsustainable. 

While Prince Charles has hinted that 

he could accept disestablishment of the 

Church by saying he would prefer to 

be known as ‘Defender of Faith’ rather 

than ‘Defender of the Faith’, once the 

constitutional role of the monarchy 

is confronted, the monarchy comes 

under an uncomfortable spotlight. The 

monarchy’s ties to these unfavoured 

institutions make its modernisation 

very challenging. 

While Britons may now see the monarchy 

as a symbol of our proud heritage, and 

a guarantee of national identity, it only 

takes a generation or two for public 

attitudes to reverse. One easily forgets 

that only one hundred years ago, Britain 

was a society which rejoiced at the onset 

of war and universal suffrage was still 

fourteen years away. British society 

is increasingly cosmopolitan, moving 

away from the kind of society easily 

represented by one figure head. 

On the other hand, as anti-political 

sentiment grows in the UK, the 

alternative to the monarchy looks 

steadily less appealing. Any referendum 

on the future of the monarchy is 

realistically bound to present the only 

alternative as an elected president. 

People in Britain already resent the 

influence of politicians in public life, so 

would be unaccepting of the idea of a 

political head of state. This aspect may 

be surprisingly successful in staving 

off republicanism for longer than 

otherwise, but can do nothing to turn 

the tide. 

The monarchy may be successful and 

popular now, but it will quickly begin 

to seem irrelevant to the British public, 

once the Queen has passed away. If it 

can maintain relevance, it will be no 

mean feat. The likelihood, however 

appears to be the opposite. ƒ 

Has urban redevelopment 

been a greater 

success in the 

US than the UK? 

Cameron Ballard 

Urban re-development is 

a phenomenon which has 

become more and more 

popular on a global scale. 

With the aim of improving the 

efficiency of land-use in deprived urban 

areas, urban re-development can bring 

prosperity to areas where crime and 

poor living standards ruined the lives of 

the locals. In fact, it occasionally occurs 

that areas of urban re-development 

can exceed the rest of the city, and 

can become a financial hub for trade 

and investment. The closest, but 

possibly most under-estimated example 

of urban re-development is Canary 

Wharf – arguably the current banking, 

legal and media centre of London, if 

not the UK. The shipping industry in 

this area of London began to decline 

and the ports were closed in 1980, 

leading to the creation of the London 

Docklands Development Corporation in 

1981, which acted as a means for the 

government to encourage and stimulate 

redevelopment in the area. 

High Line Street 

While it is often difficult to make 

comparisons between the US and the 

UK, due to much larger economic and 

physical size of the US, it is possible 

to compare success on a smaller scale, 

between two similar projects: The 

Barbican Estate in London and The 

Highline Project in New York. 

During World War II, many parts of 

London were devastated by bombing, 

including the area on which the 

Barbican Estate now stands. It was 

not, however, until the 1960s that the 

urban regeneration commenced. Nearly 

ten years later, in 1969, the building 

was completed, offering a home to four 

thousand people, living in 2,014 flats. 

Not only is the Barbican a residential 

area, but it is also Europe’s largest multiarts 

and conference venue, costing only 

£161 million to build; cheap considering 

this is equivalent to £400 million today. 

Even Her Majesty called the Estate “one 

of the wonders of the modern world” - so 

what’s the problem with it? 

Well, the most striking issue with 

the Barbican Estate is its Brutalist 

architecture. It takes only a five-second 

glance to appreciate that it is not as pretty 

as the Renaissance beauty of St Paul’s 

Cathedral. While a book should not be 

judged by its cover, some would argue 

that the Estate has acted as a scar on the 

City. Is this just a personal opinion? No, 

in 2003 the Barbican Centre was voted 

London’s ugliest building in a poll by 

Grey London. Furthermore, it’s not just 

the eyes, which hurt after looking at 

the Barbican, but prices of nearby areas 

have fallen. Due to the growing demand 

for housing in London, which has caused 

prices to rocket, the effect of this has 

been minimised significantly. Although 

it may look like it, the Barbican was 

not built as social housing, meaning 

that there was no intention of providing 

affordable housing, which is in much 

more demand today. A one-bedroom 

apartment in the Barbican could cost 

up to £850,000. So taking into account 

the eyesore on the City, not providing 

housing for low-income workers and 

50 

51

SOCIETY 

costing the equivalent to £400 million, 

has the Barbican Estate been a success? 

compared to other projects? 

Barbican Lake Terrace, near 

London. 

Compared to some disastrous projects 

such as the Hulme Crescents in 

Manchester (which were demolished due 

to their failure only nineteen years after 

construction), there is some weighting to 

support the advantages of the Barbican 

Estate. On the contrary there have been 

thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, 

of projects and schemes which have 

been much more successful, including 

the High Line Project. 

Although the High Line has not been 

entirely completed (the third and final 

phase is due to be finished by October), 

the success of the project is already 

evident. Originally a disused railway 

track, the High Line is an elevated, 

one-mile park in the bustling city of 

Manhattan. 

While the High Line is “non-economic 

infrastructure”, it does arguably improve 

the quality of life of those working and 

living in this part of Manhattan, and has 

been, arguably, a greater success than 

the Barbican Estate. 

The High Line cost close to $90 million 

(£54 million) overall, nearly an eighth 

of the cost of the Barbican Estate. 

While the Barbican Estate became a 

home for many workers in the area, the 

High Line created $2 billion in private 

investment surrounding the elevated 

park. Considering that the High Line 

occupies an area ten times the size of 

the Barbican Estate – that’s good value 

for money! While it is difficult to attach 

a monetary value to happiness and social 

benefits, it is most likely that people 

will find it easier to relax, meaning 

that productivity for local business 

should rise. Furthermore, the influx of 

tourists and visitors to the park mean 

that firms and businesses should see a 

rise in income, due to the multiplier 

effect, hence the reason for such a large 

sum of money being invested into the 

surrounding area. 

It would be inappropriate to make 

assumptions on the national effectiveness 

of urban regeneration in the US and the 

UK, based solely on these two projects. 

However, these projects took place in 

potentially, the countries’ most iconic 

and important cities, meaning that they 

should give an accurate image of the 

successfulness of urban regeneration 

elsewhere. 

For the mentioned reasons, the High 

Line has been far more successful than 

the Barbican Estate. However, that does 

not mean to say that the Barbican Estate 

has been a failure. Recently, the Barbican 

Estate has been drastically improved, 

with green areas being installed to 

improve the visual aesthetics. 

Despite the huge success of Canary 

Wharf, the majority of urban redevelopment, 

particularly in exindustrial 

cities such as Manchester 

and Liverpool, has involved large tower 

blocks, often referred to as “cradles of 

crime”, due to the high levels of criminal 

activity that they attract. 

Since the concept of the High Line is 

being copied elsewhere in the world, 

along with other successful projects 

throughout the United States, it must 

be concluded that urban re-development 

has been a greater success in the US 

than the UK. ƒ 

Should 

Politicians ‘Do 

God’? 

Will Cowie 

The issue of religion and 

politics is certainly a 

contentious one. 

On one side of the debate the religious 

peoples of the nation cry “Let us share 

our faith through the public sphere”. 

The atheists, à la Richard Dawkins, 

denounce religion as dangerous, a 

matter for autonomous individuals to 

make up their minds about in their own 

time, and certainly not an issue to be 

discussed in Westminster. Indeed, in an 

increasingly secular country, the urge to 

stop any form of religion from entering 

Westminster is strong. But I believe that 

there is a path through which politics 

and religion, like lion and lamb, could 

lie together. 

And indeed, the argument that all 

ideas proposed in Parliament should be 

discussed without any religious views 

encroaching is a deceptively simple one. 

It is very easy to think that, yes, our 

country and Parliament would be far 

fairer if the views of religious groups are 

left aside; that in our liberal democracy 

religion is not a matter worth bringing 

into the picture. I believe, however, that 

the secularisation of politics would be 

undemocratic. We have to remember 

that democracy is based upon consensus 

– we give each man and woman in the 

country a vote because we believe that 

their views are worth hearing. To deprive 

religious people of the ability to use that 

vote in favour of religious politicians or 

political parties and instead instruct 

that politics be determined by some sort 

of liberal morality and sense of debate 

does not make much sense in the context 

of the democratic nature of our country. 

It’s very easy to adopt the view, which is 

extremely prevalent at the moment, that 

religion is an ancient system, not fit for 

today’s standards – but the fact that 

over fifty percent of the UK population, 

according to the 2011 Census, would 

call themselves members of some kind 

of organised religion is, in democratic 

terms at least, testament against that 

fact. 

The issue with secularisation is that it 

contains an underlying assumption that 

the religious views which the people are 

espousing are inherently wrong. Take 

recent issues, like, say, the abortion 

debate. Attempts to try to secularise 

the debate – so that abortion should 

be determined based solely on medical 

advice and the idea of autonomy – does 

not provide a greater basis for discussion 

but is instead an underhand and subtle 

victory of the liberal worldview, 

because it rests upon the assumption 

that the religious view is in fact wrong 

and hence can be discarded. We cannot 

discuss pressing issues to our nation 

without considering religious views 

and values, especially given how many 

people do indeed live by such values. 

The secularisation of such debates is 

undemocratic; it deprives those religious 

people of a political voice. 

If we live in a truly democratic country, 

then secularisation just does not work. 

Depriving religious people the ability 

to express their own religious opinions 

through politics is a denial of the values 

Britain stands for. ƒ 

The Visible 

2012 Legacy 

James Acomb 

Two years ago this summer, 

it was London’s turn to put 

on a show of sport. 

The motto was ‘Inspire a Generation’ 

and was one of the main reasons that the 

International Olympic Committee (IOC) 

chose London rather than Paris. Jacques 

Rogge, head of the IOC at the time of 

London 2012 stated that London has 

‘created a legacy blueprint for future 

Games hosts’. The legacy included 

making two million more people in 

England become more active by the end 

of 2012. 

However in November 2013 the House of 

Lords Select Committee on the Olympic 

and Paralympic Legacy, reported 

saying that although the games were an 

‘outstanding success’, the legacy benefits 

‘are in danger of faltering’. It believed 

there was ‘little evidence’ of an increase 

in the number of people participating 

in sport and the economic benefits were 

unevenly distributed. According to the 

Government, the Olympics added almost 

ten billion to the UK Economy, although 

it created 31,000 new jobs, 15,000 were 

in London and the South East and only 

7,000 in the North East of England. 

There are concerns that this legacy may 

be faltering and claims in the report that 

little has changed but figures published 

in December 2013, by Sport England, 

showed that 15.5 million people in 

England play sport once a week every 

week, which is an increase in 1.5 million 

since 2004, when London won the bid. 

However, is this really a high enough 

increase for nearly ten years of work? 

In April 2012, the London Legacy 

Development Corporation (LLDC) 

was established for the intention of 

continuing the legacy programme. 

The former Athletes Village has been 

remodelled for domestic use and is now 

called ‘East Village’ with half the homes 

being bought by a Qatari Wealth Fund 

who are investing over half a billion 

pounds into the area. East Village has 

2,818 homes and just under half are 

affordable homes and has twenty-seven 

acres of public space. The first residents 

moved in November 2013. 

In addition, there will be a new digital 

quarter called ‘Here East’ which replaces 

the Olympic Press and Broadcast Centre. 

It will use the pre-existing connectivity 

and facilities. BT Sport is situated 

near “Here East” in an 80,000 square 

foot production hub. Loughborough 

University is planning a centre for a 

thousand postgraduates. Hopefully the 

area will be finished by 2018. 

The presence of some big name 

companies such as the Qatari Wealth 

Fund has attracted other investment 

into the area. In addition, £325 million 

has been spent transforming the park 

after the Games. Five thousand jobs were 

involved in transforming park with the 

encouraging businesses to grow, creating 

more jobs. By 2030, it is anticipated 

52 

53

SOCIETY 

that twenty thousand jobs will have 

been created, and the spin-off from this 

has been valued at £5 billion. London 

is a changing city and it’s too early to 

work out the benefits for fifteen years 

in the future. 

The Olympic Park was re-opened under 

the new name ‘Queen Elizabeth Park’ to 

which the public can enjoy 6.5 km of 

waterways, three new schools , 8,000- 

11,000 new homes, 257 acres of open 

space, an Energy Centre, 1000 parking 

spaces, together with two thousand 

events hosted per year along with five 

world class sporting arenas. The Lee 

Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre in 

the park will open by the end of June 

2014. The new Queen Elizabeth Park 

is 560 acres and Denis Hone, Chief 

Executive of LLDC stated, ‘We have 

created a magnificent park for London 

with beautiful parklands’. The LLDC 

estimate that by 2016, 9.3 million 

people will visit the park per year. 

The LLDC is also going to build five 

new neighbourhoods and also improve 

some existing areas around the park. 

These areas are designed to complement 

and extend the communities they are 

already in. An example of one of the 

neighbourhoods is Chobham Manor. 

This project will be co-developed 

between Taylor Wimpey and LLDC. 

Seventy-five percent of the housing will 

be family properties together with two 

nurseries and a walk-in health centre. 

By 2015 residents will start to move 

into 828 homes, of which a third will be 

affordable, and it will be completed by 

2020 including a new school. However, 

are there enough affordable homes? 

Chobham Manor is only proposing 

thirty-three percent and East Village 

fifty percent. Price houses for London 

have increased by twenty-nine percent 

and so people on low to middle incomes 

are finding it almost impossible to buy 

a home in London and this will become 

worse by the time they are completed. 

Surely the answer as a requirement is 

to have at least sixty percent of all new 

neighbourhoods should be affordable 

homes otherwise there is a real risk that 

the area may become housing for the 

rich. 

There are other neighbourhood areas 

such as East Wick, which will have 870 

new homes and Sweetwater which will 

have 650 homes. They will be situated 

on western edge. Sweetwater will have 

private gardens, communal green spaces 

along the Lea Navigation whereas 

East Wick will have a business and 

The London Olympic Swimming pool has recently opened to the public. 

commercial centre as it is situated near 

to Here East. However, at the moment 

no developers have signed contracts for 

these projects. Does this mean that they 

won’t be built by 2030? It does really 

appear despite the massive demand for 

homes in London, this part of the legacy 

is proceeding at a slower rate than 

people expected. 

In addition to working on neighbourhoods 

inside the Park, the LLDC have worked 

on projects around it. For example, 

Glasshouse Gardens will be a £1.3 

billion commercial and residential 

scheme. It will be completed by 2017, 

with up to three bedroom homes that 

have views facing the Stadium, Orbit 

and Aquatics Centre. In addition, a 

new twenty-six-acre development called 

Strand East will be built with 1,200 

homes and a 350 bedroom hotel. 

However, some of the housing will not be 

complete until 2017 and some areas not 

until 2030. Is this too long for people to 

wait for new housing areas? 

Finally, the LLDC are trying to make 

the area as sustainable as possible by 

2030 with key themes such as energy 

conservation, waste management, 

biodiversity and conservation, with 

over two thousand trees being planted 

and one hundred acres of bio-diverse 

habitat. 

Much has changed since 2012 although 

there have been numerous press 

complaints that the initial transformation 

of the park and its re-opening took too 

long and that whilst Chobham Manor 

has been started and the homes are on 

sale, much of the other neighbourhood 

areas and housing redevelopment have 

yet to be started. Given the demand 

for housing, it is surprising that more 

of the neighbourhoods have not been 

developed and the LLDC must watch 

carefully so that what appears to be a 

slow momentum is not lost entirely.. ƒ 

Is the UK a 

Christian 

country? 

Jonathan French 

In April 2014 David 

Cameron said that the UK 

is a Christian country and 

that we should be “more 

confident about our status 

as a Christian country”. 

These comments have sparked a new 

debate on this topic and prompted a letter 

to the Daily Telegraph by fifty prominent 

individuals including authors, eminent 

professors and scientists which said that 

this characterisation of Britain ‘fosters 

alienation and division in our society’. 

There are plenty of statistics which 

support this response. Church 

attendances have fallen steadily with the 

Church of England’s figures claiming 

that 800,000 people would have 

attended a service on a typical Sunday 

in 2012, half the numbers attending in 

1968. Furthermore, in the 2011 Census, 

only twenty percent of people described 

themselves as belonging to the Church 

of England, down from forty percent in 

1983. 

Mr Cameron’s claim seems to be 

weakened by the waning influence of 

Christianity on the laws in the UK. 

Laws relating to abortion and same-sex 

marriage in particular seem to oppose 

Christian teachings. These laws were 

introduced despite vocal opposition from 

religious groups. Laws in the UK are 

increasingly moving away from what is 

taught in the Bible and this can be seen 

as evidence of the declining influence of 

Christianity in this country. 

Christianity also seems to have a 

declining influence in society. It used to 

be the norm that Sunday would be a day 

of rest for the majority of the country 

with most shops being closed. However, 

this is not the case today: most shops 

remain open and life seems to carry on 

as normal. The increasing number of 

places of worship for other faiths in the 

UK would appear to symbolise how the 

UK is drifting away from Christianity. 

Immigration has resulted in a multitude 

of different faiths in the UK. While 

Christianity is still the largest faith by 

number, there are now over 3.3 million 

Muslims in the UK. This presents a clear 

case that Mr Cameron was going too far 

when he labelled the UK as a ‘Christian 

country’. 

However, this ignores the fact that there 

is an established Church in this country. 

Its bishops sit in the House of Lords; 

the Queen is supreme governor of the 

Church of England and holds the title 

Defender of the Faith. The UK has a vast 

Christian heritage and Christianity is 

intertwined with the UK constitution. 

Harry Cole, an agnostic journalist, wrote 

in The Spectator that it is impossible 

to deny the UK is a Christian country 

without attempting to ‘rewrite history 

and ignore our heritage’. 

The fact that fifty-nine percent of 

people in England and Wales described 

themselves as Christian in the 2011 

Census offers further confirmation that 

the UK is still a Christian country. Even 

though this was four million down on 

the 2001 figure, it is still a majority 

of UK residents who say that they are 

Christian. 

Yet the most convincing evidence that 

the UK is a Christian country lies not in 

how many people describe themselves as 

Christian but in the role of Christianity 

in society. School holidays around 

Christmas and Easter are there for 

Christian events. 

Christian principles are taught in 

nearly every school in the country. 

Parables such as the Good Samaritan 

which teach us to love our neighbours 

are still taught and are the bedrock 

of what people would describe as good 

and morally upstanding behaviour. The 

values taught by Christianity are valued 

enormously in our society. Atheists and 

Christians alike tend to aspire towards 

the same values of selflessness and 

doing good for others. This stems from 

Christian beliefs. 

Moreover, the fact that so many different 

religions can be followed freely in the 

UK displays the tolerance that is bred 

from Christian beliefs. Christianity has 

played a vital part in creating the free 

society which we enjoy today. 

In this letter to the Daily Telegraph, it 

was claimed that “We are a plural society 

with a range of perspectives, and we are 

a largely non-religious society”. This 

ignores the influence that Christianity 

has had on the UK throughout history. 

Christian beliefs have shaped the 

country that we live in today so Mr 

Cameron was justified in characterising 

the UK as a ‘Christian country’. Even in 

an age where tradition is unfashionable, 

we should look to our roots and realise 

that our identity and Christianity are 

inextricably linked. 

Our future being uncertain, now is 

about the right time to recognise that 

fact. ƒ 

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SOCIETY 

Can pro gaming 

be a real 

career? 

Sam Norman 

The current prize pool for 

the major competition, 

known as The International 

4, of popular computer 

game ‘Dota 2’ stands at 

over eight million dollars. 

When shared out, the winning team, of 

five people and a number of coaches, 

could stand to get over $500,000 each. 

This sum also does not include the 

large amounts earned from potential 

sponsorship, other competitions 

throughout the year, merchandising, 

online streaming of game play (George 

“HotshotGG” Georgallidis, a League of 

Legends player was earning over $2000 

per day simply by streaming on Twitch), 

Youtube channels and other potential 

revenue streams. It would seem that 

the winners of the Dota 2 International 

4 will be in line for earnings higher 

than ever before seen in the history of 

pro gaming, more commonly known as 

esports. 

There is evidently a lot of money in pro 

gaming. But that does not necessarily 

mean it is a viable career choice. A 

career needs some form of sustainability; 

it needs to be something you can do for 

your whole life. This sustainability does 

not seem to exist within pro gaming. 

A good gamer requires good reaction 

speeds. However, at the age of thirty, 

your reaction speeds begin to peak off. 

When your reaction speeds begin to 

slow, then you’re not as good at those 

quick reactions, to the other player who 

tosses a grenade as you turn the corner or 

the enemy team who decide to surprise 

attack and ‘gank’ you from behind the 

fog of war. While the difference between 

0.1 and 0.2 seconds may seem negligible 

to most, for the pro gamer, this could 

mean the difference between surviving 

and diving away, with a pro-as-heck 

escape, or dying and having to wait to 

respawn while the enemy capture and 

objective, take a tower or simply laugh 

at your noobiness. These reaction speeds 

are therefore crucial to the success of a 

pro gamer; when they are gone, they 

are going to be less successful, winning 

fewer tournaments and thus earning less 

money. The pro gamer thus has a limited 

period in which they could make money 

from their ability. 

But this is the same for all sportsmen, 

right? Yes, it is, but due to the size of 

these sports, there are places for the 

players to go – footballers can become 

coaches, managers or any number of 

positions within the sport. Pro gaming 

is a much smaller industry, and while 

there are coaches and managers, these 

positions are few and far between. Many 

gaming teams cannot afford to support 

themselves, let alone managers, coaches, 

PR managers, personal assistants, 

merchandise managers or masseuses. The 

opportunities that present themselves 

once the pro gamer has gotten too old to 

compete are limited, making it a career 

with very few options once you have 

stopped competing. 

However, it is perhaps just speculation 

to talk about what would happen 

‘after’ the careers of these gamers has 

ended as we simply do not have enough 

evidence. The pro gaming scene has not 

been around long and those that have 

retired seem to have found other jobs: 

many have gone on to be casters (such 

as Troels “SyndereN” Nielsen of ‘Dota 

2’ or Nick “Tasteless” Plott of ‘Starcraft 

2’); many have gone on to own and 

manage teams and many have gone into 

other games- card games, mainly poker, 

which attracts a large number of players 

from the strategy game ‘Starcraft 2’. 

It would seem that there are positions 

available for these pro gamers once they 

retire, even if it would seem like there 

wouldn’t be. 

The problem 

with the 

Cannabis debate 

Sam Lewis 

420 blaze it: the rally call 

of cannabis users all over 

America. 

Or so it may seem. When you picture a 

cannabis user, it’s probably the classic 

pot head, in his mother’s basement, hair 

in a mess and wearing a t-shirt with a 

vibrant print. It would seem that these 

are the people who would care about the 

marijuana debate; but this is untrue. 

The deb ate over the legalization of 

marijuana, especially in the USA, is 

no longer for the service of a minority 

of pot-smoking stoners but is instead a 

grand debate that takes place as much 

in the government buildings as in the 

basements of matriarchal domiciles. I 

would say that this is the major issue 

with the modern marijuana debate. 

Those adamantly for the legalization 

and those adamantly opposed to it seem 

to believe it is a big issue that is going 

to affect everyone, no matter where they 

live. In fact, this is not entirely true. 

The debate over marijuana is not about 

civil rights and liberties, like some 

would make you to believe- it is about 

whether or not a drug, with medicinal 

benefits, should be allowed to be used 

by the general public. Sure, maybe by 

criminalizing it you deny people the 

right to put into their body what they 

want and give the state power over 

everyone’s private life. But ultimately, all 

those who debate the drug’s legalization 

should be concerned with is whether or 

not it is dangerous and whether or not to 

punish those who possess it. The debate 

over marijuana, it would seem, has lost 

its theme and has turned into a grand 

debate over civil liberties. 

Therefore, I propose that the debate 

should be refocused: talk only of the 

drug and its effect and do not treat it 

as a grand metaphor for civil liberties 

because it is not, it is a plant- we don’t 

have these debates over whether the 

state should limit the possession of 

deadly cacti. Marijuana, it has been 

proven, is not as dangerous as first 

thought and, in fact, has many medicinal 

benefits. It would seem silly, therefore, 

to deny people their right to this drug 

in a medical capacity. While other drugs 

may also be effective, marijuana is a 

relatively cheap, natural source of pain 

relief. So, in at least a medical capacity, 

it would seem almost illogical to deny 

the drug to those who would benefit 

from it. 

Punishment for possession is also a 

ridiculous concept- in the USA, 40,000 

people are arrested each year due to 

marijuana possession. While this figure 

may not be high, certainly not by the 

USA’s standards, it still shows that 

many are arrested for what is not in 

the interests of the tax-payers funding 

the police force and the prisons. The 

resources could be better used on other 

cases or even on better training for 

police officers, which in the USA is 

sorely needed. There are many options 

that are more worthy than the arrest of 

people for possession of marijuana. ƒ 

We don’t know whether pro gaming 

is a viable career- we can see when 

the current generation of gamers have 

retired, whether they can continue to 

make good amounts of money, whether 

it will be gg wp no re, or whether they 

will make no money at all and turn into 

noobs and scrublords. But with the rise 

of pro gaming, especially in Eastern 

Asia, I am almost certain that, one day, 

it will be a career. In the meantime, I 

would strongly suggest that you stick to 

your studies - we’re a long way from the 

ultimatum in 2014. ƒ 

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57

MEDIA & SPORT 

Sport and media are two aspects of modern life that we cannot escape. Every day there is one sporting 

event or other and the media now cover all aspects of daily life from the sporting events of the days 

before to significant events in the world such as democratic elections. 

It is important that we take a deeper look at the media and the world of sport because all too often great injustices 

and problems arise. Whether it is the phone hacking scandal of the News of The World, the internet providers of 

America that wish to end Net Neutrality or the inner workings of FIFA, we find ourselves demanding answers. 

The sport and the media seem to go hand in hand nowadays where every sporting action is picked apart by the 

news reporters on television, online and in the newspapers. Due to the important role that these topics play in our 

lives, such as what we know about in the goings on in the world comes from the news channels provide, I attach the 

upmost importance to them both. 

Chris Ranson, Section Editor 

The changing 

role of finance 

in county 

cricket 

Jonathan French 

From an outsider’s 

perspective, it may seem 

that the eighteen firstclass 

counties around the 

country are only active 

during the summer months 

and sit dormant during 

the winter, waiting for the 

season to begin again. 

However, this is not a viable business 

plan. 

Counties are by no means guaranteed 

a profit on ticket sales alone. Crowds 

for the County Championship are small 

and show no signs of getting larger due 

to most of the cricket being played 

midweek when people are either at 

work or at school. The only reliable 

source of income from ticket sales is 

the twenty-over competition, rebranded 

for 2014 as the Natwest T20 Blast. As 

always with cricket, the threat of rain 

adds further financial uncertainty to 

the mix with the potential for entire 

matches to be washed out. If a lucrative 

home T20 match were washed out, this 

could result in the loss of over £50,000 

in ticket sales due to refunded tickets 

and the lost opportunity of selling food, 

drinks and souvenirs at the ground. 

The result is that hosting cricket matches 

does not guarantee a profit for many 

of the counties in the English game. 

Richard Gould, the chief executive of 

Surrey CCC, said that only around 

£2 million of the club’s £26.5 million 

turnover comes from the domestic 

game. Surrey is very fortunate in that 

it has a relatively large ground with a 

capacity of 23,500 and hosts regular 

international cricket, for which strong 

ticket sales are a given. 

Where does that other £24.5 million 

come from? This is the area of finance 

in county cricket that many casual 

observers fail to appreciate. Surrey CCC 

has a vast network of sponsors including 

Kia, OCS, Octopus Investments and 

Savills. The club regularly makes use 

of its facilities by hosting events and 

conferences. This is a reliable source of 

revenue for many county cricket clubs 

since the majority have the necessary 

facilities to host corporate events. 

Since the recession hit Britain in 2008, 

county cricket clubs have been forced 

to diversify the products that they offer. 

Surrey CCC has arguably led the way 

in operating in a financially sustainable 

manner but that is very dependent 

on its central London location and 

the benefits that it brings such as the 

excellent access. 

Some other counties are not so fortunate 

with their location and have had to find 

other ways of generating revenue. Far 

away from the bright lights of the London 

and Surrey CCC is Northamptonshire 

CCC. Its ground on Wantage Road is 

one of the smallest on the county circuit 

with a capacity of just 6,500. However, 

it has made use of its land by hosting a 

concert by Sir Elton John in 2013 which 

was such a success for the club that they 

are hosting another concert this year 

where Sir Tom Jones will be performing. 

These events are incredibly important 

for small clubs like Northamptonshire 

which do not host international cricket 

and do not receive much from ticket 

sales due to the small capacity of their 

grounds. 

Such is the onus on being able to host 

corporate events and the like that 

many counties have spent millions 

on redeveloping their grounds so 

that they have the facilities to attract 

new customers. Lancashire CCC has 

undertaken extensive redevelopment on 

their Old Trafford ground for this reason 

with the pavilion being redeveloped and 

the construction of The Point, a striking 

£12 million feature that can be used 

for both cricket matches and corporate 

functions. 

The Point promises to reap huge 

financial rewards for Lancashire 

because it is a state-of-the-art facility 

which can be used in many ways from 

hosting conferences and events to simply 

watching the cricket. In some sense, this 

represents a commercialisation of the 

sport in a way similar to football and the 

major US Sports. 

County cricket has undergone somewhat 

of a revolution over the last fifteen or 

so years with the advent of twenty-over 

cricket. The sport is more professional 

now than it ever has been. The off-field 

activities of county cricket have become 

ever more important in this period. 

The first-class counties are now run as 

businesses not just as cricket clubs. Offfield 

activities are becoming ever more 

important and no county wants to be 

left behind. ƒ 

58 

59

MEDIA & SPORT 

Dark days for 

conventional 

TV? 


Can you imagine a world 

where TVs are no longer 

needed? 

Nowadays phones, tablets and iPods have 

the power to display TV programmes, so 

are we to conclude that the traditional, 

cumbersome television set is redundant? 

The television does provide a family 

viewing experience inconvenient and 

uncomfortable on tablets or phones. For 

proof of the survival of the traditional 

ritual of gathering to watch television, 

one needs to look no further than the 

World Cup. An estimated fifteen 

million people watched England’s first 

match, many of them at bars or pubs or 

at home in large groups. 

While young people turn away from 

televisions to newer technologies, TVs 

offer a very valuable familiarity for 

older viewers with less technological 

nous. 

Web series developed on sites such 

as Youtube have begun to rival 

conventional television media, due to 

improvements in picture quality, scripts 

and acting. However, TV manufacturers 

have adapted to this new phenomenon 

by developing smart TVs which are able 

to display web series. Furthermore, 

the large display remains the most 

immersive way to enjoy the web series. 

The USA provides some of the best 

TV programmes on the planet such as 

Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. 

While American programmes take 

weeks or months to be aired on British 

television, they can be accessed online 

by British viewers as soon as they are 

released over the Atlantic, via platforms 

such as Netflix. The American ISP, 

Verizon, has even put in place a deal 

with Netflix to increase WiFi speeds 

four-fold in order to introduce 4K Ultra 

HD so that viewers can experience the 

best possible picture quality. 

One modern phenomenon which 

reinforces the need for a traditional 

television set is ‘dual device’ viewing. 

Younger viewers in particular are now 

accessing social media via their tablets 

and handsets at the same time as 

watching a television programme. Thus, 

viewers are able to instantly share their 

reactions to the programme online. 

The rise of television programmes on 

devices other than the traditional screen 

may seem to herald the end of the TV 

as we know it, but the two forms of 

viewing need not be incompatible. As 

long as there is demand for comfortable, 

immersive viewing, the tradition of telly 

will never be switched off. ƒ 

Why would you 

host the World 

Cup? 

Chris Ranson 

Host countries are left with 

massive debt, while FIFA 

laugh all the way to the 

bank... 

First of all, the millions of football 

fans coming into the country, spending 

their money on accommodation and 

food, boost the economy. The Brazilian 

economy will be boosted by $90 billion 

according to Aldo Rebelo, the country’s 

Minister of Sport. Another positive is 

that the World Cup generates many jobs 

both short and long term. Again, using 

Brazil as an example, 3.6 million jobs 

were apparently generated by the World 

Cup. Of course, the excitement that 

comes with hosting, arguably, the most 

prestigious tournament in the world 

gives it a powerful allure for prospective 

host nations. Brazil hosts the World Cup 

in 2014 and, as a nation notorious for its 

love of a party one of the world’s biggest 

footballing countries, surely Brazilians 

are ecstatic to be hosting the World Cup. 

However, there are many reasons why the 

people of Brazil are not enthused; more 

than one of those reasons is because of 

FIFA. 

FIFA have a full and comprehensive tax 

exemption in the country that is hosting 

the World Cup. This means that the host 

country must agree to forgo potential 

tax revenue, for the benefit of FIFA, 

costing Brazil $250million this year. 

In addition, since FIFA are a charitable 

organisation, they hardly pay any 

tax themselves in Switzerland, where 

they are based, anyway. What is even 

more shocking is that for a non-profit 

organisation, they have an enormous 

reserve fund of over $1 billion. When a 

charitable, non-profit organisation has a 

reserve of such a vast quantity, serious 

questions must be asked. 

FIFA argue that they leave much benefit 

behind when the World Cup is over, 

for example, new laws. In Brazil, in 

2003, alcoholic drinks were banned 

from stadiums due to the unusually 

high death rate among fans, mostly 

due to excessive alcohol consumption. 

However, one of FIFA’s main sponsors, 

Budweiser, produces beer, a product 

which (and this should come as no 

surprise) contains alcohol – so is surely 

just as harmful as drinks of similar 

alcoholic concentrations. FIFA did not 

agree, wading into the matter to protect 

their sponsor from the alcohol ban. 

Despite the urges of the Health Minister 

of Brazil, Brazil passed the ‘Budweiser 

bill’ allowing the sale of Budweiser 

within football arenas across Brazil 

. 

Finally, FIFA take most of the profits 

of the World Cup with them when they 

leave. At least $4 billion will come out of 

Brazil as FIFA’s profits. Despite Brazil 

paying for all the cost of the World Cup, 

most of the money generated from it 

leaves when FIFA leaves. With Brazil’s 

projected total cost the World Cup 

coming to around $14 billion, Brazil are 

set to make a considerable loss. Even the 

added infrastructure is not a bonus. 

Brazil’s government spent $270 million 

dollars on the stadium in Manaus, which 

will host only four games across the 

duration of the World Cup, including 

the first England game. There is no 

local club close enough to fill it after 

the World Cup as the town of Manaus is 

almost inaccessible by car. This stadium 

is a serious eye-sore for the town of 

Manaus and will serve as a reminder of 

the amount of money wasted by hosting 

the World Cup. 

With staggering costs and very little 

benefit, once the FIFA whirlwind has 

finished dipping its hand into the 

profits, the continued desire of many 

countries to host the World Cup is a 

mystery to me. ƒ 

The Changing 

Fortunes of 

Manchester 

United 


The Red Devils just 

completed one of their 

worst seasons in living 

memory - will their luck 

change? 

Simply put, Manchester United was a 

club in turmoil (by their lofty standards) 

at the end of the 2013/14 season. No 

official manager, no marquee signing 

for the season and most importantly 

no European foot-ball. Now most clubs 

can afford an off season; especially if 

they avoid relegation. Not Manchester 

United. The famous Red Devils were 

the first sports team to be valued at 

over $3 billion by Forbes (January 

2013) and have traditionally been a 

very profitable enterprise. Nike has a 

twelve-year merchandise sponsorship 

which is valued at £303 million along 

with General Motors’s shirt sponsorship 

which is in place from 2014-2021 

valued at $559 million. The pressure 

placed on the club is enormous: without 

success and trophies, all this investment 

will surely vanish. 

The squad which won the title in 2013 

was generally regarded as a squad in 

transition. The team contained players 

who were reaching the end of their 

careers, such as Rio Ferdinand, along 

with youngsters who possessed little 

match experience, such as Adnan 

Januzaj. Fast-forward twelve months 

and the club endured one of the worst 

seasons in living memory; it was the 

first time Manchester United had not 

finished in the top three since 1990. 

With the benefit of hindsight, many 

pundits now recognise that the summer 

of 2013 offered the perfect chance to 

rebuild and strengthen the squad, which 

was sadly missed. 

Manchester United had created an 

ideal situation for the summer of 2013: 

Premier League Winners, European 

football secured and money to spend. 

Then was the best possible opportunity 

to go out and buy two or three world 

class players. Fabregas was courted with 

three bids which resulted in nothing 

(ironically he will be playing next season 

for Chelsea, who secured his services for 

a deal cheaper than United’s highest 

bid by £10 million). By deadline day, 

the club still had secured no world-class 

players. While Arsenal had Ozil secured 

and Willian had been added to the 

Chelsea ranks, Moyes bought Fellaini 

for £27.5million – a sum later revealed 

to be higher than his expired buy out 

close. This addition to the squad turned 

out to be futile: Fellaini did not score 

in the Premier League. Although Juan 

Mata was a player of real class (to add 

to the growing crowd of number-tens at 

Manchester United), his inflated price 

tag of £37.1 million was considered more 

beneficial to Chelsea than Manchester 

United. 

The Premier League has just witnessed 

one of the best title races ever. The 

money of Manchester City combined 

with Everton’s spirit of adventure and 

the youth of Southampton created even 

contests at both the top and bottom of 

the table this year. Manchester United 

must step up their game to ensure they 

remain competitive next season. One 

part of the agenda which has fortunately 

60 

61

MEDIA & SPORT 

now been sorted is the manager. 

David Moyes had only one piece 

of silverware to show for his whole 

managerial career: the Division Two title 

with Preston. Many believe that Moyes 

was always the wrong appointment due 

to the trophy-per-season expectation 

of the demanding Manchester United 

fans and board, but Sir Alex Ferguson’s 

wishes could not have been ignored. 

Moyes’s future at the club was already 

placed under the huge weight of the 

expectation that he could emulate 

Ferguson’s, even in a small way. Moyes’s 

downfall was his inability to handle the 

pressure of leading a big-name club 

such as Manchester United, perfectly 

illustrated by his panic buy of Fellaini 

last summer. The Manchester United 

board has learnt from its mistakes and 

now Louis van Gaal will be leading the 

Manchester based club next season. 

The Dutchman has proven himself as a 

winner throughout Europe, leading huge 

clubs such as Barcelona and Bayern 

Munich. The Dutch national side has 

been producing outstanding football 

under his leadership. 

Qualifying to play European football 

in the 2015/16 season is an achievable 

target for Manchester United. The 

opportunity to play in European 

football is normally very attractive 

to prospective players, but due to the 

team’s failure to qualify last season to 

play in Europe in 2014/15, world-class 

players for next season will have to be 

attracted by large salaries alone. A new 

back four, a midfield powerhouse and a 

winger are the main holes to fill for the 

squad over the summer. I have faith that 

Van Gaal will spend wisely. There is no 

doubt that the likes of Manchester City, 

Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and Everton 

will strengthen even further over the 

summer but under Van Gaal, United has 

a bright future and a chance to right the 

wrongs of the past year for themselves 

and the fans. ƒ 

Football: more 

than just a 

sport? 

Alex Goodchild 

Hidden just off a little 

passageway on the scenic 

island of Madeira lies a 

certain place of divinity. 

The Portuguese are historically Roman 

Catholic, yet, no conventional god is 

worshipped here. It is Funchal’s CR7 

Museum, a shrine to Cristiano Ronaldo, 

a footballing icon. No biblical text is 

needed; Ronaldo’s glittering history 

narrates itself in more than 150 

displayed trophies and medals, twentysix 

signed hat-trick balls and two Ballon 

d’Or awards. A life-sized waxwork and 

several images reveal how Ronaldo is 

just one example of how football has 

become increasingly devotional. But 

whether this is a religious symbol more 

than a simple show of affection leads one 

to examine whether football is indeed a 

religion. 

There is little doubt that Ronaldo’s 

compatriots believe in him as an icon. 

On this issue, the museum’s curator, 

Nuno Mendes, declared, “He is Portugal’s 

main ambassador… The image of the 

country is reflected in him.” Certainly 

football is a significant aspect of life in 

Portugal but there is greater evidence 

that it is followed routinely around the 

world. 

This summer, Brazil plays host to 

the FIFA World Cup and, as such, 

many fans have flocked to the football 

‘Mecca’ of the World. City squares are 

brimming with football fans and no less 

by Americans. Remarkably, 200,000 

match tickets were bought in the US, 

which comes as some surprise given 

that ‘soccer’ is still some way behind 

baseball, American football and others 

in terms of popularity. More incredible 

still is that 75% of English season-ticket 

holders would sooner change religion 

than the team they support, according 

to a poll conducted on the eve of Easter 

by the makers of Warren United, an 

animated sitcom about a fervent football 

fan. 

In an increasingly secular age, can 

football therefore be considered an 

adequate replacement for traditional 

religion? As Diego Maradona said, 

“Football isn’t a game or a sport, it’s 

a religion.” Is convening to the new 

churches in the form of stadia to attend 

fixtures not a form of group devotion? 

There’s communal singing in the form 

of football chants, and a faithful crowd 

always awaits, hopefully, the coming 

of every new manager or star signing. 

Posters and graffiti often adorn the 

streets of Barcelona and Argentina 

bearing the face of their one true hero: 

Lionel Messi. And there is compelling 

evidence that football can be a substitute 

for religion. Songs of Praise, the most 

watched religious programme on British 

TV, attracts barely three million viewers, 

just a quarter of what can be reached on 

a televised match by Sky Sports. 

Despite this, Italian film director Pier 

Paulo Pasolini’s claim that ‘football is 

the last sacred ritual of our time’ seems 

a little exaggerated. Not always do you 

see in a football fan the same unwavering 

faith that you do in religion and even 

if Neymar may now be the patron saint 

of Brazil, should he not perform to the 

lofty expectations, he could face jeers. 

Besides, whilst some players are idols, 

‘sacred’ could not be more inaccurate 

when describing Uruguayan Luis 

Suárez who has just recently bitten a 

third victim to add to equally heinous 

offences of racism. 

Yet part of the reason that football can 

be viewed in a holy light is because 

religion played a formative role in the 

rise of football in this country. In fact, a 

quarter of league teams in England trace 

their origins to church sides, formed in 

the late 19th century era of “muscular 

Christianity”, including Everton, Aston 

Villa, Fulham, Southampton, Bolton 

and Wolves. There are still Christian 

leagues today, while professional clubs 

nowadays have club chaplains. This 

then sheds light on why the idea of 

switching football clubs seems to true 

fans sacrilege. “Soccer isn’t the same 

as Buddhism”, concedes Franklin Foer, 

author of How Soccer Explains the 

World, “but it is often more deeply felt 

than religion, and just as much a part of 

the community’s fabric, a repository of 

traditions.” 

The backlash of supporters against 

the commercialisation of football in 

the developed world can be seen as an 

illustration of the principle that football 

means more to people than mere sport. 

In the UK, where investors have been 

drawn to huge profits in merchandising 

and ticket sales, the largest clubs, led 

by Manchester United, are leading 

a comeback. Fans relish fighting off 

commercial interests for the sake of 

protecting the beautiful game. As 

money becomes ever more important, 

and the fans become abstracted from 

the astronomical sums paid to players 

for licenscing an playing, there will be 

a global revolution. Rather akin to the 

reaction of Martin Luther or Desiderus 

Erasmus to the decadence in Rome, the 

fans will no longer be able to tolerate the 

excessive monetisation of the sport as if 

it were a commodity. 

However, Football should not be 

considered a religion but it is still 

vitally important to sections of society 

in the same way as faith is for others. 

Played well, football is an art that has 

proved a great entertainment and it 

fills many lives with the passion of 

despair and euphoria. Perhaps it is Eric 

Cantona who most accurately defines 

the life of a football aficionado with this 

observation: ‘You can change your wife, 

your politics, your religion… but never, 

never, can you change your favourite 

football team.’ In that sense, football 

might even be more than a mere religion 

after all. The football infection hasn’t 

yet reached its furthest extent, It won’t 

be long before it does. ƒ 

62 

63

The Future of Britain

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