The Beaver
i March 2011 Newspaper of the LSE Students' Union
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LSE and Libya - the end of the affair
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Davies calls for full reparations following donation reversal
Oliver Wiseman
LSE Director Howard Davies responded to students occupying his office last Wednesday in protest of the School's ties with Libya by saying he was "ashamed" the School had accepted money from the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation (GICDF).
When the LSE Council, the School's highest decision-making body, meets on Tuesday, Davies will recommend the LSE reallocate the £300,000 it has received from the Foundation to ends beneficial to the Libyan people, a spokesperson for the School told the Beaver.
In 2009, the Foundation pledged £1.5 million, to be paid over the course of five years, to support the activities of LSE Global Governance, specifically the development of a "research programme on North Africa, focused on politics, economics and society", according to a statement from School. Thus far, the School has received £300,000 from the Foundation.
Around half of the £300,000 has already been spent, "mainly on research projects on human rights, women and development, democracy and civil society, and economic diversification", according to a statement on the School's website.
In various interviews and public statements given during the last week, Davies has advocated spending the remaining funds, as well as an amount equivalent to those spent thus far, on a "purpose agreed by the wider School community".
Speaking to the BBC on Monday, Davies said, "We have to take on the chin the fact that we spent £150,000 of Gaddafi's money."
"We will accept that on our own money, and put the whole £300,000 into a "scholarship fund", Davies told the BBC.
As the Beaver reported last week, "highly distressing" reports about recent events in Libya prompted the School to halt the Global Governance programme funded by the GICDF, and refuse the remainder of the pledged £1.5 million.
A statement released by the School last Monday, 21st February, said the School was "reconsidering its links [with the GICDF] as a matter of urgency".
The GICDF is chaired by Muam-mar Gaddafi's son, Saif, an alumnus of the LSE who earned both an MSc and a PhD at the School. Saif's doctoral thesis, entitled "The Role of Civil Society in the Democratisation of Global Governance Institutions", is currently under scrutiny by the School, following allegations of plagiarism.
Last Tuesday evening, following an emergency meeting in the Quad, around eighty students occupied the Old Building's Senior Common Room, calling for the School to make further amends on behalf of the Libyan people. The following morning, a dozen occupiers stormed Davies's office, while others protested on Houghton Street to highlight the cause.
In a series of demands to the School, occupiers called for a rejection of any further monies from GICDF and the creation of a scholarship fund for "underprivileged Libyan students using the £300,000 that the LSE has already accepted", a revocation of Saif Gaddafi's LSE alumnus status because of his "[implication] in the killing of innocent civilians as well as other human rights violations", and a commitment to democratically establishing, with student involvement, the School's policy on donations from controversial individuals or organisations.
The occupiers also demanded the School issue a statement denouncing "gross violations of human rights by the Gaddafi regime and Saif Gaddafi's violent threats against the protesters in Libya" as well as a promise to refrain from cooperating with the the Libyan regime and "any other dictatorial regimes known to be implicated in gross violations of human rights".
Speaking last Monday, 21st February in a television address, Saif denied the regime had used force in quelling protests, and defended the his father's refusal to stand down.
In light of the student occupation, as well as ongoing violent conflict in the North African state, the Academic Board, one of the School's senior decisionmaking bodies, met on Wednesday, 23rd February, later submitting a decision regarding donations from the GICDF, for review by the Council.
And while the occupation ended last Wednesday afternoon,.students say they
will keep a close eye on the Council's decisions. On Monday, the LSE Students' Union Education Officer told the Evening Standard students would reconsider further protest and occupation if the Council refuses Davies's and the occupiers' suggestions that the £300,000 go to scholarships for Libyan students.
The Academic Board rejected the occupiers' demands for the School to revoke Saif Gaddafi's alumnus status. According to a statement on the School's website, the Academic Board maintained an LSE degree may "only be revoked if there are substantiated concerns about the manner in which it was attained in the first place-for example if there is a later discovery of plagiarism-and not on the basis of any subsequent shortcomings of personal conduct".
In 2009, when the School initially accepted the Foundation's donation, David Held, a pro-director of LSE Global Governance, and then-Students' Union General Secretary Aled Dilwyn Fisher, maintained Saif was a reformer in his father's oppressive regime.
Fisher wrote to Held in 2009, saying, "It is quite clear that not only is the donation acceptable, it should be encouraged."
"This is exactly the kind of organisation the School should be associated with-a group struggling for justice under what continues to be, despite reforms, a repressive and brutal regime", Fisher wrote.
The Council cited the opinions of both Held and Dilwyn Fisher when it approved the acceptance of the donation.
In a statement published last week, however, on the website of LSE Global Governance, Held retracted his support for Saif.
"My support for Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was always conditional on him resolving the dilemma that he faced in a progressive and democratic direction", Held said. "The speech [made by Saif Gaddafi on Sunday 20th February] makes it abundantly clear that his commitment to transforming his country has been overwhelmed by the crisis he finds himself in".
"He tragically, but fatefully, made the wrong judgement", Held said. "As a result, the LSE has stopped new work on the North Africa Programme".
CORRECTION FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK
An article published on this page in last week's Beaver, "Graduate Teaching Assistants left unpaid for months" (22 February 2011), wrongly identified the entry-level salaries of Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) at the School. The article reported that entry-level GTAs are compensated £7,068 per annum. According to a document on the School website, "LSE Pay Framework", backdated to 1st August 2010, the minimum annual salary for GTAs is £16,150 per annum, at an hourly rate of £8.84. The Beaver regrets this error.
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In this week's Beaver you will notice repeated mentions of the elusive phrase, "Election candidate", notably in News pieces not related to hustings and photo credits. If you're voting preference is determined by photographic ability -sorry.
Do not be perturbed unduly. We are obliged not to print the names of election candidates, in case your opinions on them are significantly swayed by what we say about them in non-hustings contexts. While we doubt this would actually be the case, the wise Beaver always looks to cover its back.
We regret that this may make your reading experience poorer, and hope you recognise the need for us to play by the rules.
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School to investigate authenticity of Saif's thesis
Sachin Patel
The LSE is investigating allegations of plagiarism in the PhD thesis of Saif Gaddafi, a son of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and alumnus of the School, but will not engage in a "rushed exercise which jumps to a speedy conclusion", the School's Academic Registrar, Simeon Underwood, told the Beaver on Monday.
Responding to purported instances of plagiarism raised by academics at other universities, who have asked not to be identified, as well as contributors to a collaborative website, Underwood said the School is following standard procedures in its investigation.
But such protocol may be overturned if a meeting of the LSE Council, the School's highest decision-making body, to be held Tuesday, finds such an investigation is not appropriate and practical, given "the questions raised by recent events" in the North Africa country, Underwood said.
Underwood told the Beaver the School was "duty-bound" to follow up on the number of allegations, even though, taken individually, none are particularly substantial.
"The School is not rushing to say there is unarguable evidence that merits further investigation," Underwood said.
The Registrar told the Beaver PhD theses are not ordinarily checked using Internet-based plagiarism-detection services, such as Turnitin, unless there is prior cause for suspicion. Universities and schools often buy licenses to services, such as Turnitin, which check documents for plagiarism.
A student must be informed of the specific concerns surrounding their work, and consent to use of the programme. However, at the time of Gaddafi's enrollment as a PhD candidate, clauses pertaining to Turnitin were not present in students' agreements.
Underwood also said other practical considerations may hinder the School's ability to carry out a conventional plagiarism investigation. For example, Underwood said students under investigation must be given the right to reply, which is "probably not [Gaddafi's] priority at this minute". Students are also expected to be present at panel hearings which can form part of the process, Underwood said.
"The levels of plagiarism brought to light come below what a supervisor could pick up on", Underwood said.
Gaddafi completed both his master's degree and his PhD in the Schol's Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method.
On Monday, the department's head, Professor Luc Bovens, told the Beaver all standard procedures were followed during Gaddafi's time at the LSE. He said Gaddafi took all the modules required of him, and his examinations were completed under
the same conditions as other students. Bovens also said Gaddafi's marks were "comparable" to those of other candidates.
In fact, Bovens told the Beaver the only distinguishing characteristic of Gaddafi's time as a PhD candidate was the presence of bodyguards in the department building when he was working with his supervisor.
Two members of the Department of Philosophy named in the thesis's acknowledgements, Dr. Alex Voorhoeve and Professor Nancy Cartwright, declined to comment.
Professor David Held, a co-director of LSE Global Governance, who worked closely with Gaddafi during his time at the School, told the Guardian last week that Gaddafi' 'came to voice very serious commitments to liberal values and the human rights agenda."
Underwood told the Beaver philosophy department records indicate a continual improvement in the quality of the drafts of Gaddafi's thesis.
He also responded to concerns about Gaddafi's admission to study at the LSE, saying the thirty-eight-year old was "properly qualified, had strong references, and a decent GPA from the University of California".
Bovens sought to dissuade any questions about the authenticity of Gaddafi's thesis.
"There are reasons why students may accidentally plagiarise," he told the Beaver. "Psychological, cultural, and accidental - it is easy to copy large chunks of the source material into one's notes, especially if English is not one's first language."
Bovens also stressed the need to protect the rights of students, and said an investigation could not "single out a particular student".
Bovens added, however, that depending on the investigation's findings, the philosophy department may commission a formal investigation headed by someone not previously involved with Gaddafi's studies, which will then move to either dismiss the case, or conduct a panel hearing.
Regardless of the School's decision, public scrutiny of Gaddafi's thesis, entitled "The Role of Civil Society in the Democratisation of Global Governance Institutions", is unlikely to dissipate. National newspapers, such as the Times and the Independent, as well as the BBC's flagship current affairs programme, Newsnight, have all discussed the issue.
Moreover, additional allegations have emerged, claiming pportions of Gaddafi's thesis were ghost-written by consultants at Monitor Group, a management consulting firm, employing former a MI6 agent who sits on the advisory board of LSE Global Governance.
Underwood said though such allegations consist of "hearsay and rumour", the School will ask the individuals responsible for the claims for further details, and carry out investigations as necessary.
The Beaver i March 2011
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No more AstroTurf
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There is a qualitative difference between student politics and students acting like politicians, in this newspaper's opinion. The former is about making a real difference to students' experiences of campus life by providing a stable core around which worthy causes can rally, and by acting maturely and realistically about goals and ends. The latter is about grandstanding, being mealy-mouthed about things which are intangible or unachievable, and perpetuating so-called churnalism - the process of inadequately disseminating press releases through the media such that the same quotations are trotted out ad nauseam, to little effect.
This newspaper believes that too much of what this year's Sabbatical Officers have done falls into the latter category.
This week we saw this dichotomy writ large along Houghton Street, as a diverse collection of students forced the School's hand on the issue of the Gaddafi Foundation's funding of a Global Governance programme (see page 1). Eighteen months too late to the party, some cynical souls opine (see page 10), but the evidence shows this was a campaign with teeth: its culmination saw Howard Davies apparently condone the occupation of his own office, while the School hastily drew back the open arms with which it had previously welcomed Gaddafi's £1.501. The finer details of this retreat are yet to be resolved, but signs suggest the genuine feeling of disgust and betrayal on the students' part was pivotal in convincing the School of the severity of its mistake. Their backpedalingwas not free of squirming, but this newspaper is proud to have played its part in solidarity with the occupiers and protesters in securing real results.
This spontaneous campaign should serve as a useful lesson to would-be Students' Union representatives (see pages 1,4 and 5). This year's Sabbatical Officers have been preoccupied with campaigns that masquerade as grassroots but which more closely resemble AstroTurf - pho-
ney. Consequently, we saw top-down diktats which left no room for manoeuvre; a UGM whose isolationism and jingoism eventually excluded even the most vocal and rational of moderates; and a smug refusal to believe their tiller was pointing off-course.
This newspaper hopes the aspirants for next year's Students' Union executive are taking notes. For the sake of lay students, who will be squeezed from every side - by the government, by the university, by future employers - it is essential that officers learn to listen, and to look beyond their own conceptions of right and wrong. There are many campaigns that will deserve a look-in, and these must not be cast into the shadows for the sake of an easy ride through the corridors of faux power and onto the set of Newsnight.
Regrettably, the campaign trail to date has been risible in so many ways, and this newspaper fears a low turnout due to voter alienation. 'We are eveiywhere,' they say. Most of the electorate find this rather creepy.
Though the UGM hustings proceeded without a hitch, other such events have proven more troublesome. Planted questions and hijackings of the audience are puerile and tiresome, and do little to encourage moderate candidates to persevere. Their task is not made easier when one considers incumbent Sabbatical Officers' ability to promote favoured candidates (and cast aspersions on those less favoured) through social networking websites and on the street. This newspaper finds such actions instinctively repulsive and concerning, all the more so because this malpractice has spread to ordinary students too. The vilification of candidates who up until now have been performing admirably in other roles compromises the potential to have rational debate; it does not belong anywhere, least of all on our campus of tolerance and plurality.
To those with eyes on the throne, we offer the following: unless you are the ultimate representative of the Students' Union (one of the few responsibilities still
gifted to the General Secretary), do not attempt to politicise your roles. You are not a warring government minister, and your press-release pen does not make you Alastair Campbell. You must be a generator of ideas, yes, but not to the preclusion of those of others. And if you ever wish to attract the goodwill of this newspaper, you must stick up for the moderate, whilst maintaining the instruments of radicalism for well-picked fights. «£
MASH UP THAT BAKED-BEAN CAN
This newspaper also takes a dim view of campaign gimmicks, which lead inevitably to a war of one-upmanship. From giant baked-bean cans to dancing flash mobs and YouTube mash-ups which send record labels into paroxysms of legal finy, we have seen it all, yet still election candidates insist on devoting resources to these idle pursuits. Likewise with campaign websites: one more area where free, unrestricted markets are not the ideal.
Is a good idea worth nothing nowadays? We offer our own take on this most inane game: find the biggest white-board you can, place it halfway down Houghton Street, and let your voters tell you what they want. Holding up a large white rectangle doesn't always spell surrender. *£
Union Basho
Hardly missed
Loads at'UGM.
Loads in the Quad. So few of
them economists.
Basho was in such high spirits this week (we believe psilocybin may have been involved) thathe also gave us the tea-stained haiku epic below. Big deals.
East Building LSE Students' Union London WC2A 2 AE
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Poorna Harjani; Yisum Heneghon; Charlie Hodgson; Tahiya Islam; Harriet Jackson; Judith Jacob; Felipe Jacome; Alex Jones; Megan Jones; Naeem Kapadia; Sam Tempest Keeping; Pooja Kesavan; Alizeh Kohari; Marion Koob; Vivek Kotecha; Anna Krausova; Ashok Kumar; Ashma Kunde; Daniel Lahey; Dominic Lam; Phyllis Lui; Nizar Manek; Filipe Henriques Martins; Jamie Mason; Duncan McKenna; Nitya Menon; Anna Mikeda; Rimmel Mohydin; Vincent Mok; Aditi Nangia; Bianca Nardi; Chu Ting Ng; Brett Noble; Mustafa Okur; Bryan Ong; Kyle Packer;
Rhiannon Parkinson; Aameer Patel; Anup Patel; Jaynesh Patel; Rajan Patel; Sachin Patel; John Peart; Ahmed Peerbux; Reagan Persaud; Alex Peters-Day; Chloe Pieters; Hannah Polly Williams; Shrina Poojara; Danielle Priestley;
Pern-Yi Quah; Rahim Rahemtulla; Annika Ranga; Anjali Raval; Ricky Ren; Aimee Riese; Chris Rogers; Leonora Rumsey; Conor Rushby; Ahman Sahni; Thienthai Sangkhaphanthanon;
Amrita Saraogi; Benedict Sarhangian; Lukas Slothuus; Luke Smolinski; Katerina Soukeras;
Jonathan Storey; Masaya Tanikawa; Andre Tartar; Pooja Thakrar; Kerry Thompson; Jack Tindale; Vladimir Unkovski-Korica; Aliabbas Virani; Heather Wang; Joseph Watson; Jonathan Weir; Chris Westgarth; Sam Williams; Matthew Willis; Chris Wilkins; Oliver Wiseman; Natalie Wong; Vincent Wong; David Woodbridge; Daniel Yates; Alexander Young; Calum Young; Sofia Zabolotskih; Mehek Zafar; Sadir Zayadine
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Think you can write like Bernard Levin?
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News
i March 2011 i The Beaver
I am international, say LSE students
Bethany Clarke Senior Reporter
Last week saw the continuation of joint efforts between the School and the LSE Students' Union to counter government proposals for increased restrictions on British immigration policy, with the launch of an "I Am International" campaign.
On Monday, 21st February, and Tuesday, 22rd February, the Students' Union's Postgraduate Officer and International Students' Officer Michael Lok took to Houghton Street with the recently launched campaign, which aims to raise students' overall awareness of the proposals.
Lok and the Postgraduate Officer have collected student testimonials on why global education matters and have taken photographs of the participants, which will be assembled into a montage to be displayed around the LSE campus. The two officers told the Beaver they believe such efforts will prompt increased student involvement in, and recognition of, the campaign.
The Postgraduate Officer told the Beaver student response to the initiative has been "overwhelmingly positive", with students recognising that the LSE's strength-lies in the diversity of its student body.
He added that though the majority of campaign participants have been international students, there has also been a significant response from British nationals.
Lok also participated in a National

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e Postgraduate Officer invited students to explain why they thought global education matters
Photo: Griffin Carpenter
Union of Students (NUS) conference in Birmingham last week, where he met with international students' officers from other universities, and took part in a panel discussion to share insights from the LSE.
The officers' actions follow a joint press release, from the Students' Union and the School, published on 18th February regarding the government proposals. The release expressed concerns that "new visa regulations could deter significant numbers of international students from studying at the School".
The proposed changes to UK immigration policy would limit the ability of international students to work in the UK
for a short period after studying, and reduce students' ability to bring dependents to the country while they are studying.
The press release states a recent survey of LSE international students "shows deep dissatisfaction amongst our overseas student body at the new proposals-many have made it clear that they would not have applied under the new rules, and some have even said that they will discourage others from doing so".
LSE Director Howard Davies has written to School alumni in government on this matter.
Simeon Underwood, the School's academic registrar, has said he believes
"pressure from the sector is causing the government to re-think its proposals" and "pressure from the School in particular is causing it to re-think its position on closing off the Post-Study Work route".
Officials from the School and Students' Union, along with a group of LSE students, have also met with Matthew Coats, an LSE alumnus who heads immigration at the UK Border Agency.
The Students' Union is currently working with that of Goldsmith's to organise a speakers event, highlighting the importance of migrant workers in the UK. The event will take place in early March, according to the Postgraduate Officer.
Darling, these economists are fine
Ahmed Alani
After an intense first round of competition, which saw students from as far as Bangladesh and Germany submitting academic papers, the Economic Policy Challenge (EPC), initiated by the LSE Students' Union Economics Society, held its final round last Tuesday.
This year, the Economics Society has sought to characterise itself as "a platform for budding economists to challenge academics", a representative from the committee told the Beaver.
The most-recent EPC also demonstrated competitors were happy to challenge themselves. Established last year, the competition intends to "incentivise
students to put into practice what they had learnt in class", according to Wensi Lao, one of the event organisers.
This year, sixty participants entered the first round, in which they had to submit 3,000-word economics papers addressing current issues. The essay topics were set by professors in the LSE's economics department. Professor Nicholas Barr set the topic, "The ageing problem is not a problem, but perhaps the greatest welfare gain of the twentieth century', while Professor Francesco Caselli proposed, 'Does foreign aid foster growth?'. The three teams who wrote the winning essays participated in last week's final round whereby they presented their essays and faced tough questions on their papers by a panel of judges.
The judges were looking for essays
that presented a "well thought out idea to solve actual economic policy problems", with innovation and feasibility being given due credit. However, the Economics Society were keen to stress that "from an academic stance there was no perfect paper", identifying that the event was a forum for learning, less about being the ideal team and more about developing skills.
The judges included Alistair Darling, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Professor Julian Le Grand of the social policy department and Professor Caselli. Teams were quizzed on their method of economic enquiry, content of their essays and the wider implications that their conclusions had. "This was a daunting task, especially in front of the audience of over fifty people", said one member of the
winning team.
Teams from the LSE, the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) and the University of Birmingham made it to the final round. For the second consecutive year running the team from Birmingham won the competition, earning a trophy, ' £1,000 in prize money and the opportunity to have their winning essay printed in the Economics Society's magazine, Rationale.
Maria Zhivitskaya, a master's student and Director of Special Projects in the Economics Society, said, "It was wonderful to see so many students interested in research, and having this great opportunity to present their work in front of the distinguished judges."
Perseverence pays for LSE100 students
AlexHaigh
Last Tuesday saw an awards ceremony for students involved in the pilot scheme of LSE100, the School's interdisciplinary course for first-year undergraduates intended to help students "understand the causes of things".
The exam results of the LSE100 pilot scheme-a course that was taken voluntarily by 183 now-second-year undergraduates and concluded with an exam in January 2011-were released last month, followed by an awards ceremony held on 22 nd February.
The course saw high levels of exam success, with nearly a quarter of all participating students obtaining a distinction, the highest possible grade. Thirty-nine of the 171 students who sat for the final exam were awarded distinctions. Five students received prizes for outstanding attainment.
Tuesday's award ceremony, held in the Sheikh Zayed Theatre, included speeches by Professor Michael Cox, the chair of the LSE100 steering committee, Dr. Jonathan Leape, the course director, and LSE Director Howard Davies. Students also spoke about their experiences taking the course.
Beginning this year, LSE100 is now a compulsory course for all first-year undergraduate students. As such, 1,271 students will take LSE100 in 2011. But because some students may have chosen not to participate in the course, if given a choice, it remains to be seen whether this high level of attainment will be upheld in future years.
Some students currently enrolled in LSE100 told the Beaver they resent being forced to take a course, and sit for an exam, which they might not find useful.
Laxman Regala, a first-year accounting and finance undergraduate currently enrolled in LSE100, told the Beaver he has found the course thus far to be "a waste of time".
Meanwhile, second-year government undergraduate Shakira Chanrai also said she found the course beneficial, telling the Beaver, "In hindsight, I am glad I took it. I learnt a lot from it."
The pilot course saw an effective dropout rate of 37 per cent. Of the 400 students who began the pilot in January 2010,110 left the course after attending only one lecture or class. Of the 290 who remained, 107 more left the course during the subsequent twelve months.
Indeed, even students who completed the course have given it mixed reviews. While the course's creators, and many students, have deemed the pilot programme a success, others have offered little praise. Second-year law undergraduate Nina Wood called the course "a joke" after completing the pilot.
The course, which Cox says aims to "bring the school together", has been accused by some of taking a "one-size-fits-all" approach and neglecting certain disciplines within the school.
Alexander Young, a second-year politics and philosophy undergraduate, told the Beaver he would describe the course as "essentially for teaching maths and economics students how to write essays" through its focus on skills learning and emphasis on writing.
Students spoke about their experiences ol the LSE100 pilot course
Photo: Nigel Stead / LSE Press Office
Dr. Jonathan Leape, the course director, told the Beaver that there is "an overall balance on writing" in LSE100, but added that the emphasis on essay writing was deliberate because writing is "regarded as a universal skill".
Even so, Leape said there exists a "balance across the course between more statistical quantitative skills and qualitative analysis", as to cater to students from both qualitative and quantitative subjects.
But some students have claimed the one-size-fits-all approach has meant some departments are not represented, or at the very least are under-represented. According to Leape, fourteen of the LSE's seventeen departments are represented in the course.
"I don't think we'll ever do better than that", Leape told the Beaver.
Leape also said that in order for LSE100 to be successful, course organisers had to be "selective" in organising the lectures, as exploring the "big issues" within society would inevitably emphasise certain departments over others.
Some students agree with Leape, even going so far as to saying certain departments should be given even stronger focus.
Patrick McGregor, a second-year law undergraduate, said he thought the course should focus more heavily on economics.
"Many people chose to do the course because of the topic of the financial crisis", McGregor told the Beaver.
But second-year economics undergraduate Palomie Patel told the Beaver she enjoyed the variety of topics covered, saying, "It does give you quite a good general knowledge about key issues, and the course is structured so that you don't have to do too much work outside of class."
Leape said LSE100 offers a means to provide a better educational experience for LSE students.
He told the Beaver LSE100 will be used not only to give LSE students a unique socially scientific mindset, but also as "a way of referring students to places where they can get the right support".
Leape said he hopes that by combining LSE100 with resources offered by the Teaching and Learning Centre, improvement will be seen in the education of all LSE students.
Leape has said also said LSE100 students will see long term benefits such as having more competitive applications when applying to jobs. The LSE Careers Service reported that 83 per cent of recruiters believed LSE100 would make LSE graduates more attractive job candidates than graduates of other comparable universities.
News
in brief
PRESIDENTIAL RACE
Ross Allan, LSE alum, is running for President of the University of London Union (ULU). Whilse studying law at the LSE, he held the position of President of the Debate Society. His manifesto states that he wants to focus "on issues that affect students as students, and in particular students as London students." The major issues that Allan proposes to consider are accommodation, public transport, visas and better provision of resources. Currently, Alan holds the position of Chair of the ULU Senate.
PORTER OUT ON THE STREET
Aaron Porter, President of the National Union of Students, last Monday announced that he would not be re-running for his position. Porter's resignation comes as a result of intense criticism from students that he did not work hard enough to prevent the increase of tuition fees. The 26-year old Porter, who took up the position in June 2010, is believed to have taken the personal criticism that he has been subjected to very hard. At one event Porter was scheduled to speak at in Manchester, Porter had to be escorted away by police to avoid the intimidating shouts of protesters.
IN-HOUSE REVOLUTION
Last week, Iranian security forces launched into the house of the son of Mehdi Karoubbi, a pro-reform clergyman, placing him and his wife under house arrest. According to Dr Katerina Delacoura, who is part of the LSE Department of International Relations and an expert on Iran, the tactic of house arrest is one of the major tactics used by the Iranian government in their attempt to crush opposition. Delacoura states that the government, which came out in support of revolts, has been attempting to tie these revolts to their own revolution.
MOOTING VICTORY INSIGHT
The LSE Mooting team sailed through to the final round of the London Universities Mooting Shield competition for aspiring lawyers. In last week's round, the LSE team went head to head with Birbeck College at the Supreme Court. In a decision made by Lord Dyson, the LSE team triumphed with a 16-5 victory, securing them a guaranteed spot in the final. The team will face Queen Mary in the final round, a team that, earlier this year, they beat 18-3. One team member said, "Bring it bitch".
THE SOCIAL NETWORKER
Dr Jordi Robert Ribes, author of the blog 'Networking and Business', delivered a lecture of 'Face to face vs. Facebook: Networking to your objectives', a topic relevant to LSEers who are both Face-book and networking enthusiasts. The event, hosted by the LSE SU Economics Society is part of the series 'coffee with the speaker',that allow students to meet the speakers and engage with them on a more personal level.
GOT A SCOOP?
Got a story that you think we should be printing? Send us an e-mail: news@thebeaveronline.co.uk

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The Beaver 11 March 2011
News
Candidates descend on Bankside
Simon Chaudhuri
Bankside House Hustings got off to a tardy and confused start as organisers were unsure whether candidates for some positions would be permitted to speak since not all candidates for these positions were present.
Half an hour behind schedule, it was decided that only candidates for the positions of General Secretary, Activities and Development Officer, Community and Welfare Officer, Anti-Racism Officer, International Students' Officer and Women's Officer would speak, to ensure a fair contest.
Aspiring General Secretaries Daniel Kroop and Alex Peters-Day were both well-received. Kroop promised 'to ensure your voice is heard in the union' and spoke of students 'torn away from a relationship with their union'. Peters-Day focused on providing a Student Services Centre 'that doesn't disrupt' - its construction work is anticipated to be completed in 2013 - and she closed with her crowd-pleasing 'Alex Peters-Day, For Every Step of the Way' slogan.
Amena Amer, candidate for Education Officer, opened by stating that 'education is the cornerstone of our society', while Alexandra Kane alluded to the recent student protests, stating that 'before anything national can happen, we need to fix our problems at home'. Both candidates argued that the LSE should do more to bring more lectures online for students' convenience.
All of the prospective Community and Welfare Officers - Lukas Slothuus, Leena Taha and Hannah Polly Williams - emphasised the issue of bringing the LSE's halls of residences together to foster a sense of community. When asked their opinions on the recent occupation to Freeze the Fees, Slothuus and Taha both supported the action - Williams, on the other hand, highlighted that occupation should be used sparingly if possible.
Activities and Development candidates Stanley Ellerby-English and Mohammed Najmul Morley both took a light-hearted approach to the hustings, with both arguing for greater integration within LSE and better activities beyond the classroom.
Anti-Racism Officer candidates Sher-elle Davids and Eden Dwek took different
approaches to their speeches. Davids provided detailed proposals, including a 'Combat Ignorance Week' on campus; Dwek claimed that 'it's always the same people getting involved student polities'.
The presence of sexism in the Athletics Union was a topic broached by the candidates for Women's Officer, Lucy McFadzean and Rebecca Sunter. Sunter emphasised the 'need to work tirelessly for every woman on campus' and McFadzean suggested 'confidence building and public ¦ speaking workshops' for women as well as an International Women's Week at LSE.
Gaelan Ash and Hannah Geis differed in their focus on the role of International Officer. Ash drew attention to the government's tightening of student visa eligibility, claiming that such actions will 'totally destroy LSE's ability to attract the best talent from across the world'. Geis focused on developing informal international links, suggesting a global network of 'couch surfers' for LSE students to draw upon.
LSE STUDE
Budding Sabbs in UG
Vincent Wong
Senior Reporter
Fancy dress test for AU hustings
Alex Haigh
Members of the LSE Athletics Union (AU) filled the Quad last Wednesday, 23rd February, to hear the manifestos of AU members hoping to represent the Union for the 2011-12 academicyear.
Each candidate was told to wear fancy dress, and the event took on a light-heart -ed feel as the candidates presented their ideas for the year ahead.
Candidates are competing for the position of AU President, as well as five available AU executive positions.
This year's electoral scheme represents a change from years past, when
members were elected to specific positions within the AU Executive Committee, such as events officer, communications officer, liaisons officer, treasurer and secretary.
Brendan Mycock, one of two candidates for AU president, told the Beaver he thinks the change is a "breath of fresh air for the AU's organisation", as work that may previously overburden individual roles now "can be shared over all of the exec positions giving a more productive and better outcome for the sporting, and wider, LSE community".
The two presidential hopefuls, Mycock and Hendrik Scheer, did not disappoint the audience with either their costumes or
their campaign ideas.
Mycock, referencing his surname, came to the stage wearing a full-body phallus costume, while Scheer dressed as Superman.
Other memorable outfits included Tom Lennon, an AU executive hopeful, wearing a mankini. Joshua Stacey, dressed as a character from the film "Anchorman".
Wednesday's proceedings included both serious statements on the candidates' plans for the AU, as well as the fun and games more often associated with the AU. These included a beer downing contest for the presidential hopefuls, and a dance contest for the executive candidates.
Campaigning for the LSE Students' Union 2011 Lent Term elections kicked off last Thursday at 1PM with hustings at the Union General Meeting (UGM) and in the Quad.
The twenty-five candidates vying for eleven Executive Committee seats addressed enthusiastic and questioning audiences.
They were joined by the five candidates for the two available Board of Trustees positions, and the ten candidates competing for the five open Democracy Committee positions.
Hustings for the four available Sabbatical positions - General Secretary, Education Officer, Community and Welfare Officer, and Activities and Development Officer - took place at UGM.
Aspiring General Secretaries Alexandra Peters-Day and Daniel Kroop spoke first.
Peters-Day promised to "prioritise fees, widening participation and financial support", adding she wanted to create a Students' Union that would be "with [students] every step of the way".
Kroop promised to "ensure [students' voices are] heard in the Union". He said he would also focus on teacher evaluations.
Kroop also said he wanted a "big, star-studded orientation concert".
Both candidates also promised to work on ethical investment and to campaign for transparency about donations to the School.
But the candidates differed in their responses to a question about political aspirations. When asked, Kroop, unlike
Peters-Day, did not explicitly deny a desire for a political career.
"Politics and public service matter," he said.
Prospective Education Officers Amen^ Amer and Alexandra Kane spoke next.
Both promised to "fight" for students and to take action before the start of the next academic year, but whereas Amer's speech focused on the idea of an activist Education Officer, Kane emphasised "representative engagement".
They were followed by the three candidates for Community and Welfare Officer, Hannah Polly Williams, Lukas Slothuus and Leena Taha.
Williams stressed the need to unite the student body, vowing to fight for improvements to widening participation and against cuts to welfare provision. She promised to run a "listening campaign" to find out students' concerns.
Slothuus too promised to defend welfare provisions. He also said he wanted to actively represent students, to fight against discrimination, and to campaign for the School to set up an ethical investment policy.
Taha said she wanted to "make every student feel welcome" and to combat stress. She also promised to improve support networks and to further widening participation programmes.
The three candidates were asked whether they supported the Students' Union Vegetarian Society's Meat Free Mondays initiative, which would result in the removal of the sale of meat products from LSE catering outlets one day a week.
Whereas Williams seemed determined to take the programme forward, Slothuus was critical.
LSE Opens its doors to the world's debaters
Conor Rushby
Senior Reporter
Last weekend the LSE Students' Union Debate Society hosted the LSE Open tournament for some of the most prominent debaters from around the world. The competition saw nearly sixty teams from around th6 world travel to Aldwych for a weekend of debate and partying.
As LSE was the host university, no home teams were allowed to compete; however, the "open" tournament style allowed those who had recently left university to take part. Among the debaters were a barrister and journalist. Azeem Sulemanji, Treasurer of the society, said, "We always enjoy hosting the Open because every year it attracts such a high quality of debaters". Sulemanji added, "It is harder to make it to the quarter-finals at the LSE Open than at the World Universi-
ties Debating Championship (WUDC) because the debaters who participate are so experienced and seriously good".
The competition was won by a team comprising a student from Cambridge University, Sam Block, and a postgraduate student from Oxford Univesity, Jonathan Leader Maynard. The winning team were awarded a bottle of champagne for their day of debating. Sam Block was also rated the best speaker, winning a bottle of wine. Sulemanji said, "Simply, they were awesome! They were really on form".
Among the motions debated were "This House would make blackmail contracts legally enforceable," and "The House believes that the West should oppose Arab democracy."
Scott MacDonald, Convenor of the tournament, said, "The standard was incredibly high with many of the best debaters from years gone by returning to compete. It wouldn't have been possible without an army of keen volunteers from
the society, all of whom deserve a hearty congratulations for making the weekend such a success."
LSE belongs to the IONA (Islands of the North Atlantic) debate circuit, which operates like a sports league, with fixtures being held every weekend at different institutions. This year LSE have won the Oxford IV, York Novice Cup, Durham-Newcastle Novice Cup and have been finalists in the UCL President's Cup (another novice tournament), UCL IV, Inner Temple IV and the John Smith Memorial Mace (the English National Championships), and semi-finalists in the SOASIV and the Oxford Women's Open.
LSE A is also ranked in the top four teams for British parliamentary style debating in the world, making it to the grand finals at this year's WUDC in Botswana, having consistently beaten almost 400 other institutions to do so. Next year's WUDC will be held in Manila, in the Phil-lipines.
Students bid for dinner with Davies (and dog)
Lauren Fedor
Last Tuesday night saw the conclusion of the LSE Students' Union Raising and Giving (RAG) Society's annual RAG Week, with the RAG Week and Development Society People Auction raising more than £2,200 for charity.
The auction, which gave students the chance to "purchase" some of the "most eligible and exciting members" of the School community, offered nearly twenty lots, including faculty members, Students' Union officers, and LSE notables, in an evening's frivolity which took place in the Quad.
The RAG President told the Beaver RAG was "very happy" with the event, as "everyone was very generous".
The average price paid per auctionee was "a lot higher this year", she said.
She and General Course student Phil
Greene hosted the auction, asking those "on the block" to talk about themselves and share any hidden talents.
Many students, including the UGM Chair, President of the Students' Union Debate Society Judith Jacob, the Students' Union Disabilities Officer and a second-year government undergraduate standing for election, serenaded attendees, with numbers ranging from Gilbert and Sullivan songs to Broadway show tunes.
Other students touted their culinary skills. Students' Union General Secretary Charlotte Gerada offered five courses of "traditional Maltese cooking" while Tara Lee, a second-year sociology undergraduate, told attendees she would cook them a "full day of meals", with breakfast, a two-course lunch and a three-course dinner.
Sir Howard Davies fetched the night's highest bid, with one student paying £380 for a night with the School's Director. Like Gerada, Davies promised to cook dinner for the lucky bidder, adding his dog would
join the winners for the meal, too.
Professor of Economics Danny Quah, who offered bidders an evening of dinner and Halo gaming, fetched the night's second-highest bid, with a group of students paying £300.
Also among the highest-valued "lots", Sachin Patel, Executive Editor of the Beaver, was sold for "£100 and a rim job" to former Pulse Station Manager Stuart McColl and the Clare Market Review Editor-in-Chief.
In total, RAG Week activities-which also included such events as Battle of the Halls and "Gunge-a-Sabb", as well as speed dating, a pub quiz, bingo and a salsa-dancing workshop-raised an estimated £8,000 for three charities: St. Mungo's, Women for Women International and African Street Child Organisation.
Angxy letters raise threat of Rosebery rent strike
Alex Haigh
Following a series of emails exchanged between residents and management at Rosebery Hall over the past month, the frustrated residents, led by the Rosebery committee, ate poised to commence a rent strike.
Residents say they are increasingly irritated by the continued delays in improvement works on the hall's bathrooms.
The hall website originally stated that improvement work was "aimed to be completed by the end of January 2011".
Residents were also told the two sets of showers in need of refurbishment would not be under construction at the same time. But work on the second shower area began on 17th January, while the first set of showers still under construction. Works on the second set of showers have yet to be completed.
A first-year geography and economics undergraduate standing for election sent a personal email to Rachael Elliot, head of Residential Life at the LSE, on Friday, 11th February, saying residents felt the "rate of progress" was "unacceptable".
The complainant outlined problems with the design of the first batch of bathrooms that have already been completed. He cited difficulties with the showers' sensors, pools of excess water on the bathroom floors, and lack of privacy in the showers among residents' concerns.
Rosebery management have told students they do not understand the causes of such complaints.
Elliot responded to the complainant in an email, writing, "I am really struggling to understand what it is that angers you about this project".
The student responded to Elliot's comments with "sheer anger" over the way the project has been handled. Describing how the project had been "plagued with failures and misjudgements throughout its whole period", he outlined further concerns about the construction project. Such issues included sporadic shutting off of the water supply and excessively noisy construction work. He also said the lack of
osebery bathrooms still not up to scratch
hoto: Duncan McKenna
locks on the shower doors was cause for concern.
The Residential Life office said the student should have used the appropriate channels to direct his concerns about Rosebery's refurbishment by going through the student committee, elected to represent Rosebery residents. The Rosebery committee itself, led by Rafie Faruq, has launched its own campaign against residencies management. On 24th January, Faruq met with Hero Austin, Community and Welfare Officer, as well as representatives from Residential Life, to discuss how to resolve the issue.
It was agreed that the Rosebery residents would be individually and collectively compensated for the inconvenience of the construction work, receive a formal apology and two deadlines were set for the completion of the remaining work. Faruq said, "We are just waiting for a final comment from Residences Management. They are already two weeks late in coming through with the compensation that they promised and their formal apology". If the students remain unsatisfied, the committee is mandated to lead a strike.
Faruq told the Beaver that of the five promises he received when he met with Rosebery management on 24th January, only one has been fulfilled. Residential Life has agreed to purchase a pool table for communal use as part of the compensation agreement.

News
5
i March 2011 i The Beaver
Aspiring Students' Union officers spar at hustings
Photos: Aisha Doherty
4TS' UNION
M tete-a-tete
He said that despite practising vegetarianism himself, he would not "preach" its virtues to others.
"There must be catering options for everyone," he said.
Taha said that she would listen to "every one's views" before considering.
TTiree candidates for Activities and Development Officer - Guarav Srivastava, Mohammed Najmul Morley and Stanley Ellerby-English - then took the stage.
In their speeches, all of the candidates focused on greater integration within the LSE and encouraging student participation in activities beyond the classroom.
They also promised to extend the Give It A Go programme to Athletics Union (AU) activities, to work on a new system for funding societies' purchases, and to improve societies' access to the School's resources.
Srivastava has since dropped out of the election.
Hustings for the seven available Part-Time positions - Athletics Union President, Anti-Racism Officer, Disabled Students' Officer, Environment and Ethics Officer, International Students' Officer, LGBT Students' Officer and Women's Officer - took place in the Quad, immediately after the UGM had concluded.
The two candidates for Athletics Union (AU) President, Brendan Mycock and Hendrik Scheer, promised to make the AU more accessible, and to foster better links with the LSE's Raising and Giving (RAG) society.
Both Mycock and Scheer seemed to support the promotion of events which do not involve drinking.
Sherelle Davids and Eden Dwek, aspiring Anti-Racism Officers, indicated intentions to.improve the representation of smaller societies, with Davids argu-
ing for greater promotion and Dwek for a greater role for assemblies.
Both also vowed to make the role of Anti-Racism Officer more proactive.
The incumbent Disabled Students' Officer, Polly McKinlay, is the sole candidate for the position in this year's election. She said she plans to continue making the School more accessible for disabled students and to work on the provision of lecture notes and^mprove legibility of lecture slides.
Brendan Greenfield, Lois Clifton and Jay Stoll, the three candidates for Environment and Ethics Officer, said they would foster environmental awareness schemes.
Greenfield and Clifton said that they would also make the issues of corruption and transparency about donations a central part of their campaigns.
Gaelan Ash and Hannah Geis took different approaches to the role of International Students' Officer. Ash spoke on protecting students from national immigration reforms, while Geis focused on developing informal links between students around the world.
The three LGBT Students' Officer candidates, Benjamin Butterworth, Emma Kelly and John Peart, promised strong representation and more events to increase awareness of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) issues.
Meanwhile, Lucy McFadzean and Rebecca Sunter differed in their approaches to the role of Women's Officer. McFadzean stressed activities on campus, whereas Sunter focused on outreach programmes. The two agreed that spreading awareness of women's issues in different cultures was important.
Campaigning continues throughout week eight. Voting opens at 10AM on Wednesday, via an online ballot.
RATIONALE
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on the future of regulation
The changing dynamics
of consumer culture	Know your dominant strategy
UNION JACK
Or rather, this is supposed to be where Union Jack goes. Sadly all this satire doesn't go unnoticed by our dear constitutional leaders, and amidst the general freaking-out, this week's column was deemed completely inappropriate. Apparently it made non-factual judgements about election candidates, which might have swayed your opinion come voting day. Jack doubts that, but is really too drunk to do anything about it.	(
This would never have happened in the Giddens days.
Grossman offers a taste of entrepreneurship
Luke Smolinski
On Tuesday night, a room packed full of members of the LSE Students' Union's Food Appreciation and Entrepreneurs societies was treated to Loyd Grossman's tales of LSE in the 1970s, MasterChef, and pasta sauces.
Clearly impressed by the size of the audience gathered to listen to him, Grossman said, "Obviously re-runs of Come Dine With Me aren't on tonight."
Grossman began the evening by telling his fans about LSE life when he was at the university in the mid-1970s. Virtually nothing on campus has stayed the same, he said; the Wrights Bar is probably the single part of the LSE estate which hasn't changed. Back in the 1970s, he said, the School had no facilities, but it didn't matter, because it was in the centre of the "greatest city in the world". Grossman said, "LSE had nothing to offer except great teaching and great fellow students". The audience responded by tittering.
Britain at that time, he said, had "nothing approximating joie de vivre". In a climate of industrial unrest, there were evenings where there were power cuts from 7.30 to midnight. At that time, he said, 50 per cent of people went to a restaurant once a year. Now, 35 per cent of people go to a restaurant once a week. Britain, he said, wasn't used to eating out.
Grossman said part of the problem was that British television had no popular cookeiy programmes; there were a few food programmes, but they were serious programmes, aimed at gourmets and enthusiastic amateurs. Television now is "littered with food programmes", he said, but only because of MasterChef, the show Grossman made in the 1990s. The bizarre thing was, he said, BBC Executives put it on at a "graveyard shift" as they believed that "no-one wanted to watch people tasting food, if they couldn't taste it themselves".
It was around this time, Grossman said, that he came up with the idea of selling ready-made pasta sauces. He told the story of going along to a marketing
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executive with a suitcase of pasta sauce. The man looked at Grossman and said, "Tell me about it." Grossman explained that the sauces were different because they used extra virgin olive oil, fresh herbs, sun-dried tomatoes and so forth. The man stopped him mid-sentence, leaned in, and said gruffly, "If my wife spent more than 99P on 500ml of pasta sauce, I'd fucking kill her!"
Grossman said he didn't think the man was joking either.
When the market research came in, Grossman said he was exasperated at the insanity of some of the advice: one woman said "she'd never buy it because there was too much flavour". Another person said she wouldn't buy it because you could see the olive oil; when it was explained to her that this was because there were no emulsifiers, she affirmed that she still didn't want to see olive oil. One man said he wouldn't buy it because he didn't know what puttanesca was and unless it was in English, he would never buy it.
Despite all this Grossman decided to plough ahead. He said, "The only thing to do when you have a sauce factory is to make sauce."
Benjamin Wigoder, President of LSE Entrepreneurs Society, said, "This was one of our best attended events this term, with a turnout of around 130 students. Loyd's witty and fascinating story was thoroughly engaging and we all went home with a reinvigorated entrepreneurial spirit!
m
A younger, sexier version of The Economist
Attend our launch party sponsored by Bloomberg, March 10
6
The Beaver 11 March 2011
News
Students sleep out at St. Paul's
Amnesty International-organised event raises awareness about homelessness
Shrina Poojara Senior Reporter
Last Thursday forty students from the LSE and the University of London slept outside St. Paul's Church, in Covent Garden, in conjunction with 'Still Human Still Here' campaign to end the destitution of refused asylum seekers.
The sleep-out was organised by Amnesty International UK and STAR London as party of the 'Sleep-outs to End Destitution' initiative, which ran over thirty-two sleep-outs in over twenty-five areas across the country from Monday to Sunday of last week. Over 1,000 students across the UK took part in this week's sleep-out campaign. The action was a follow up to the Amnesty International and STAR national sleep-outs in March 2008, where over 750 students took part in twenty-one sleep-outs.
Student Amnesty International societies were represented from several London universities, including the LSE, UCL, KCL, SOAS, City, Barts and University of the Arts London. Oliver Sidorczuk, 3rd year LLB Law at LSE and co-chair of the LSESU Amnesty International Society, said, "It was great to see so many University of London students coming together
and campaigning for such an important cause. The fight's not over though - we'll be lobbying Parliamentarians, asking then to make a serious effort to change the UK's ridiculous asylum system laws."'
Hannah Shaw, student manager from Amnesty International UK, said, "The aim of the sleepout is to raise awareness with the general public. But, more importantly, (it exists) to put pressure on decision makers to try to get them to sign our declaration about permission to work for asylum seekers who are left in limbo."
The campaign focuses on granting work permits to asylum seekers who have waited for more than six months for their asylum claim to be considered and those whose claims have been refused but who cannot return to their own country for practical reasons. The campaign also aims to improve the quality of asylum decisions, the provision of support provided to those waiting for a decision to be made and their access to healthcare. Emma Williams, Chief Executive at Student Action for Refugees (STAR), added, "Tonight is about giving the voiceless a voice through students".
An evening programme ran from 8pm to 10pm, during which there was music, food and speeches delivered by several individuals who had first-hand experience
of the asylum process. This attracted large crowds by the Covent Garden piazza. The speakers included representatives from Asylum Aid and the Refugee Council. There was also a moving street theatre performance, led by Annet Henneman of Teatro di Nascosto, about the arrivals of refugees to Europe. The sleepout took place in the courtyard of the church, with some students spending the night in sleeping bags while others slept on cardboard sheets, braving temperatures that reached as low as 8°C.
Peter Yates, LLM student at UCL, who participated in the sleepout, said, "The lack of publicity on the issue was one of my main reasons for participating. There's a huge amount of misinformation about asylum seekers in the public sphere. Many people don't realise that giving destitute asylum seekers the right to work won't encourage economic migration and that it won't impact on the availability of jobs for British workers as jobs would be allocated from the list of roles which are currently understaffed. If people knew about these points, I think the vast majority would support the idea of giving asylum seekers the right to support themselves."
Fiesta is no siesta for Spanish Society
Marion Koob
Senior Reporter
The recently formed LSE Students' Union Spanish Society says it is pleased by the turnout at its first event, a "Spanish Fiesta" held at the Salvador and Amanda, a bar in Covent Garden, last Thursday, 24th February.
The event aimed to launch the Spanish Society and heighten its presence on campus. More than 300 students attended, with the most party-goers seen around midnight.
"I was worried at the beginning", a society member told the Beaver. "At nine, there were only a few of ys here, but afterwards the atmosphere got a lot better."
The £5 price of admission granted attendees a free glass of sangria, an offer many party-goers enthusiastically embraced. At times, large crowds formed around the stall, as the bar staff struggled to keep stocks replenished.
The music consisted of many well-known of Spanish pop songs, to the great joy of students making use of the dance-floor at the back of the venue.
In addition, numerous party-goers told the Beaver the populated bar rated high in the realm of human aesthetics. "I
need to find my wing man," said an LSE student who wished to remain anonymous. Event organisers said they considered the event a success.
"We all had a fantastic time and that was the main purpose, so we are very happy in the society!" Teresa Garcia-Alonso, events and social coordinator of the Spanish Society, told the Beaver.
"Finally, we ended up selling out more than three hundred tickets. We indeed did not expect this many people", Alonso added. "This gave us the chance to meet a lot of students interested in Spanish culture and that has encouraged us to organise as many activities related to Spain as possible."
The Spanish Society seeks to work with other cultural groups in order to promote multiculturalism and Spanish culture. In order to promote Thursday's event, the Spanish Society worked with other Latin American societies.
The society is working to plan many other events before the end of term, including flamenco shows and public lectures with Spanish politicians and academics.
Next week, on Monday 7th March, the Society will host a reception following a public lecture by Patxi Lopez, a Spanish Basque socialist politician.
State secrets an open book for Hennessy
Heather Wang Senior Reporter
Professor Lord Peter Hennessy delivered a talk about "secret state books" concerning the Cold War last Wednesday, 23rd February, at the LSE.
Hennessy, a professor at Queen Mary, is an honorary fellow at the LSE. Hennessy was a journalist for twenty years, writing for the Times, the Financial Times and the Economist, among other publications. A published author, he presented on BBC Radio 4.
Hennessy began Wednesday's talk by saying he hoped the evening's subject, "Catch-up History and the Cold War", could bring "a touch of consolation" to the study of this period. Hennessy said when studying history, we "should be haunted by what we miss, let alone what we failed to understand in our attempts to pick up particles and patterns of the past".
Hennessy spent most of the talk discussing the declassification of various state documents. Over the past twenty years, he said, "top-secret" documents about the Cold War have become available to historians.
According to Hennessy, British scholars and the wider public owe a great deal to William Waldegrave, John Major's cabinet office minister.
During his time spent working under Major in the early 1990s, Waldegrave allowed Hennessy to interview him for Radio 4 on the subject of open government. On the programme, Waldegrave invited the historians to let him know which government files, which had been retained beyond the normal thirty years of confidential classification, they would like the Whitehall to try release to the public.
Hennessy said the so-called "Waldegrave initiative" produced a "bonanza" for the academic community. In 1998, some 96,000 files were made available to
the public. The assistance of Whitehall continues today, Hennessy said, and "now, there must be well over 150,000" documents available.
The "Waldegrave initiative" is extremely important, Hennessy said, adding, "It gave historians a very substantial new historical currency with which to trade and the product is a growing number of books, articles and thesis written by PhD students and master's students, and indeed, at undergraduate level, too."
Looking at the successful experience of the "Waldegrave initiative", Hennessy then revealed his "tricks" to the audience. This was of special relevance to "those who are setting eyes on the PhD", he said, adding that in securing the continued release of documents, proactivity is extremely important.
Hennessy encouraged students to take the "Waldegrave initiate" route when trying to have documents declassified and reassured the government had been very
good at helpingyoung scholars.
According to Hennessy, another historical breakthrough was the full avowal of Turnstile, the nuclear bunker in the UK, released by the Ministry of Defence in 2004. It was very significant as, when Hennessy first visited part of it in 2001, "it was still technically a deception".
Hennessy spoke about his visits in the Turnstile, including his time spent in the room where the nuclear retaliation would be launched had the Cuban Missile Crisis tipped over.
"It was fascinating", Hennessy said.
Talking about the influence of the Cold War on the government, Hennessy said, "The designers of the new protective state were pretty well all shaped by inside Cold War experience".
There were also similarities between the military plans of 2011, and actions in the early days of the Korean War, in September 1950.
At the same time, some things have
changed as a result of the Cold War, Hennessy described these "discontinuities". There are almost no Government mysteries today, compared with "the intelligence secrets" of earlier years, he said..
Finishing the lecture with contemporary insights, one audience member asked Hennessy how he feels about Wikileaks.
"I'm an open government man, but I'm not a Wikileaks man", Hennessy said, rejecting the idea Wikileaks is about the freedom of information. He described the leaking of secret information as a "pussycat thing" to do and deemed Julian Assange, the founder of the Wikileaks, an "absolute sod".
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Mutually assured ^|11Wmce - of its efficacy
LANGTON
Despite my mannerisms, hair and spare-time activities, I am not a hippie, and this why I cannot argue for the complete abandonment of nuclear weapons. And no, this isn't blasphemy or treachery of the leftist ideal, it's just common sense.
The truth is, getting rid of nuclear weapons is a bit like lubingyourself up on Hampstead Heath with your trousers down and just assuming nothing is going to happen. In the minds of those supporting the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, there seems to be an unrealistic ideal of a world where a nuclear deterrent is not necessary. In this fantasy world, Kim Jong-il and various other people that shall not be named are not actually s completely insane, and will never pose a threat to the West or its allies. We all wish this was true, of course, but it isn't and never will be.
I think the most important thing to remember is that having nuclear weapons is a deterrent, and not an aggressive military measure - for Western countries at least. To put it crudely, the whole point of nuclear weapons is to stop crazy leaders of rogue states from actually thinking they pose a genuine threat to other countries.
It's a bit like the parenting tactic of letting your kid piss about a bit and then when they go too far you threaten to give them a smack, or a good telling off depending on how good a parent you are (Yes, I did just compare the West's nuclear deterrent against the world to parents and children). The United States will never stop being the Global Policeman and will persist in repressing naught leaders. It is
the nuclear deterrent - admittedly along with the mildly impressive air force - that will continue to make their threats far from hollow. America has made some colossal foreign policy mistakes, but that doesn't mean I'm not glad they're still around to threaten Ahmadinejad when he finally loses all sense of reality. These people don't compromise.
Even David Miliband doesn't seem entirely convinced that the UK should rid itself of all nuclear weapons without mass co-operation from the rest of the world. He is certainly for reducing stockpiles, but doesn't commit to anything unless 'everyone else does too' like an insecure child at school. But I completely see his dilemma - how would anyone expect us to make the first move? By doing so you would be admitting delusion and be joining the small group of people already lubed up and trouserless on Hampstead Heath pretending to feel all self-righteous and confident, when in fact they are more scared than anyone.
The cost, however, is a tiny bit of an issue, most notably for Trident. Figures seem to vary massively, but around the £9-iobillion mark seems about right. The exact figure is beside the point anyway - it just costs a hell of a lot. So, just as I ask myself every time I choose to spend 4op more on a pack of cigarettes by treating myself with some Winston: is it really worth it? In times such as this, it is pretty hard to justify billions of pounds of maintenance on Trident, let alone the original start-up cost. The bottom line is that it's worth it if there are genuine present or potential threats to our country and our allies. Unfortunately, the people in government are probably the only ones that truly know how genuine the threat is. Regardless, none of it is worth the risk and I'm going for a yes on Trident and nuclear armament. %£
Getting rid of nuclear weapons is like
lubing yourself up on Hampstead
assuming nothing is going to happen
Isitreall worth the cos and mora bankruptcy tha will surely com as part q the package?I just might be
What is the government's main job? To bring about a pattern of social justice by redistributing resources? To use its authority to make and enforce laws? To protect the freedom of markets? People with radically different politics will see the state as having, at bottom, radically different functions. Some like big states, other like small states and they differ accordingly in their conception of the legitimate scope and purpose of state activity.
Despite this plethora of views, it is reasonable to suggest that everyone, despite their ideological views or party affiliations, can agree on one thing. That is, a government should protect the security of its citizens. It can do all the redistributing and legislating it wants— but if it fails to look after its people in the face of belligerence from overseas, we probably wouldn't vote it back in.
Saying that New Labour and the modern Conservative Party have radically different political ideologies would be a tremulous argument. Nevertheless, they have, over the years, disagreed with each other in several fundamental respects. Not this one though. That they both see the security of citizens as the foundational priority of government is demonstrated by their mutual commitment to upgrading the Trident Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile System, the UK's independent nuclear deterrent.
I remember seeing strong opposition to Labour's plan to upgrade die system when first adumbrated in 2006. At the time, 95 Labour backbenchers voted against the proposal in Parliament. In fact, it only passed with the support of opposition Conservative MPs. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament had a field-day, getting the megaphones out of the loft and starting a vociferous 'Scrap Trident' campaign. The Church of England and Greenpeace, among many others, also expressed their disapproval. Not quite a state of national hysteria, but the story did make headlines for a while.
So it is a surprise that five years later; with an entirely new government in office,
WILLIAMS
and the plans for upgrading the Trident system still on track, the nuclear issue is eerily silent. The megaphones are back in their lofts, re-accumulating all that dust that Tony Blair unsettled in 2006. Why? Is the question of whether the UK needs an independent nuclear deterrent any less controversial now than it was then?
That the government is currently engaging in the most sweeping set of budgetary reforms to be seen in a generation must account for the deterrent question's reticence. When people fear for their jobs, they aren't inclined to hold passionate ideological opinions about things like these. Nevertheless, the reluctance of the issue to re-enter public discourse won't last forever. Once it has become clear that coalition policies represent, on the whole, the best remedy for the legacy left to it by the profligate temerity of Labour, the Trident question will certainly re-emerge. In fact, given the new patterns of diffidence likely to be adopted by Iran and Israel in the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution, the question might resurface quite soon.
There are all sorts of problems with the plan to upgrade Trident, ranging from the ethical to the financial; from the strategic to the practical. Given these, is it really worth the cost and moral bankruptcy that will surely come as part of the package? It just might be. This question needs to be asked: is an independent nuclear capability necessary for the British Government to fulfil its duty of protecting its citizens from the (very real) threats that they face? If the answer is yes, then Trident must be upgraded.
This will be a delicate and divisive debate. Time is ticking until it goes off. %£
T'" 7

8
The Beaver t March 2011
Comment
Stop waiting for a miracle
Afghanistan needs to get over its martyr complex and present its people with options
111 Mubarak get his job back?
loto: ifick'r usei rwpike
ti's never ending blame game yonderbob
Asad
Rahim Khan
In September 1996 Mohammad Najibullah, Afghanistan's fallen president, was besieged in Kabul. The United Nations complex he had taken refuge in had come to be surrounded by the Taliban, hitherto unknown to the world. After an abortive attempt to flee to India, Najibullah caved in to his negotiators and emerged from the compound that had protected him for four years. He was seized, had Russian currency stuffed in his mouth, mutilated, shot multiple times, dragged through the streets, burnt with lit cigarette ends and trussed up from a streetlamp in Kabul's busiest city centre. Hence the Taliban government was inaugurated.
Few wept for Najibullah, once the pitiless head of KHAD, Afghanistan's intelligence outfit, during the 1980s'
Soviet occupation. His tenure saw the often arbitrary torture and murder of some tens of thousands of Afghan civilians, besides helping a deranged Murtaza Bhutto hijack a Pakistani airliner and shoot dead a blameless army captain on board. Najibullah's reputation as KHAD's frenzied killer was rewarded by the Soviets with the presidency in 1987. Communist presidents Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin had both been murdered by their successors, and Najibullah was consigned to the same fate in Afghanistan's unhappy history.
Hamid Karzai now presides over the making of that history with self-pitying abandon. And though some neighbouring heads of state are also fantastically unpopular, Karzai definitely has the thickest skin in the region. He glides over the WikiLeaks cables with diplomats blue in the face from his blaming every minute problem on Pakistan. He ignores the think tanks calling his brother a venal influence-peddler with an appetite for the booming drug trade. He is up against the most desperate enemy in recent memory but presumes the US-led NATO forces will stay forever. President Karzai, in effect, is sprinting towards the fate of other Afghan leaders sponsored by a withering occupation. And if Taraki, Amin and Najibullah were all killed (with the exception of Babrak Karmal being given the chance to flee to Moscow), Karzai's chances, at least through a shallow historical lens, look grim.
Sadly, no one can help the Afghan state when it cannot begin to help itself. Its
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
foundation is bolstered by an exhausted, increasingly casualty-prone NATO. Its recent domestic achievements include elections too rigged to have a conversation about, spurning human rights groups, and 'reconciling' the irreconcilable Taliban, bored by their successes in the south. Its entire premise rests upon American attention, egging on foreign aid, looking towards India and resenting Pakistan. And out of all the above, only looking towards India has delivered. India has made much headway into the country as per winning over hearts and minds, investing in infrastructure and human development. Its accomplishments are commendable. But the knee-jerk reaction for Afghanistan's well-wishers has often been to point to India's soft power while perceiving Pakistan as bent on control via arms and coercion. This way of thinking needs to change.
t is true that during the Soviet invasion, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia contorted Afghanistan's essentially nationalist struggle into a holy war: a citadel of Islam fighting the pagan hordes. But more than anyone else too did Pakistan play a role in the Soviet withdrawal by single-handedly coordinating its neighbour's entire resistance movement (this achievement since having been ridiculously attributed by Western historians to Ronald Reagan, to perestroika, to even the idiotic Charlie Wilson). Pakistan also suffered more than a fraction of the pain Afghanistan did in taking in three million Afghan refugees, the largest such population in history, and having to absorb them by force to disastrous effect in its north-western province. It now faces the backlash of America's war in Afghanistan: sporadic terrorist attacks by rabid militias on home soil, foreign 'diplomats' gunning down civilians in broad daylight and the wholesale murder of mostly innocents by unmanned US drone attacks conducted by joysticks in Virginia. It's not sophistry to say Pakistan has suffered more for Afghanistan than anyone else has.
Then there's the heavy criticism Pakistan faces over strategic depth, a policy allegedly followed by a long line of its generals with regards to Afghanistan. Everyone enjoys screaming about how cavalier strategic depth is, which in basic terms is Pakistan utilizing Afghan territory as a sort of reserve basement when pushed up against India. Yes, it does sound like abuse. But Pakistan aids chosen groups in Afghanistan as opposed to letting the tinderbox implode once everyone withdraws and then explode across the Durand Line and into Pakistan, which has already begun. India's logistical help to ISAF, derided as I Suck At Fighting by the staff of General McChrystal (who was subsequently sacked for such admissions)
Has the North African revolution really spelt defeat for Neoconservative interventionist styled regime?
Ben Rogers
North Africa and the Middle East are needless to say, in the middle of a once in a generation set of events that have already led to the downfall of two regimes with a third in Libya hopefully to follow. The most noted and quite rightly applauded characteristic of all of the recent uprisings is that they have been internal revolutions led by the people and the grass roots democratic movements of those countries. It seems-that the masses have stood up to their tyrants with amazing results. Talk of a repeat of 1989 is featuring in the public domain and one wonders if more regimes fall how long it will be before commentators begin to reach into the attic and then resurrect that all too fateful term 'the end of history'.
Even if not everyone is getting quite that far ahead of themselves and sales of John Lennon's Imagine aren't making too dramatic a comeback, at least we can all
agree on the point that US led Neoconservative style regime change has expired as a method of liberating the peoples of the Middle East from dictatorships with much fewer casualties. Or can we?
Once the waves of euphoria die down and the situations in both Egypt and Tunisia are re-assessed we have to confront some disappointing truths. In both cases only the head of the regime has been removed and in its place has arisen the all too familiar faces of the close associates of Ben Ali and Mubarak. In the case of Egypt the new acting president, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, is a lifelong friend of none other than... you guessed it, Hosni Mubarak. The expert judgement of Robert Fisk on the situation has already forewarned of a short period of relaxed government followed by the introduction of emergency power acts and there is little so far in the history of the Middle East to suggest otherwise. Maybe this is where Roger Daltrey and The Who can be credited as being a superior musical accompaniment to these events, rather than Lennon, with their lyric 'Meet the new boss, same as the old boss'.
So if Robert Fisk is vindicated within the next year or so, we will still be looking at an Arab world with only one function-
ing democracy, that infamous neoconservative creation, known as The Republic of Iraq. This begs the question of whether removing more than just the head of a regime and restructuring the power institutions of the state, as the case of Iraq, is our most effective tool so far for bringing credible democracy to the Middle East than popular uprisings? Could a people's revolution have succeeded in Saddam's Iraq? The whole sale slaughter of both the Kurdish and Shia opposition during his reign and the forced dispossession of the Southern Marsh Arabs sadly suggests otherwise. Should we also have left Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Kuwait to the method of people's revolution? And aren't the Libyans currently deploring Western inaction?
I sincerely hope that my argument is proved wrong, but just in case of the unlikely event of history repeating itself, we should not be so quick to right off the neoconservative method. I am aware that this article might have a rather repulsive 'the empire strikes back' feel to it for most anti-war readers. However, they still have their work ahead of them if they wish to forge a viable alternative, splendid isolationism or shouting war criminal at heads of state not being options. £
is of the same vein: assisting proxies in gaining footholds. And the reason no one's proxy is the Afghan army is because of the army's own helplessness.
The hard fact of the matter is that Afghanistan and Pakistan share a massive land border, decried as porous by the media to no end. They share a Pathan ethnic group that is Afghanistan's largest and Pakistan's second-largest. The Pakistani state has freely cultivated its support under the noses of opposing governments from Daoud's to Karzai's. And no amount of foreign intervention or for that matter soft power, can neutralize geographical, historical and ethnic factors this profound. Pakistan and Afghanistan are, simply put, stuck with each other and if the Pakistani security apparatus cannot only tolerate but use this dynamic to its advantage, there is no reason the rickety Afghan state cannot gradually build up the capacity to
do the same.
Second, though it isn't a perfect solution (there are virtually none in this depressing scenario), the situation would vastly improve with American withdrawal which a majority of Americans unsurprisingly support. Naysayers talk of the drawn-out internal bloodbath following the USSR's exit, but that was also in large part because of the deliberate neglect Afghanistan faced afterwards by nearly all concerned parties. If the US can remove troops and actually 'nation-build' rather than keep proposing it, that may be an effective strategy, as India has come to find. And both countries can continue bettering the lives of the average Afghan without the additional, near-impossible objective of impeding Pakistan's room to maneuver. All this can only happen once the government actively pushes for withdrawal and more importantly, proves credible in
handling such a withdrawal.
And though it remains both spiteful ! and pitiful, the Afghan state has at least begun asserting itself recently. But it can only point fingers when it has made an, at the very least, semi-respectable attempt at providing some of its citizens basic facilities and, failing that, strengthening its own forces to cope with the future withdrawal, and failing that, devising a foreign policy that is not solely obsessed with Pakistan and the US, and failing that, cleansing itself of the feckless Hamid Karzai, and failing even that, not embarrassing itself with pathetically fixed elections and incoherent policy statements. The Afghan people, having witnessed a constant state of war since the 1970s, are of an inherent dignity in the face of so much pain. They deserve better than the | Afghan state.
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Comment
i March 20111 The Beaver
How to properly rerum cognoscere causas
Love it or hate it, LSEioo is here to stay
Election Candidate
a
To know the causes of things". That's our motto and is the core aim of the new LSEioo course that the LSE has launched to improve our employment prospects. The logic is that LSE graduates are skilled in our own fields but employers don't like our narrowly focused programmes and would like us to have broader skills. Thus, if you're a first year, you now have to take part in the LSEioo course to develop your skills to "think like a social scientist". Good idea, no?
Well, there seems to be some debate about just how good an idea it is. From the get go, students have been complaining about the new course and its not surprising.
First and foremost, it feels a little bit like the School is attempting to teach us all the social sciences while teaching us none. While that might sound a little counterintuitive, bear with me. Because this course is delivered to first years across 37 departments in the school - a total of 1271 students - the course has to be pitched in a way that is accessible to mathematicians and to anthropologists (Is it just me that sees an issue with that principle?). You can't design a course that fits that many people, all who applied to the LSE with unique expectations about what they want to study. I've heard people saying that they feel at some points the course is like a GCSE level subject while others argue they don't understand an ounce of what's going on. Moreover, LSEioo counts a whole o per cent towards your final degree classification. So whilst you're sat in the Peacock Theatre, you can be safe in the knowledge that this compulsory fifth module is of no consequence to everything else you do. Then the administration wonders why people are questioning the relevance of the course when not only is it pitched poorly and counts for nothing, but more than that, for most of us, the course overlaps with content already on our respective degree programmes.
Now I'm not going to just sit here writing all the things that I think are wrong with LSEioo, because, for what its worth, I actually think it's a good idea. So instead, let's get constructive.
Firstly, if you're going to make me sit a compulsory module, make it a core module as part of my degree programme - don't tag it on as a fifth and expect me to care about it because it appears on my transcript. Make it worth the effort! Most,
if not all students have an outside option available in their first year - swap it for LSEioo.
Secondly, because you can't teach us all at the same level, as I mentioned above, make LSEioo customized for each department so I don't study the same content twice. In the School's defense, they've given the SSLC an explanation of why the course is designed this way - mostly money and inflexibility of the School as a whole - but whilst these changes might take significant investment, students will soon be paying anywhere up to £9000 as a minimum to study at the LSE - and they should have their money invested in a course designed around them.
Thirdly, get the timing right; don't make me sit through lectures on writing skills in our sixteenth week of the academic year! I can appreciate why the
It feels a little bit like the School is attempting to teach us all the social sciences while teaching us none
LSE has timed this module the way that it has - we don't feel overwhelmed with work in our first term and we don't get burdened duringyear two's exam period. But seriously, giving me a lecture on essay writing - that admittedly could have been pretty useful - when I've already finished all my formative work this year, is a little nonsensical. I don't know about you, but if I haven't figured out how to write an essay by week sixteen, you may as well book me for a resit now! Of course not everyone takes qualitative subjects so these skills aren't useful to them right now on the course, but if LSE 100 is designed to boost our skills set, boost it right at the beginning so we can hit the ground running, not 16 weeks too late.
Now I could go on, but I dare say someone will write for the Beaver either commending or condemning my comments and elongating the debate, so instead I'll leave you on this note: LSEioo is a good idea and a potentially yery useful course. But the LSE needs to get serious about this. If it doesn't, it will be seen as a laughing stock forever more, and they wouldn't want that - not with all the money they've invested in those luxury embossed folders. ^
Quick
COMMENT
Let's See Europe- What else can LSE stand for?
Libyan Subsidised Economics
-	Anser Aftab & Usha Patel, General Course, International Relations, 2nd year BA History
Learn Something Exciting
-	Sir Howard Davies, Director of the London School of Economics
Low Self Esteem
-Sachin Patel, Executive Editor, The Beaver
Lacking Student Experience
-Alexander Young, Features Editor, The
Beaver
Learn to Screw the Economy - Priyan Patel, 2nd year, BSc Mathematics & Economics
Little Sexual Exploits -ChuTing Ng, 2nd year, LLB Laws
Loud Shit Egos
- Ahmed Alani, Design Editor, The Beaver
Luxury Super Express - Sean Cox, President, High Holborn
Leaders in Strange Experiments -Kunal Gupta, 2nd year, BSc Economics
Moses
Lemuel
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Politics as tacit knowledge
You don't need to be an expert to offer an opinion
mediated by the people's representatives- the politicians who presumably know more about what governing is really about.
I don't wish to argue for or against
One might think that the role of the expert can be democratised in the modern world, devolved to a larger base of 'common man' experts in a context where knowledge is widely available, thanks to a trend that can perhaps be traced from the invention of the printing press to the advent of mass literacy and most recently to the development of information technology. Apparently not.
Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein referred to "that whereof we cannot speak", a tacit kind of knowledge that agents draw upon in order to interpret meanings in a language, knowledge that can only be apprehended in its instantiation as part and parcel of practices that comprise social life. This knowledge, therefore, cannot simply be codified and read off the pages of a book or on any communicative medium. It has to be lived. A field of expertise may be regarded as a kind of language, if we apply principles from structural linguistics to the wider realm of social theory. And it makes sense in this instance. Experts are experts not just because they have read a large number of texts on a subject (though that certainly helps), they are experts because they have been extensively engaged in a body of knowledge and have participated in the social activities that are central to the production and reproduction of the knowledge and the field. In other words, they know it inside-out.
I find politics especially interesting because rather than just being interwoven with power relations in the Foucauldian sense, most knowledge pertaining to the field deals directly with power. Are there experts in politics? Michael Oakeshott certainly thought so. Politicians, those who know the art through extensive experience, are supposedly the experts. However, taking a cue from the title's reference to Max Weber's Politics as a Vocation, we have to be slightly careful: Are politicians the experts or does the label more accurately apply to the political bosses?
Oakeshott seems to believe that the statesman rather than the campaigning or vocational politician, although the ability to acquire and retain power in a democratic context is certainly implicit to his conception. So let us treat politics in the sense that relates to governance and whatever political manoeuvring is necessary to govern a society. A kind of elite theory of democracy that this notion of political expertise implies is consistent with a rationalisation of representative democracy. Representative democracy is held to be superior to direct democracy because 'a government by the people' is
the notion of politics as tacit knowledge here, although I think it is undeniably true to some extent. Instead, I want to offer a critique of expertise as a myth whereby the expert becomes a high priest of knowledge who is to be consulted and heeded, as augurs were, in an uncritical and almost superstitious manner. Simply put, we sometimes think too highly of experts. And with their own interests in mind, they seldom want to correct us. Rather, they readily assume the robes of the high priest.
To do so I have in mind experts who do n §'t actually understand what they are talking about. We can have a significant amount of certainty about their ignorance when it comes to very recent political events, as insufficient time has passed to allow for an extensive body of reliable knowledge on it to emerge. The Harvard professor who was dead wrong about the North African/Middle Eastern political upheavals comes to mind here. Yet we still see experts coming forward to offer their opinion on this very topic, even as events are still unfolding. It might not matter so much if they were merely at risk of being wrong but they are also party to the framing of the present struggles of real people as political theatre, as a spectacle for entertainment or as a commodified platform for making a point. And these experts congregate or belong altogether in the media, eager to broadcast their messages to a wide audience partly because this may further their careers.
Thus, I much prefer the historian's perspective—at the very least, the intervening dimension of time allows for observation that is more respectful and accurate. This notion has some implications on the question of whether politicians can be trusted as experts.
Not having the luxury of dealing with content that is mediated by time and yet (unlike many experts in the media) having to deal with it all the same, politicians are frequently engaging in necessary guess work. Tacit knowledge could certainly help in making 'educated' guesses, but given the incentives involved, we do not always know whether they want to make guesses for the benefit of the public. This suggests that while it is generally pretty stupid to tell scientists that they are wrong about things like climate change, this is not the case with politicians. When it comes to certainty in their knowledge, as well as their integrity, occasional scandals notwithstanding, experts in the natural sciences are in a completely different class compared to experts in politics.
Hence, for the sake of a publicly-oriented participatory democracy, we should feel free to take up the role of the common man who is a political expert. It is only for our own good.itf
The frightened free marketeer
Why we, as consWmers, need to stop buying everything salesmen say
Why
Nicola Alexander
Some hippie, I think it was Smith, told us that the invisible hand will prevail so that consumers and producers will live in a balanced bliss. Clearly, Smith never stepped foot into the Apple store on Regent Street. The chaos that I behfeld as a tiny consumer amidst the mass of £1000+ laptops and blue-clad geek-sperts shone an uncomfortable spotlight on the truth that consumers everywhere are beginning to quietly realise: we are nothing against these conglomerates.
There was once a time, when all those beautiful truths of the free market were reality. Consumers and producers worked in harmony to negotiate prices, there was equal information on both sides of the transaction and power was balanced. Something changed.
First came the law. Anyone who has been to a bazaar in Morocco, or one of the hundreds of tiny kiosks that line the
dusty roads of South Africa, will know the thrill of the negotiation. For those who live in the developed world, this exhilaration is magnified given the stark contrast between buying a hand-beaded necklace from a grateful local craftsman at a bargain and purchasing an over-priced piece of jewellery from a dissatisfied till-person at one of the chains in a London shopping district. A piece of jewellery that probably bastardises or 'inspires', depending on which side of the hemisphere you sit on; a tribal symbol for fertility. That bargaining power acts as the justice-scale of the free market, measuring how power is divided between buyers and sellers.
But since the age of the modem commercial lawyer, the scales have begun to tip.
The introduction of standard form contracts has eroded our power as consumers. You've definitely seen a standard form contract. It's that long document that is typed in tiny print on the back of your receipt, handed to you before you buy a mobile phone, or pops up when you're about to download software from a computer company. And that quick tick that you mark, or click, 'I agree', signs away all your freedom as an active consumer. What this means is that every time you go
to purchase a mobile phone or a laptop, you now have two options: either sign the contract and agree to the terms or don't take the goods and choose to communicate with the world via messenger pigeon or, worse, post.
The standard form contract exists to make life 'easier', which certainly makes sense for the big conglomerates, because, let's face it - consumers are better seen, not heard.
Second came the salesman. The slimy salesman was birthed at around the same time of the standard form contract, which came into popular use in the 1960s, although similar breeds of the salesman have existed throughout history; the conman, the poker player, the gangster. The slimy salesman is superior to these primates in that he has mastered the art of being subtle. From the conman, the salesman learnt that there is a very fine line between a downright lie and a hint in the wrong direction. I will draw from personal experience to illustrate this. I was told by Rhys at the Apple store, that every Mac-Book came with iWork - the equivalent of Microsoft Office. Naturally, when I breathed life into the laptop and found that it was iWork-less, I was outraged at having been lied to. "No", I was told,
"That's salesmanship!". Apparently, the distinction here is that, since every Mac has an application through which you can download 'iWork' for £36, it was no a lie to be told that it comes on the laptop.
From the poker player, the salesman learnt to hide behind a screen. Poker players know well that the eyes are the hands of the face, they give away everything you're feeling by moving. It's no wonder then that your hardcore poker bum will wear sunglasses and a trucker cap. Similarly, the salesman hides behind managers and deputy managers. Notice that if you ever have a problem with an employee at an institution you will likely to passed onto someone who has training on how to deal with people like you - so that you can never confront the salesman who made the preliminary mistake and may, under interrogation, admit it.
But the greatest lesson that the salesman could ever leam is from his gangster brother. The gangster taught the salesman that, sure, knowledge is power, but really, size gives the most power. With the force of a hundred fellow branches behind you and a head office that is harder to contact than those imprisoned at Guantanamo, you are the big boy in the playground. The consumer is the weedy kid getting
i-(cm
punched.
But as consumers we should take some responsibility. For one, Blackber-rys, Macs, credit cards and university admissions are luxury goods. They are a symbol of status. The pressure of society to attain these 'high end' goods means that demand, in almost every case, outstrips supply. We want them much more than they need us.
Furthermore, Applications such as Blackberry Messenger, WhatsApp, files saved on a computer and credit cards are all network economies. Their value increases as the number of people who have them grows. Would a MacBook be as valuable if you were the only one who had one and you couldn't email any documents to PC users? If consumers didn't value a product en masse, they wouldn't have nearly as much power.
I should have said at the beginning, I am a die-hard capitalist and browser of the free market. But markets, as they stand today, have decided that profit comes before people. Herein lies the problem. This is a decision and a distinction that did not have to be made. Consider this a call to arms for all consumers.
+«
The Beaver i March 2011
The Sabbs of '68
Nathan Briant discusses changes in activism at the LSE
union meeting to union meeting." If a student chose to be an activist, they were going to be an activist for the vast majority of their time: it was a real commitment.
Although I can't say that I was terribly surprised that the Beaver had not been a fulcrum of Union activity, it does date the period quite well, culturally if anything. In an issue of the newspaper in 1968,
there is a colour advert taking up half a page for The Graduate, with the famous picture of Dustin Hoffman looking at a (and what's actually not Anne Bancroft's) leg; in another edition there's an interview with 'Radio 1DJ' John Peel. And if the Beaver's accused of being right-wing in comparison to the Union's position now, it was totally the reverse back then. When Crouch told the Daily Telegraph, just before he resigned, that the newspaper was run by the Anarchist Society, in the next edition of the newspaper the Beaver put that right: they wrote that only some of the people working on the newspaper were part of the Anarchist Society, thank you very much.
Whether or not Crouch and Shaw stood on much more polarised political footings forty years ago it's surely significant that whatever their politics then, both Shaw and Crouch are today members of the Labour Party and both voted for Ed Miliband in the party's leadership election last year. That said, Shaw, living in Brighton (I interviewed him in his swish kitchen, and told him that the area reminded me of Hampstead - he said that was no surprise; it's known as London-on-Sea by some), voted for the first Green MP elected in Britain in Caroline Lucas last year's general election, so maybe he's still more radical and left-wing than Crouch.
But one thing's for sure: the 1960s' politics reflect a very different world to today's. And one thing is clear: their generation of the LSE had stuff to protest against, and, boy, they did.Uf
With the seemingly endless activism that has been going on at the LSE this year, it is getting difficult to tell whether people are joking or being serious anymore. There have been occupations to protest against the national protests on the rising of the tuition fees and Saif al-Is-lam Gaddafi's donations to the Centre for Global Governance and protests against Chris Huhne and Jeremy Hunt (although I'm still not entirely what the protesters were against exactly since much of the chanting was about Rupert Murdoch and BSkyB, not tuition fees) and another protest against the Greek Education Minister, Anna Diamantopoulou. When the Twitter feed of the 'LSE Occupation' was (probably) hacked into yesterday, announcing, "Ladies and gents this week we will be occupying The Garrick in protest at rising coffee prices", I stared at my computer screen for what might have been minutes, in two minds whether it could have been genuine or not. I was nearly taken in.
As someone who does believe that the right to protest and politics are important but also disagrees with the way that the Students' Union has gone about it, a few weeks ago I started to seek out opinions and information about what it was like in the late 1960s, when the LSE was the nationally recognised font of all things radical. Mick Jagger had come and gone a couple of years before and was doing whatever he (still) does, and students who had arrived in the mid-1960s with short hair were (perhaps) leaving university with a longer do, maybe having had a few doobies along the way.
But, whatever my general apathy towards what's now bandied around as 'direct action', what went on then seems so much more accessible, worthwhile, in comparison to now - although surely there was just as much parochialism and banality in the 1960s as there is today knitted within everything else more exciting - and the technocratic arguments
which some students somehow have to try to fight against today. Protesting against the price of a latte going up from £3.40 to £4 in the Garrick could so be a legitimate student concern at the LSE in 2011.
Similarly, a total scrapping of tuition fees which hard left-groups argued for was plainly an unrealistic aim - Labour's £3,000 tuition fees introduced years before made that impossible and the coalition's bleating about the national deficit at last year's general election even more so. Similarly, the LSE's behaviour on the donation via Gaddafi's son to the Global Governance centre was regrettable to say the least, but much of it was only stirred by the fact that Gaddafi's father and his cabal suddenly started doing what he's done for forty-one years on a wider scale and in view of the world's TV cameras. The protesters had had thirteen months since the donation was mooted and then given to make their displeasure felt.
The issues of the mid-late 1960s were more black and white - and more fierce. It's hard to disagree that Vietnam was a just cause that students protested against from the start - and even if their influence was infinitesimal on a global scale, LSE students took to Grosvenor Square in a seminal protest in 1968 against Harold Wilson's government for not condemning American military action. Fighting for civil rights and against racism are other just causes of that time which would surely get (the vast majority of) students' support today. That the LSE's Director at the time, Dr. Walter Adams, was loosely connected (but still connected) to the apartheid regime in then-Rhodesia- now-Zimbabwe - since he had worked for the state University College of Rhodesia - gave students at the time something genuinely reasonable to feel outraged about. That the Rhodesian High Commission was (and still is) on the Strand made it easy for LSE students to take a sizeable protest down there. Students today live in better and more stable times; our parents' generation, or even before that, had more
things to legitimately rail against.
When I interviewed two former students at the LSE, Colin Crouch and Martin Shaw - both former sociology students who started at the LSE in 1965, who are now both Professors at Warwick and Sussex Universities respectively - they both pointed towards France as the place where the student and protest movement truly (and famously) kicked off, particularly in 1968. But both proudly added that the LSE was one of the most important universities in the "cultural milieu" of the 1960s' student protest movement. Although there was university protesting around Britain, it was notably "more diffuse" than protests today, says Crouch. "There were [protests at] Leeds, Essex, Oxford and various other places - and we were the first."
Much more of the LSE populace were more politically engaged and politically idealistic, but there were times when for students immersed in political activity values had to be reassessed. In one protest against the appointment of Adams, as the then Union President (a General Secretary leading the Students' Union was introduced in the 1980s), Crouch was attending a protest, standing next to a porter who suffered a heart attack and died. Having always relied on the 'moderates' for support in the Union - the Conservative, Labour and Liberal societies - he says that he became less fond of direct action and protesting after that.
As a result of his moderately-altered views, he became increasingly unpopular amongst the Union faithful, and from being elected in March 1968, he didn't see the year out as President of the Union - he had resigned by late autumn. Looking at past copies of the Beaver it is clear how much Crouch was resented by the left for being too staid and not keen on protesting. I put it to him that people "didn't like him too much", and fortunately he replies, "no, no", laughing. Thank god for that, I thought. I still don't know how I would have reacted if, forty-three years later, he
was still emotionally raw about it all.
Martin Shaw, on the other hand, was politically more radical than Crouch at the time - but just as suspicious of violence in the protest movement. Looking back, he classes himself as a 'second-tier' leader in the left-wing International Socialists within the Socialist Society at the LSE. But once security gates were installed (and subsequently torn down) around the LSE campus in February 1969 to prevent protesters entering buildings, and major figures within the Union were banned from speaking, Shaw stepped up to speak against the victimisation of students who had been responsible for removing the gates. There were 2,000 students there that day and Shaw remembers it being "very tense". It's no wonder - he was speaking to over half the Union.
Crouch and Shaw say that both theoretical and practical arguments were regularly used, a notable contrast to the issue students have to deal with today. Crouch says that being "a sociology student at the time you could link what you were studying to [student politics]. And we argued in terms of social theory"
I was interested in the way in which people organised themselves in those days - surely there was a radical difference then to what we have today when someone can set up a Facebook group, send an email round and post something on Twitter. The answer to this, and making sure that everyone was there was, unfortunately for this publication, not the Beaver newspaper, but just regular - very regular - meetings. Shaw says, after I asked about the importance of the student media around at the time, "The Beaver wasn't terribly important - in all deference to the Beaver - but people read it" -1 think he added the last bit as not to make me feel that the publication I've been writing for throughout university was totally futile. "Among the activists there were very frequent meetings, meeting several times a week, mixing socially, in the bar, making posters, and it tended to go from
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i March 2011 i The Beaver
Libya after Gaddafi
Leonora Rumsey analyses the case for democracy
At the time this article was written. Colonel Gaddafi's avowal that he would never relinquish Libya was ever more insistent. His son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi's plans A, B and C offer all point to the capitulation of the Gaddafi regime. There is no question that Gaddafi ought to go; historical injustices aside, in this last week he has effectively declared war upon his own people. Saif has claimed that if the Libyan people continue to behave as they have been, they can "forget about democracy, forget about reform" -as if Gaddafi has spoilt them with those sacred rights. No, Libyans won't get the political democratic reform they crave if Gaddafi stays, but their fate without him will be no bed of roses either.
Last Sunday, one man on the ground said: "Our goal is simple: We want Gaddafi to leave. We want freedom...We want democracy." The goal is indeed simple, but the reality will likely be something much more damaging. Gaddafi's departure does not guarantee a new era of reform: freedom will likely bring a civil war before it brings any semblance of democracy.
For a start, Libya does not even have a constitution. If Gaddafi were to go, there is nothing to make of the country politically. This is of course Gaddafi's own doing, a ploy to ensure that whilst he may be nothing without Libya, his country is also nothing without him. The army has been engineered to safeguard against a military coup; it is riddled with divisions and there is no overarching authority ready to step in, as was the case in Egypt. Socially, the country is a tangled mass of different tribes, which supposedly maintain their historical divisions. Gaddafi's own tribe, the Qadhadfa, has done well from his regime, and knowing the repercussions of association should Gaddafi fall, it will likely fight to the death to keep him in. On top of this, Gaddafi has made sure no trade unions, Islamist movements or po-
litical parties exist, so a future power base cannot come from those arenas. Libya post-Gaddafi will need to be conjured out of thin air.
This may seem a very pessimistic view on what is a hugely heroic undertaking by the Libyan people, a people who suffered terrible atrocities for something that we never need even question over here: liberation. Obviously, the status quo in Libya must change. Gaddafi must go. At any rate Libyans are too far in to turn back now, even if they do realise that their bid for freedom is a form of suicide. So entangled are the fates of Gaddafi and his country, however, that it is difficult to imagine the people's noble cause triumphing over their belligerent dictator. He will not flee clutching moneybags as other exiled leaders have done. Gaddafi will ensure the country is left on its knees before he bids it farewell, ushering in a new era of conflict as Libyans come to their feet again and a ruling people emerges. Left to its own devices, Libya seems doomed. It remains to be seen whether the world will stand by and watch.
Already that great structure of worldwide humanitarianism, the UN, is oiling its somewhat stiff diplomatic arm, ready to extend it and all the diplomatic weapons at its disposal against Gaddafi. This week, the UN adopted a resolution condemning Gaddafi and establishing a commission of inquiry to probe possible war crimes by Libyan authorities. The Colonel seems rather unfazed by this, perhaps reckoning that he has a good few years before that institution readies itself to call him to order. Easy as it is to mock the UN for its slow response system, the crisis in Libya has witnessed a key turn with regard to diplomatic cooperation with Gaddafi. The Libyan mission to the United Nations in Geneva has broken ranks with the government in Tripoli, with the Libyan diplomat Adel Shaltut declaring that the mission's loyalty lies with the
protesters.
America has begun the process of diplomatically isolating Gaddafi. Unilateral sanctions have been imposed, US military cooperation suspended and Gaddafi-re- , lated assets frozen. It is expected that the UN will follow suit. It is a step in the right direction, but one that we all know will do little to affect the battleground in Libya. Indeed, it is difficult to take seriously the threat of diplomatic and economic isolation when North Korea, currently posed to enter a new era of nationwide famine, stands as a testament to the idea that brutal regimes can survive such cold treatment at the expense of their peoples.
What the people of Libya need is action right now. The UN has so many bureaucratic hoops to jump through that by the time it is ready to intervene in Libya the situation there could be nothing short of apocalyptic. Action must presumably come therefore from third parties: sovereign states with a vested interest in Libya's future. Already, ideas about a no-fly zone are surfacing: it is questionable how effective this would be since the fighting in Libya has now moved on from aerial bombardment and is predominantly on the ground. A no-fly zone will not be able to protect those sites from tanks and the artillery of his mercenaries. Some have argued that a no-fly zone as implemented against Iraq in the 1990s is tantamount to military action.
And so we arrive at the possibility of military intervention in Libya. Whilst it seems the surest way to rid the country, and indeed perhaps even the world, of Colonel Gaddafi, it opens up a whole host of calamities. For one, the Libyan independence movement would become inevitably tainted by "collaboration" with foreigners. Once it appears that the West is behind them, the pure, nationalist desire of the protesters will be overshadowed by the enormity of the situation.
And what motives would bring the
West to the forefront of the Libyan conflict? Rumours are swirling about an oil price shock, which would surely lead to a downturn in the US economy. Oil conglomerates across Europe are becoming increasingly concerned about the safety of oil reserves. On a purely humanitarian level intervention is needed; however, given the level of accommodation proffered to Gaddafi in recent years, Britain comes to mind here, it is difficult to say that the world has had a vested concern for the fortunes of the Libyan people. Thus, while it is the only reason intervention is desperately required, it does not seem to be the motivating force behind the West's gradual turning against Gaddafi.
One cannot think about military intervention in the Middle East without memories of America and Britain's most recent forays there: Iraq and Afghanistan. They cling to our memories and will guide any policy that is initiated against Gaddafi. The tragedy of intervention in the name of humanitarianism is that too often it is initiated too late; countries are cautious, requiring justification that they acting correctly, and thus the death toll mounts. Rwanda is a case in point here. In fact, the evacuation of foreign nationals from Libya reminded me, with a sense of foreboding, of the situation in Rwanda in 1994, when United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda's (UNAMIR) swift evacuation of foreigners allowed Rwanda the shield from global criticism it needed to begin the genocide.
By the time this is published Libya's fate may already be decided: Gaddafi may be departed, the world's forces may have descended, or perhaps the protest may even have been crushed. Any of these outcomes spells a difficult road for Libya. And if Iraq and Afghanistan are anything to go by, democracy in the Middle East (with the exception of Israel) is only a spot on the horizon.iC
\

^ ...a layman's look at science
" You and me baby ain't nothing but mammals...
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0 let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel."
So sang comedy punk rocker Jimmy Pop in the Bloodhound Gang's 2000 hit, "The Bad Touch". Familiarity with Pop's take on love was practically a prerequisite of growing up at the turn of the millennium. In the song, Pop eloquently reveals his yearning for sex of the most basic kind, calling on the animal world as inspiration for simple, no-strings bonking.
Findings published in last week's American Journal of Primatology suggest that there's more to animals' sex lives than Pop seems to think. The report outlined the mating rituals of Capuchin* Monkeys and in particular, a tendency among male Capuchins to rub themselves with their own urine. Which account paints a more accurate picture of animal sexuality? The perfunctory caricature conceived of by the Bloodhound Gang or the aqueous kink of the Capuchin monkeys? Your correspondent had to get to the bottom of this issue.
A few moments of nauseating research disprove the widely-held belief that humans are alone in finding intercourse pleasurable. In fact, it appears the Bloodhound Gang were emphatically wrong about how they do it on the Discovery Channel. Take the example of the Bonobo monkey, believed to be a fully bisexual species. Intercourse occurs between both sexes and almost all ages. Primatologists have observed Bonobos using sex as a means of greeting, conflict resolution and post-conflict reconciliation. Busy with a lifelong Bacchanalian jungle orgy, its no wonder the Bonobos were overtaken by us in the evolutionary race.
I'm fairly confidant the all-male Bloodhound Gang wouldn't want to "do it" like the Chinese Mantis, chief practitioners of sexual cannibalism. After intercourse, the female eats the male, saving her the trouble of finding food later. The post-coital habit is said to account for 63 per cent of a female Chinese Mantis's calorific intake. In a redefinition of our understanding of altruism, the male Mantis is believed to consent to the process. Imagine the conversation:
Mr. Mantis: "Darling, I want to give our child the best start in life I can."
Mrs. Mantis: "That's so kind ofyou sweetheart. Do you mind if I eat you alive?
Mr. Mantis: "Of course, cutie pie.
After all, our baby needs the nutrition"
Weirder still are hermaphroditic flatworms. Reproduction for this species' involves what scientists have so tastefully dubbed "penis-fencing". Two flatworms "fence" till climax and then ejaculate on one another, absorb the necessary fluids through the skin and have a baby.
Somehow I doubt penis-fencing was on the minds of the Bloodhound Gang when they penned 'The Bad Touch'. The moral of the story, therefore, is a simple one. When an American punk band ask you to "do it like they do on the Discovery Channel", say no.
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The Beaver 11 March 2011
Features
Religion and science
Louise Heuerty analyzes progress in the Catholic Church
The Vatican has decided to join forces with the Italian scientific community and more specifically with the Italian Space Agency (ASI), with the introduction of a new website entitled 'The Universal Portal of Cosmology'. The website's purported aim is to provide a greater understanding of the universe,
interpreted through both science and religion, whilst attempting to shatter the popular view that the two are mutually exclusive. The four main topics addressed will be theology, astronomy (including space missions), philosophy and art, with the Vatican overseeing the theological aspects while the ASI deals with the science.
The intention is for the website to be available in both English and Italian with three access portals, one for students and professors, one for scholars, and one for the general populace. The main attraction is predicted to be the cosmology section,
which will feature the latest space data from satellites and unmanned probes,
as well as up to date information on American and European space missions.
The Vatican's front-runner on the scheme will be Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, the dean of the philosophy department at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome.
Claiming that he believes in both God and Einstein's theory of relativity, Basti says the aim of the scheme is to "bring both sides together for the good of humanity - from the Church's point of view, this is about getting religious people to see that scientists are not the enemy and getting scientists to see that religious people are not the enemy."
It is perhaps fitting that he might use the word enemy. This Vatican alliance comes after centuries of not only mistrust but also an extended and violent history of opposition to science and rationalism,
and the persecution and ostracisation of its proponents, at the hands of Catholicism. It only takes a visit to the Italian | capital, where one can easily catch a glimpse of the statue of Giordano Bruno,
to be reminded of this uneasy past. Bruno was a Dominican friar who was burned at stake in the i6oo's for suggesting that
Gaelic gnosis
Maeve Glavey surveys the role of the Catholic Church in Ireland
fresh wave of anger among those affected. At a time of economic and political turbulence in the country, the Church was just one more institution people felt they could not trust. People who wish to continue living lives of faith are increasingly bypassing the formalities of mass attendance and religious ceremonies and pursuing their own version of spirituality instead.
Despite these challenges, the Church is far from redundant in Ireland. Though people may choose not to actively practice Catholicism, they will find it hard to avoid in everyday life. Many schools and hospitals are still run by religious orders. Moreover, its ideas of morality still pervade the general ethos of society and even the law. It is easy to forget that Ireland is a country that only fully legalised contraception in 1980, and homosexuality in 1993. The question of legalising abortion is still among the most sensitive political issues one can allude to.
Today there is an uneasy tension between many of the modern, liberal values Ireland has come to embrace, and its traditional, Catholic roots. The economic crisis has forced many to question their values and to reassess whom they can rely on for guidance in their everyday lives. The Church has undoubtedly failed Irish society in many ways, but it may find in these times of change an opportunity to win back followers by offering them some kind of certainty. Many religious orders and charities still do excellent work within Ireland, and have offered refuge and advice to those adversely affected by the crisis. If this is to be built upon, the Catholic Church will need to be increasingly open and show that it takes abuse within its organisation seriously. It needs to be more proactive, and face up to its shortcomings rather than sweeping them under the carpet.
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the universe was infinite - just one of many to pay the price of falling foul of the church's doctrines by challenging orthodox teachings. With this in mind, it is easy to sympathise with those who are suspicious when religion ventures into science generally, and in this case specifically. Since the Catholic Church started embracing and accepting certain aspects , of science, (mostly those that were blind-ingly obvious) it has always been selective * of what science it embraces and what it rejects for conflicting with doctrine. As such, it seems perhaps wise to question religious motives.
According to the mission, it is only with this double view of hard scientific data and its theological interpretation will we ever
discover the truth of our origins
Claiming that the Catholic Church has come a long way and is no longer suspicious of scientific explanations of the universe, Piero Benvenuti of ASI comments that the venture is about the necessary conjoining of the two parallel realities, exemplifying his beliefs on the intermingling of facts and faith by saying, "I cannot, as a scientist, prove love exists, but I know it's there". According to the mission, it is only with this double view of hard scientific data and its theological interpretation we will ever discover the truth of our origins.
Within the more staunch scientific domains however, the two realities remain very much competing, with the belief that there is a fundamental conflict between a worldview that encompasses a metaphysical reality, and one that does not. Scientific discovery is not a buffet table from which the Vatican can pick and choose which facts to accept as such and which to not. When we begin to ask or discover questions for which the answers are as yet scientifically unexplainable the answer 'God did it' is still very much thought of as religious for 'I don't know'.
Perhaps, however, we should be grate-fid for small mercies?
Despite its past and relatively slow progress, there is no doubt that the Catholic church has made significant progress with its approach to science over the last 100 years. As such, if the Vatican is genuinely participating in this scheme to promote understanding, then hats off at their progression. At the same time however, I cannot help but feel that at least some scepticism is warranted. As with any conflicting ideas based on core concepts, is it not reasonable to assume that eventually one will be rejected or we will seek cognitive dissonance to avoid the issue? With the impressive achievements of recent science, in light of the sharp decline of followers of the Catholic faith, I wonder if this new initiative is nothing but a poorly veiled attempt at compromise because the Vatican knows it is fighting a loosing battle.^
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The Catholic Church was once the mainstay of Irish morality. Growing up in the Republic, you were most likely educated at Catholic schools, taken to mass on Sunday by your Catholic parents and threatened with Catholic reprimands for misbehaving. The country's religion formed a core part of its identity since its founding and was bound up in every part of life. By the 1970s and Ireland's first dip into modernisation, that relationship began to strain.
Ireland took its first steps towards change when it joined the European Economic Community in 1973. Entering the union along with Britain, real prospects for growth started to open up. By the late 1980s, government economic policies had changed dramatically. The Ireland that had once seen mass emigration was attracting investment and creating jobs with companies from all over the world. During this modernising period, mass attendance began to seriously decline. Though individuals have had their own reasons, a sudden multiplicity of choices may have had something to do with their departure in droves. During the 'Celtic Tiger' era, Ireland's rapid growth brought widespread change to economic, social and cultural life throughout the country. Immigration brought new languages, new religious beliefs and new ideas onto the island.
As the Catholic Church struggled to maintain its grip on daily life, another much more sinister threat to its authority was revealed. In the 1990s, a number of television documentaries began to reveal the abhorrent abuses at the heart of its system of control. The programmes documented how hundreds of young people, placed in the care of clergy in hospitals and schools, were the victims of rape and varying forms of sexual assault. The Church largely reacted defensively,
refusing to answer questions and merely relocating accused clergy members from their original parishes away from the scandal. Few attempts were made by the Church to hold offenders accountable.
The Church was just one more institution people felt they could not trust
But the scandal was not easily quashed, and received increasing attention in the 2000s. It was gradually revealed that abuse was widespread not only in Ireland but notably in«the US, the UK and a number of other European states. The Vatican faced increasing criticism from across the world, and within Ireland a number of victim support groups were set up and began campaigning for justice. Under mounting political pressure, several government-funded commissions were set up to report on the issues. As more and more details of abuse spilled forth, public confidence in the Church declined, • and mass attendance continued to drop. By 2008 attendance figures were down 50 per cent from what they had been in 1974. The public's animosity toward the Church was only exacerbated by the slow and inadequate response from its hierarchy at home and abroad. The Church continued to focus on downplaying the scandals and the Vatican offered no formal apology until March of 2010.
Even then, the pastoral letter which apologised to victims stopped short of admitting that the Church had systematically covered up abuses in Ireland and caused a
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1 March 2011 [ The Beaver
Why China will escape
Hea th 2; /ang explains why China will not be swept fay revolution
Last Sunday morning, after reading numerous articles in 'esteemed' newspapers that speculate on waves of protests spreading to China from the Middle East, I decided to write something noting that all of these visions are absolute nonsense. It seems like that for many in the West there are so many 'similarities' between the Chinese regime and the problematic Arabic world. They are or were (in the case of Egypt) both under the rule of a dictator - if you really like the word so much - both have corrupt governments, both have people suffering from unbearable grievances. But the situation in China is in no way compatible to that in the Middle East. Just as I was planning this piece in my head, news of the outbreak of the Chinese 'Jasmine Revolution' jumped onto the computer screen. Yeah right,
great timing. But although a Chinese Jasmine Revolution of sorts took place, the speculations are still nonsense.
The Jasmine Revolution in China -named after the revolution in Tunisia, which led to the ousting of President Ben Ali - was just a few people standing around; I am not even sure if it could be classified as a protest. Although it was reported that there were about 200 people outside the McDonalds' in Wang Fu Jing - the main gathering place in Beijing -most of them had no idea what was going on. They only stayed to find out what was happening. And as Wang Fu Jing is a busy commercial centre, it is not surprising at all that there were many people around. In the other cities, the turnout was even lower. And after 20th February, the day die Jasmine Revolution took place, neither in Beijing nor in the other twelve cities 'involved' were there any further 'protests'.
Despite of the lack of enthusiasm for the calling of protests, the Chinese government, as always, reacted with alarm. Words like 'Jasmine', 'McDonalds", and even 'tomorrow' were censored on the internet. On RenRen, the Chinese
equivalent of Facebook, any accounts expressing opinions related to the subject were cancelled. On the streets, especially in Beijing, there were a large number of police officers patrolling; a few citizens were arrested. Obviously, few in China would find out any of this.
The actions of the Chinese government might sound horrible and ruthless, but in fact, very few in China want to actively oppose it, or oppose it at all. Obviously there are activists and radicals, just like every other country, but they are the minority - the very, very few. But why is there so little unrest? First of all, in the case of those in the financial sector who benefited hugely from rapid economic growth, there exists a contentment with the life that they have; they have, therefore, no intention whatsoever to overthrow the current regime. For those receiving regular monthly salaries, although many among them never have money left over after paying for the essentials, there are still no strong incentives to oppose the government. And those living at the bottom of the society have usually received either no education at all, or a poor one. They aren't aware of any possible political action, and so publicly going against the government is just unimaginable.
The fact that there is little unrest in China is also due to the reluctance of Chinese people to become involved in politics and express their opinions in public. Indeed on the one hand, not many would dare to speak out even if they want to, but on the other hand, most Chinese are politically passive. They do complain in private, but unless it's a life-threatening matter or an extremely serious event, they don't feel the need to be too open.
And most of the time, the government's tight control does not bother the people that much anyway. At least not to the extent that people would risk everything they have to change it. For example, though I find it inconvenient that Facebook and YouTube are blocked,
and Google has a terribly bad connection, I won't start going around with placards campaigning against the strict censorship.
It is very true that there are many problems with the Chinese government. But for many these problems have not yet led to grievances so unbearable that they would join a mass movement against the government. Even those affected extremely negatively by their policies are neither willing nor able to initiate even small protests, let alone mass movement.
Another problem in China is that an alternative way of ruling is not yet imaginable. I often contemplate what kind of government can replace the current one and lead to a better China, but fail miserably every time. Even if there is a better model, how will the changes come about? China is too big and has too many people to risk any revolutionary movements without a well thought out plan. Not just a one- or two-year plan, but a ten- or twenty-year one, would be necessary.
This might sound strange. But it is a paradox that the more protests there are, the more legitimate the government's tight control seems to be and the exercise of a stronger control seems more justifiable. In a way, the government's action has a positive aspect: to prevent non-conformists from disturbing the stability of the society.
So it is rather foolish to compare China with the Middle East. I see little correlation between their governments, people and society as a whole. If revolutionary changes are to be brought in China, they will come through gradual reforms rather than a rapid and physical revolution. It is also a much more feasible and beneficial path for China.i^
The future of funic?
Alexander Young urges media companies to modernise

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For some people, professional misfortune is just something that follows them around: those involved with the disposal of sharps in flimsy gloves; those responsible for the cleaning up of fields after music festivals; and, of course, music industry executives, whose misfortunes seem to increase exponentially with each technological leap forward humanity makes. The media industries seem to be terrified of anything that would have a use in customers more fully using their purchases: whether it be the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) filing against Diamond Multimedia over the concept of space-shifting media from hard drive to MP3 player or the furore over time-shifting implicit in the Sony vs. Universal City Studios case over the ability of Betamax to record television shows, the logic apparent in their reasoning seems to be based upon an implicit assumption that single purchase is not enough for the media conglomerates to be satisfied with the custom of individuals if they expect to be able to use the purchased on all devices they may own.
Such a figure serves to undermine any of the traditional rhetoric espoused by the industry in its attempts to secure stricter legal rights over the content it produces
The latest target of the wrath of media companies has been streaming media services such as Spotify, YouTube and
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Pandora: the analysis of the NPD Group, published this week, demonstrating that consumption of music has increased from 18.5 hours per week in 2009 to 19.7 hours per week in 2010, in combination with a decrease in music purchasing from 70% of people purchasing music in 2006 to only 50% in 2010, had led media executives to conclude that the new models of music distribution are cheating the industry. With the sales of digital music increasingly only from 14 per cent in 2006 to 23 per cent in 2010, the massive decrease in CD sales between 2000 and 2010 (from around $70 per capita in 2000 to around $15 per capita in 2010 in the US), it doesn't seem to be that even their half-hearted secession to the inevitability of the Internet becoming a serious marketplace for media has had the desired effect.
While this is a change from the traditional rhetoric of blaming peer-to-peer file-sharing technologies such as BitTorrent for the woes of the industries, the coherence of their argument seems to be a bit lacking. These streaming services may be free at the point of access to the consumers, but it is certainly not the case that these services themselves do not pay for the rights to use the music: in the case of Spotify, based in the UK, licensing costs of 0.085 pence are charged by the Performing Rights Society (PRS) for each track listened to by any user. At a conservative estimate of one million listeners using the service per day with each listening to twenty-four tracks per day, this racks up around £600,000 for the PRS per month. Such a figure serves to undermine any of the traditional rhetoric espoused by the industry in its attempts to secure stricter legal rights over the content it produces, and any arguments thus to be made against the legality of the licensing-to-stream as the precedent currently permits it.
Such rhetoric usually takes the form of separate moral and economic rationales. The moral reasons take the form of four core arguments: creation, personhood,
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1

autonomy and desert. The creation arguments stem from a intuitively inherent right in the act of creation to have executive rights over the product of their labours, as long as this claim is not to hurt others. The arguments from autonomy is essentially an instance of the Lockean sentiment that one should be able to own what one mixes one's labour with: to enable the respect of one's autonomy, the products of one's exercise of autonomy should have their ownership conferred unto them. Personhood arguments are similar to those of autonomy, with the labours of creation serving to embody the personality of the labourer in the product: for this reason, the personhood of the individual shouldbe protected by the investment of rights in the creator. Desert-oriented arguments stem from a feeling that creators of works deserve to have rights over the dissemination of their work due to the effort expended in its creation or due to the cultural contribution made by the work. The moral elements of arguments against any streaming-based distribution seem vacuous: the rights of creators to maintain ownership of their goods are maintained under all of the four moral claims above due to the nature of the payment of royalties. Ownership rights are not at all infringed where the creators are paid in exchange for the their product: as this is the basis of all exchanges.
Economic rationales thus remain the sole justification that can be offered for the industry's insistence upon streaming services being a cause of their falling revenues; such justifications, however, seem to be a little empty. The dictates of the market are such that companies should be expected to adapt and evolve in the face of new technologies, or else go to the wall. The preservation of old market models through legislation restrictive on the use of media by the individual seems nothing more than a cynical lack of desire to move with the times on the part of the big media companies.Uf
feature story noun
1 a newspaper or magazine article or report of a person, event, an aspect o a major event, or the like, often having a personal slant and written in an individual style.
Want to write for Features?
Email us at
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Measured musings
TWilliam and Kate have invited 1,900 of their closest friends to the ceremony in Westminster Abbey taking place on 19th April. According to the BBC, hotel prices in London went up by around 200 per cent after the date for the wedding was announced, attracting mostly tourists from around the United Kingdom and America. To celebrate the occasion, one can buy 'official royal wedding memora-
Royal wedding memorabilia
bilia', including a mock-sapphire Princess Diana ring; mugs and various forms of china with printed photos of the couple; a teddy bear wearing a 'royal wedding' shirt; and a 3D-laser-crystal-engraved-block with the couple's photo whose tasteless -ness is matched by painted plates with the pair's faces.
Are the memorabilia a form of kitsch, tongue-in-cheek souvenir, or do people actually buy them? Having an aversion to printed photos on t-shirts, mugs or anything else, I wonder where people would keep these items in the house.
Being unaccustomed to any kind of
royalty and much less to their unions, I am left unsure of what to make of the celebration. Why should the country stop working for a day to 'celebrate' their wedding? As William is the second in line to the throne after his father, is the wedding really that politically significant?
The state pays for the cost of security and troops On the wedding parade, and the ceremony and reception themselves are financed by the Queen and the Middleton family. The latter owns a private company that produces party supplies called 'Party Pieces' - which is also profiting on the event by selling a series of flags and party
bits available from mid-February. They have been accused of being opportunistic. Fair enough for them, I think.
Royal memorabilia is traditional to mark so-called important events. Items celebrating Queen Victoria's coronation in 1838 can now fetch between £400 and £600 as collectible antiques. Royal divorce mugs with Charles and Diana looking in opposite directions are now sold for around £50 - as they are unconventional and rare. Although memorabilia is now mass produced and cheap, maybe it can be a source of investment for the grandchildren of our grandchildren.
An artist from Carlisle has created limited edition royal vfedding 'sick bags', with pictures of Kate Middleton and the Prince William and the words 'thrown up'. In view of this anachronistic and expensive royal circus, this is the only souvenir I would consider buying.
At least we're getting a day off. <£
Bianca Nardi
Features Editor
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The Beaver 11 March 2011
Features
Justice and human rights
iTorrey McKenn; describes the issues surrounding extradition in the Dewani case
Mil
...Ireland got home rule?
Election Candidate
The passage ot the Irish Govern-ment Act of 1894 came as a surprise to many commentators; not least because of the general election of that year which was prompted on the single issue of restoring self-governance to the province. William Gladstone, despite being well into his eighties, fought the passage of the Bill with the fire and energy of a man half his age and the capitulation of the House of Lords following his return to office was greeted with scenes of jubilation in Dublin. The vast Conservative majority within the Upper Chamber broadly abstained on the second reading, with the Prime Minister threatening to abolish the entire system if they refused to allow free passage of the Bill. Historians believe that Gladstone had learnt the mistakes of his first, failed attempt to introduce Home Rule and that this this led to more open and discursive negotiations with rivals within the Liberal Party. The defection of Joseph Chamberlain's "Liberal Unionists" to the Conservative whip robbed Gladstone of his majority, but as the Grand Old Man stated on the eve of the defections, "better to have lost the Mayor of Birmingham than the Irish people".
The first seating of the Irish Assembly, the name deliberately chosen to avoid the term "Parliament," opened in the renovated the Customs House on the 4th April 1895 after the election of the previous month gave a strong majority for the moderate "United Homeland Party" which had been formed as a regional successor to the old Parliamentary Party, the latter remaining active at Westminster. Comprised of a lower House of Representatives and an upper House of Councillors, Ireland soon emerged as a unique "Free State" within the British Empire, lacking the de facto independence of the Dominions, but enjoying a direct link with Whitehall.
Despite the Conservative landslide victory in 1896, which saw Lord Halsbury form the first Conservative and Unionist government, the principles of Irish Home Rule were maintained and the following decade of Conservative rule was maintained, although the option of autonomy for the Boers was never supported as an easy solution end to the war in South Africa. The victory of Herbert Gladstone's resurgent Liberals in 1905 marked the end of Halsbury's weak and somewhat forgotten administration, which despite forming warmer ties with the French, achieved little of lasting importance.
Herbert Gladstone, following in the footsteps of his radical father, soon set about establishing his party as a bulwark against the growing force of socialism within the United Kingdom. Led by more radical figures than himself, including such luminaries as Winston Churchill, who introduced the first minimum wage, Henry Asquith, his long-serving Chancellor, and his eventual successor as Prime Minister, Sir Edward Grey. Grey, an ardent isolationist was the key figure in leaving Britain out of the Great War of 1912, during which mainland Europe was almost destroyed by industrial warfare. The role played by Grey during the Treaty of Mainz brought the conflict to a close, although the Franco-Russian powers suffered humiliating defeats that almost destroyed both nations. As 1915 broke, Britain was the only one of the Great Powers to have survived the war without damage and under her new Prime Minister, London was able to return to her preeminent position on the world stage. £
the "social abandonment of the poor." There have been 700 reported murders in the past five years in Gugulethu, where the couple's car was hijacked.
Based on the findings of the South African police, an extradition request has been placed in the UK court. The general consensus is that the accused, Shrien Dewani, should stand trial in die court of the country where the crime has been
The lack of motive and rock solid evidence seems to call into question whether it would be truly fair for the suspect to be extradited back to South Africa.
committed. The South African authorities are looking to question him and find answers that will solve the case. But the manner in which he is fighting the extradition request makes a lot of people wonder if there is more to this case than meets the eye.
Dewani's family has issued a statement saying that the 31-year old business man was "totally innocent of any involvement in this heinous crime". The state's credibility has already been questioned after Bheki Cele, the national police commissioner, declared last year: "One monkey came from London to kill his wife here. He thought we South Africans were stupid. Don't kill people here." Dewani's publicist, Max Clifford said: "How on earth is he going to get a fair trial in South Africa? The head of the national prosecuting authority and the chief of police have found him guilty." Shrien's brother Preyen Dewani issued a statement saying that his brother was afraid that he would be wrongly blamed for the murder in order to save the reputation of South Africa and to protect tourism revenues. So far, the occurrence of violent crime is rather high, but attacks on foreign tourists are rare.
The case has drawn attention to many problems surrounding the issues of extradition. According to Article 6 of the European Commission on Human Rights, Mr. Dewani has "the right to a fair trial". Many factors surrounding the case have arisen that strengthen the claims that the British businessman may not receive a fair trial if he is extradited back to South Africa. Two other suspects in the case have complained that they were tortured into making false confessions. The driver of
the couples' taxi, Zola Tongo, alleged in his court testimony that Shrien Dewani was the mastermind behind Anni's murder. As a result of his plea bargain, Tongo was convicted of kidnapping, murder, aggravated robbery and obstructing justice, and was sentenced to 18 years in prison. The women's league of South Africa's governing African National Congress party said Tongo's sentence was too lenient "and undermines our nation's commitment to ensure that all those who perpetuate violence against women are removed from our society."
In Britain, a case like this would have been thrown out of court due to improper procedures. The lack of motive and rock solid evidence seems to call into question whether it would be truly fair for the suspect to be extradited back to South Africa. He may risk being unjustly prosecuted for a crime he may not have committed. Pending further developments, it seems that the South African prosecutor lacks legitimate prima facie evidence in order to link Mr. Dewani to the crime. Furthermore, until proven guilty the suspect should be considered innocent. I am by no means advocating a lax extradition policy that allows countries to harbour fugitives that should in fact be tried for crimes that they committed in other countries (e.g. Dean Rees). Justice must be served, but nonetheless bearing in mind that a man's life is at stake. The tragic case of Akmal Shaikh, a British resident executed in China for drug trafficking, still burns fresh in peoples' minds and continues to serve as reminder of the shortcomings of international law in protecting human rights.Uf
Ei
:
¦ ven in a crime-plagued country like South Africa, this tragedy stood out: a honeymooning couple from the UK is carjacked and the wife's body is found ' abandoned in a taxi the following day. As (the facts began to unravel, this incident went from being an unforeseen tragedy to s a case of alleged hired murder. How does |a seemingly fairytale relationship go from marriage to murder within a time span of two weeks?
j| According to Shrien Dewani (the groom), on 13th November 2010, Anni Dewani (the new bride) had wanted to experience 'the real South Africa' and ^requested their taxi driver take them ito Gugulethu, a township. When the car stopped at a traffic light, they were hijacked by two gunmen who robbed and |then dumped Shrien out of the car. The question that perplexed many was why 1 Shrien was allowed to walk away from the ' hijacking so easily (especially when he fcould identify the hijackers to the police), " while his wife was murdered. Rape would have been one reason, but the post-mor-|tem examination showed that she was not "sexually assaulted.
The plot of this case has revealed | more unexpected twists and turns than a game of Cluedo. The media frenzy has |greatly construed the facts of the case and turned it into a political debate about ^social inequalities, and has called into ^question the international standing of the South African justice system. Many news .reporters have used this case to draw attention to the level of crime in South African townships, reviving the debate which •Hungarian scholar Anna Selmeczi called
(33IE25Q,Q3H3HK37
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j A WORD FROM THE RETURNING OFFICER, MAIRA BUTT	?
* Students' Union elections are central to the quality of the student experience. It is Students' Union representatives, J| selected in elections like this one, who ensure that students have their voices heard and are represented in issues and
campaigns that matter to them.
| This year is an especially exciting time to be involved in student politics. With mass student engagement taking place ^ | nationally, and especially at the LSE, it's apparent that students are eager to get their voices heard on a wide and
diverse array of issues. These interests range from domestic policies and the rise in tuition fees to the revolutionary | processes taking place in Libya.
The LSE in particular, has a long history of intense student activity, and is often at the forefront of student move-| ment, which is why individuals elected here are so crucial!
These people will be running the Students' Union next year, and representing students at the LSE, directly impacting ^you. Have a read through the manifestos and do vote!

Daniel"
Hello! I'm Daniel Kroop and I'm standing for General Secretary to bring your voice back into our Union. As this year's Postgraduate Officer, I focussed on running an open assembly that made real improvements in student life. Together, we threw parties for thousands, launched a student co-mentoring programme called TIPS, and successfully lobbied the UKBA Head of Immigration against new international visa restrictions. I was proud to march with students on November 10th and will continue to broaden our nation-leading campaign against the Coalition's cuts. With your voice, we can:
*	Create a better campus community with a big-name orientation concert * Invest in better peer mentoring * Strengthen the consequences of lecturers' course evaluations
*	Prioritize residential issues * Diversify career resources *Involve students in a new LSE-wide ethical investment policy * Fix LSE 100 * Keep fighting for LSE-only quiet space on the Library's fourth floor * Stand up for women and the LGBT community, and against fascism and Islamophobia * Advocate for 24/7 IT maintenance - -no more Moodle crashes * Simplify and make resonant SU communications *Be on the street, talking to societies, and working hard to raise the voice of all students. Thanks for reading, I'd be honoured to earn your vote!
Alex
Life at LSE is a journey, and I want to support you on it, every step of the way. ****Experience**** * RAG President* *Rosebery President* * Pulse Radio presenter* *AU member* * Beaver collective & Clare contributor* *Democracy committee member* (1) Starting on the right foot: * Continuing fees fight.* *More events/activities for new/returning students; bigger/better welcome party; postgraduate orientation ball; quick, clear, consistent communication to incoming students.* *Matching course mentor by your interests and creating Best Practice Code for mentors* (2) Finding your feet *Satisfaction guaranteed! Increasing standardised, quality feedback; expanding contact time with permanent academic staff; shared teaching best practice* " Increasing participation: website area showing officers' major meetings so you can have your say.* *Improve study/social areas: better lockers, available computers, working printers* (3) Stepping into the future *Fighting the ban on post study work visas: opposing xenophobic, knee-jerk immigration policies* *Job support: A dedicated area of the website showing careers related events; ensuring LSE careers service offers advice and fairs in diverse sectors, further developing the LSE Professional Mentoring Network for graduates. *Campaigning against unfair, unethical, unpaid internships so you can get a job based on talent and merit.*
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Stanley Ellerby-English
Mohammed Najmul Morley
*Experience* Member of the Activities Committee RAG Sponsorship Officer Founder and President of the Scheme Society Treasurer for Anthropology and Knitting Society. * Building a Better Community* (1) Actively promoting student group events on campus, in order to promote greater participation. (2) Actively promoting student group achievements, to develop an interest in those who represent the LSE. (3)Making communication and cooperation between student groups easier. *Building a Better SU* (1)Providing greater flexibility in the types of financing and support available from the SU. (2) Making the rules and procedures of the SU clearer, to make running student groups simpler. (3) Improving the LSE SU website. This needs to be easier to use and provide students with services that they actually want. * Building a Better Relationship with Student Groups* (l)I am, and will continue to be, very personally interested in the different groups and activities on campus. I intend to make sure I am actively engaged with the activities of student groups. (2)Better feedback system, a better feedback system will mean we can expand on those things going right and change those things which are going wrong. (3) Making myself more available to the student population.
Impartial, Committed and Driven, Mohammed Najmul Morley is YOUR choice, the RIGHT choice for Activities & Development.
Impartial, Committed and Driven, Mohammed Najmul Morley is YOUR choice, the RIGHT choice for Activities & Development. As your Activities and Development Officer I will work to build a diverse, vibrant and united LSE community.
I will do this through: MORE Community by helping students engage and develop friendships and social networks beyond their own community groups. MORE Student participation by encouragingpeople from all backgrounds to get involved in AU, RAG and Media Group activities MORE Awareness by educating the student body about the wide array of activities in the AU, RAG and Media group. MORE Money for Good Causes by bringing associations in university together to combine in non-traditional ways to raise money. MORE Unity with postgraduates, by utilising the wealth of experience they have and bridging the campus barriers. MORE Opportunities by broadening volunteering prospects for students to get involved in.
Make Mohammed Najmul Morley your #1 choice for Activities & Development and I will not let you down!
HSimiEaGHSHlIl
Alexandra Kane
Ameena Amer
Education is NOT just for the privileged but a fundamental right for every single one of us who chooses to pursue it. I am asking for your vote so that we together can stand up against cuts to the teaching budget; Enrich the LSE learning experience by ensuring the provision of study packs and lecture recordings for all courses in all departments; Campaign for earlier re-sits; Further prioritise the use of the library for LSE students during exam time; Push for smaller class sizes; Establish an international internship scheme and ensure that LSE hosts more NGO-based and public sector fairs.
Studying towards an MSc in Social and Cultural Psychology I have played an active role in the LSESU and was a chief orchestrator of the 'Freeze the Fees' campaign. Working for LSE Careers has made me aware of the opportunities available to students and where there is room for improvement.
Being at LSE is more than just getting a degree. I want you to be included in all decision making, by ensuring student feedback is used effectively and continuing to develop activism on campus.
Vote AMENA #1 for Education Officer. Fighting for YOUR education.
As your Education Officer, I will ensure that the Students' Union strives to provide a holistic LSE EXPERIENCE. Starting with pre-LSE: fighting for and working with the School on widening participation, and following through to post-LSE: ensuring sustainable and attractive immigration policies for international students. Most importantly, as your Education Officer, I will fight for the HERE AND NOW -The Houghton Street Classroom - steering the focus of our Union back to issues that affect all students on THIS CAMPUS on a daily basis. Meanwhile I will continue to negotiate between the micro and the national issues, whilst pushing this Union and this university to uphold accountability and transparency in all areas of student life: in and outside the classroom. Higher education in this country is changing. 1 propose an LSE founded on collaboration between the students and the School, and amongst the various levels of the Union's organisation. Your Education Officer should be focused on representative engagement and 1NCLUSIVITY. I fully intend to work with any, and all, students to ensure that our School is, first and foremost, working for YOU on our campus today. Vote KANE: ft 1 Education Officer!
2 LENT TERM ELECTIONS
Lukas Slothuus
LET LUKAS AID OUR UNION - #1 for Community&Welfare
*** EMPOWERING OUR COMMUNITY - 60 full-time staff in the Students Union and barely any interaction with students at all! Ensure staff build connections with students, understanding what we care about. Organise for Sabbaticals to be engaging with students on Houghton Street regularly and running workshops to truly empower students. *** DEFENDING WELFARE PROVISIONS - Counsellors; education experts; disabilities specialists; careers advisers. We have endless welfare provisions but in practice lots of students feel excluded. I will undertake a full review and make them relevant to eveiy single student by improving outreach. In the coming year, student welfare is under threat due to funding cuts; I will defend our welfare provisions.
*** STANDING UP FOR STUDENTS - Fight against cuts, and work with the School to protect international students' rights. Give LSE students priority for library resources. Become a Zero Tolerance Union on all forms of discrimination. Implement an ethical investment policy. *** Everybody can talk the talk, but I have always and will always walk the walk. Vote Lukas for Community and Welfare Officer because I'm extremely passionate, hard-working and put action behind my words.
LET LUKAS AID OUR UNION - Energy for our Union!
Leena Taha
Hannah Polly Williams
Hello! I'm Hannah Polly Williams,your current Environment and Ethics Officer. My priorities are:
*	Putting students at the heart of our SU * I will run a listening campaign to find out what students actually want, not just assume I already know. *Uniting our student body
*	We need to stop fighting each other and work together. I will connect and support our incredible range of societies, sports clubs, media group and hall committees - the backbone of our student body. * Protecting students * We need to champion our hardship funds, tackle the problems plaguing our halls and stand strong international students targeted by the new study visa regime. ^Defending our education * MPs let us down badly but the battle continues to minimise the impact of any rise in fees. We must work with the School, not against them, to ensure that students aren't priced out of LSE.
I am the right person to take on these responsibilities and deliver at the highest level. I've i organised the biggest ever Go Green Week, represented the student body on BBC news ; twice and am an active member of many School committees.
J Vote HPW for Community Welfare Officer to *Revive your LSE *
Make LSE Wonderful.
Stressed? This is not the only way. As Community and Welfare Officer I plan to combat this stress epidemic. I won't bore you with lists of proposals, but this is my plan. Combat Stress, who needs it? Widening participation, for a diverse student bunch. Student Councillors, for approachable support in times of need. And finally temporary accommodation, for the homeless times. How to do this, I hear you say? Looking after your concerns and interests. Improving community relations through creative engagement of the whole LSE community. An alternative evening each week with different themes, incorporating music, dance, art, film, maybe even all at once. Student support, throughout your time here. For this, communication is key. Promoting awareness and simple communication so you know exactly what's happening, how to get involved and where help is. Encouraging healthy living through a fairtrade fruit stall on Houghton Street eveiy day. Widening participation to encourage students of all backgrounds to apply for LSE, and finally temporary-term contracts for accommodation.
Why me? Most importantly, I'm approachable, welcoming and open to suggestions by all. This is your SU after all, I'm just helping you to run it! So vote for yours truly, Leena.
Polly McKinlay
Hello, I am the current disability officer and would like to be re-elected to serve again, in order to continue to make LSE and the wider academic community a place where diversity is welcomed and disability understood.
By electing me you can expect to see a bigger and better Beat the January Blues week, as well as the implementation of activities such as meditation into Orientation. Secondly, I would like to continue the work I started on making LSE more accessible. Having successfully campaigned for the library door automatic sensors, I will continue to work with estates to make more adjustments.
I would also like to start a new campaign- to get lecturers to provide lecture notes in advance-something dyslexic students say they would find helpful. With my experiences from the past year, and the progress towards disability equality I have already made, I believe I am the best candidate.
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Brendan Mycock
1.	Organise "Recruitment Events" aimed specifically at sports players, creating unique opportunities for employment.
2.	Introduce a "Reference System" for AU members applying for jobs. Outstanding contributions to the AU will result in emails being sent to companies explaining how impressive and valuable these members are.
3.	Create events where drinking is not the core
4.	Create a "Mentoring System" where freshers will be assigned a mentor. This mentor will be a personal contact to assist them with training/games/travel and social events. The AU can be an intimidating place and this system will make it a more personal, friendly and inclusive society.
5.	Introduce an AU "Postgraduate Representative". They will represent and work closely with Postgraduate SU Reps to ensure sport is accessible and enjoyed by all.
6.	Create an officially partnership with RAG.
7.	Offer greater media group support, through Pulse and The Beaver, making the AU more accessible.
Hendrik Scheer
My name is Hendrik Scheer. I am a second year government student and captain of the LSE rowing team, and I am campaigning for the AU presidency. My promises as president of AU will be a STONGER AU, with FASTER communication, BETTER integration for new students while fighting HARDER for Wednesday afternoons off (WAF)
As president of the AU, I will demand a 'Director of Sport' at LSE, ensure that the AU becomes a significant part of LSE student life, as well as guaranteeing help to smaller and less resourced clubs getting started. I will fight for Wednesday afternoons off, even for postgraduates, ensuring closer cooperation with sabbatical officers to prioritize the campaign.
I promise more funding, organized career events, as well as better communication with AU Executives and The Beaver. We have been too complacent for too long - get ready for positive change under my presidency.
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Benjamin Butterworth
It's crucial the views and concerns of LGBT students on campus have a fair voice. I stand at this election on a strong record: having campaigned both on Houghton Street and Whitehall for progressive Higher Education policy, and being the only candidate to have served on the LGBT society's committee.
As LGBT officer, I'd endeavour to work beyond the traditional grounds of gay rights activism,. aiming to engage with the likes of the AU and religious societies to build a strong coalition of tolerance across our campus.
I feel it's vital, too, that the dynamic sets of issues faced by international students from countries less accepting than our own are recognised, with clear welfare and education available. It's through being a visible, accessible officer, organising a greater and more exciting Pride week than ever, that I hope to make these ambitions a reality. So please, vote Butterworth and spread equality!
Emma Kelly
Fight Homophobia
I will fight to maintain no platform for members of fascist organisations. I will work to raise awareness of homophobia in the wider world, especially given the recent increases in homophobic attacks in Britain. Fight Cuts I want to keep student activism strong and help build a campaigning LGBT community.
I will join campaigns to stop the the cuts which disproportionately affect the LGBT community, the closing of services and the cuts in funding to charities. I will show international solidarity by campaigning over issues such as homophobic laws. Unite Together I want people to be aware of LGBT history month through speakers and education events. I also want to put on a Love Music Hate Homophobia gig to unite the gay and straight communities at LSE. I will to ! use my experience in the media group to create an effective voice for the LGBT community on
v campus.
©
* John Peart
g. < THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE > >
^Course Rep. Ex-Students' Union Officer in my college. Ex-Student Governor. National rep on the National Executive of NUS. Where students are, I'm representing and I have the experience to represent LGBT students at LSE. I've been improving the lives of students for the last 3 Vears, and I am ready to be your LGBT officer. My policies are simple.
®(i) BROADENING THE LGBT MESSAGE: More campaign work on issues that affect LGBT students and involving straight students too.
1(2) SUPPORTING STUDENTS COMING OUT: Innovative support for students struggling Bwith being LGBT.
I (3) NOT ON OUR CAMPUS: Challenging negative perceptions of LGBT people and campaigning against homophobia and transphobia.
^(4) INCLUSIVE: BETTER REPRESENTATION: Listening to students on the ground. Using ! Assemblies to support SU democracy.
Lois Clifton
I am an environmental, anti-cuts, and anti fascist activist. Together, as a movement, we can make LSE a greener and ethical place.
FREEDOM WEEK LSE
I want to recognize freedom movements, injustice and oppression throughout the world. Freedom week will involve talks, stalls, and films geared towards education and recognition. GREEN LSE
I've been in charge of organizing a team of students to build and run the student roof garden. This year I will make the roof garden, Relove and the food coop bigger. I also want to look at food waste involving redistributing food that can be reused at the end of the day. CORRUPTION FREE LSE
I have worked on the 'Boycott Eden springs campaign'- a company which violates international law- and the Saif Gaddafi campaign. I have already begun to develop an ethical investment policy and this year I will restart LSE Not for Profit campaign
Brendan Greenfield
I'm running for Environment and ethics officer because I feel that I have a number of idea's that the students union needs to introduce. In light of recent events at LSE regarding the university accepting donations from the Gaddafi international charity and development foundation, the SU must pressure the university into undertaking a full review into how it accepts large donations, consulting with the SU with any donation that could be considered controversial.
I would also start an awareness campaign about the Coca-Cola company's poor environmental and ethical record, before putting a UGM motion forward for the SU to boycott the company.
In regards to the Unions environmental record, there is still room for improvement. If the roof garden on top of east building proves to be successful, then it should be extended.
Jay Stoll
My decision to run for E&E is founded upon a belief that progress towards an ethically conscious LSE has been hindered by a lack of collective agreement over the major issues, i.e. climate change, or a wider effort to confront human rights abuses. Past experience running politically-themed summer schemes for hundreds of children and volunteering for the Table for Table movement, cultivating staple foods for the poorest families, teaches me that only through collective will can humanity prevail.
My agenda is largely threefold:
1)	A 'KICK THE HABIT' campaign, providing a human face for environmental issues on campus.
2)	A 'BACK TO SCHOOL' initiative, increasing cooperation with LSEs Widening Participation scheme, somewhat institutionally neglected by the student body thus far.
3)	'ROOF EXTENSION' drives, continuing great work done at the 'go green week', ensuring its legacy at LSE. Vote Stoll to put the environment FIRST, so development will LAST.
LENT TERM ELECTIONS 3
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Gaelan Ash
I'm Ash the internationalist. Kumbayah. More practically, I want to internationalise our Union and empower international students at LSE.
(1)	INTERNATIONALISE OUR MOVEMENTS: Co-ordinate worldwide with Students' Unions by establishing a Global Students Network to share information and experience in the fight against education cuts.
(2)	Defend Global Education: Protect international students against visa restrictions, which diminish the School's ability to attract the world's best students.
(3)	Broaden LSE's career opportunities: Work with LSE Careers to introduce more international NGOs onto campus.
(4)	Cultivate academic excellence: Partner with LSE's alumni to push for more scholarships for international disadvantaged students, so capable candidates aren't priced out of LSE. I've been active in the fight against education cuts this year, a dedicated Pulse radio host as well as jointly pioneering the LSE Free School. Voting Ash for Internash can seriously help you and those around you. Come to where the flavor is.
Hannah Geis
Hannah Geis, breaking the ice! - As your International Students Officer I will help you...
1.	Connect with students: I want to ensure everyone can take advantage of the great diversity on campus by organizing joint society events, International Week, LSE Languages Day and many more! I will work on fun and cheap language-learning opportunities plus building a global travel exchange network for LSE students!
2.	Connect with London: I will improve support for international students settling in, by providing advice on everything from daunting visas and bank accounts, to delicious local cuisine to best parties!
3.	Connect with your future: I will connect you to our extensive alumni networks through global career fairs to ensure that you leave LSE with the best prospects for your future!

Sherelle Davids
The role of Anti-Racism officer should be pro-active. It should provide opportunities for students to learn about the culture and history of others. It should not be a position that is solely reactionary.
I would like to:
(1)Introduce	a "Combat Ignorance Week": Lectures, debates, discussions, performances and stalls on Houghton Street that will EDUCATE and ENGAGE students.
(2)'Show	Racism the Red Card' in light of London Olympics 2012 (AU involvement).
(3)Hold	frequent Anti-Racism assemblies that provide a base for campaigns.
(^Reintroduce Black History Month to the LSE!
(5) Extend LSE's impact beyond our Campus - contribute to community work and national campaigns. I would be excellent for the role as I have shown, through my activity in the SU, to be passionate and dedicated to the equal rights of all.
If I am elected into the role I will work with upmost enthusiasm to COMBAT IGNORANCE so we can FIGHT RACISM.
Eden Dwek
LOVE EDEN, HATE RACISM
Our campus is rich in culture and traditions. Everyone should be able to benefit from this vibrant community without feeling intimidated or marginalized due to their background. * "FREE SPEECH NOT HATE SPEECH: The welfare of students is fundamental; NO to racial hatred.
**WORKING TOGETHER: We are lucky to study in such a diverse atmosphere. I will work closely with societies and the International Officer to maximize this opportunity. I want to ensure that all groups are actively engaged in the SU allowing us to embrace the abundance of culture around us.
"'SUPPORT AND TRAINING: I will introduce SU-supported training sessions for people wanting to campaign against racists and fascists.
**FIGHTING FOR STUDENTS: As a first year at ROSEBERY HALL I've led the charge against the building works and the shoddy showers. As Anti-Racism Officer I will work to UNITE our
Lucy McFadzean
VSGEESSGOOnSlIl
Rebecca Sunter
We are women hear us ROAR
I want to ensure every self-defining woman on campus has the opportunity to have her voice heard.
*R*eprgsentation: strive to foster a lively women's community on campus, both in the academic and social spheres. I want to create better communication among women on campus, including creating a 'Women's Hour' and a women's column.
*0*vercome: the continuing gender bias' that remain in LSE. I want to utilise the women's assembly and include representatives from groups and societies across campus.
*A*ction: create a passion for gender equality amongst everyone on campus, and create campaigns fighting against any gender bias in the coming cuts. I want to bring international women's issues to campus to celebrate the diversity of women.
*R*evive: the women's voice, through confidence building and public speaking workshops. I am keen to begin a mentoring scheme pairing female students with women in the LSE faculty.
RETHINK PINK, VOTE REBECCA SUNTER #1 FOR WOMEN'S OFFICER!
Second year, ORGANISED, APPROACHABLE, EXPERIENCED.
* * Active campaigner for V-DAY's global campaign to end violence against women. "Volunteers at Lambeth's Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre; supporting young women aged 12-16 in developing their self-esteem. ACHIEVABLE, REALISTIC POLICIES: *P*ROMOTE VOLUNTEERING- -I want to recruit YOU to create a network of volunteers within LSE linked to external women's organisations. We can connect with a diverse range of women and create a new, distinctive platform for empowerment.
*I*MPROVE HEALTH--Raise awareness of eating disorders and depression; Encourage campus eating establishments to offer iron-rich, vitamin packed foods; Ensure better sexual health information/provision on campus.
*N*ECESSITATE FEMINISM—Coordinate high profile campaigns for: Raped Women of the Congo--International Women's Day--Ending Female Genital Mutilation.
*K*NOWLEDGE IS POWER - Boost YOUR employability--organise networking events for you to meet female alumni.
TO SUPPORT WOMEN WITHIN AND BEYOND LSE: VOTE PINK.

Alexander Drummond
(1)	To ensure that student societies are able to host large events, such as the Emerging Markets Forum, Sparks(a>LSE and the Alternatives Investment Conference. These events have become cornerstones of the LSE calendar; however, their continued growth has presented logistical difficulties, particularly with regard to finances. I would work to keep such events accessible for students to create and run.
(2)	While activism is an important component of the Student Union experience, I also am committed to the Student Union's various services. I will strive to maintain the quality of services while keeping costs in check and increasing efficiency across the board.
(3)	To provide a voice for the student who does not feel attracted to many of the activism goals of the Student Union but is concerned with the daily affairs of the Union.
Anneessa Mahmood
As your Trustee my agenda is to TRANSFORM THE ROLE OF A TRUSTEE into an active, campaigning, accountable role and create a relationship between the students and their trustees.
I will do this by:
*	Pushing for more meetings of the trustee board.
*Creating a student led agenda rather than passively voting on issues initiated by the LSE
management. ^Working towards full disclosure of minutes of meetings.
*Making the LSE campus budget friendly by campaigning for cheaper food in LSE outlets.
*	Running a "tell your trustee" blog on the SU website; making sure your issues are not only heard but dealt with.
*	Campaigning for an ethical financial policy both for the LSESU and the LSE, making sure that the institutions that we fund represent us.
My experience: Events Director, Consultancy Society. Manager of youth-led community
radio station. Publicity Team, Islamic Society.
Trust me for trustee and vote Anneessa Mahmood No 1.
Edwin Wong
Edwin Wong: Fair dinkum! Trust an Aussie!
As a Trustee, I'll keep your Union responsible to you by... Being True to You - Making sure that your Board gets your input on major decisions, rather than just listening to Sabbs. I will engage the community. Being Genuine to You - I will drive accountability and ensure that we are spending money equitably and sensibly. No bulls* *t. Defending You - Oversight isn't limited to watching over our Sabbs. I will ensure that student needs are managed by engaging your Sabbs. Screwing the Politics - Responsible management of the Union. Plans will not be approved unless they benefit you and are in line with the Union's strategic direction: not po -litical sympathies. After all, your university experience deserves a fair go. I'll ensure that your Union can deliver viable services to YOU.
That's what us Aussies mean when we're being fair dinkum.
— IPlHcMK	€•
George Edwards
Hi, I'm George and since arriving at LSE I have become increasingly involved in the politics of the SU - specifically through the campaign against fee increases and cuts to education. Having joined the policy committee, I soon discovered that I really enjoy the discursive side to unionism and learnt a number of important communicative, organisational and research based skills which I'm sure will prove valuable to the board. As a trustee, I will be responsible for the long term development of the SU. Therefore, I look forward to applying my skills into other policy areas - be this improving the LSE social environment or securing the financial viability of the union. Finally, I am proud that I am not the CV chasing LSE caricature. Instead, I am interested in working on behalf of my contemporaries for the benefit of the union and the LSE community as a whole! Thank you.
James Maltz
JAMES MALTZ FOR TRUSTEE: Independent, efficient and trustworthy. With my experience as President of the Brazilian Society, I will reliably supervise the actions of the SU.
There must be more communication between the student body and the SU. I will therefore ensure student's views are listened to with respect. My priority will be to make sure the Union's resources are readily and fairly available, reaching to all its members, societies and groups. I believe that societies should be key in the LSE's long-term strategies, and should receive extended support and funding, particularly in events that encourage society interactions. The SU officers must uphold the highest possible standards of transparency and accountability in their actions especially regarding long-term policy decisions. I will be an active and constructively critical Trustee.
Make James Maltz your first choice for the Trustee board.
TRUST IS A MUST- VOTE FOR JAMES MALTZ.
deedisxione'
^^A^WO*FRESH^PQ^RJl^
I®	HH	+€® —
Emma Clewer
As an active member of the Students' Union: I am a candidate who knows the Union well and has experience with how things run. I am an honest and reliable student who is dedicated to upholding our constitution and will prevent anyone or anything undermining it.
External influences should not be able to interfere in our democratic procedures. I believe that the Union and the Democracy Committee should be a transparent facilitator for student democracy instead of a force from above. I see the position as not just a place to uphold the constitution and the principle of impartiality, but also a position of responsibility to encourage student participation in our Union. This will include promoting the Union General Meeting, utilising our democratic structures, and making sure all students are aware of the options available to them. Our Union needs transparency and accessibility - which is what I will strive for.
Emir Nader
Apparently Democracy Committee is like the judiciary of the SU. Sort of our Supreme Court. Which is good because I like decisions. Considering I develop a grey hair daily over the Hare Krishna / Wright's dilemma, imagine my coiffure after a year of debating issues like 'can the UGM proceed without an oddball in a beaver costume beaming proudly?' My hair's curly so if it all goes grey then I might look like a real judge. Though JUDGE DREDD would be more my kind of aspiration. Until then I'm half-Egyptian but fully Yorkshire. I study Politics and Philosophy. I've stood for the Greens in a county council election (nailed Labour) and written in the West Bank and Jerusalem for a news centre too so know how to bust a sweat. After appointing Justice Warren, Eisenhower later said it was "the biggest damned fool mistake I ever made". I won't be.
ftabi Niam
Sheriff Rabi... Upholding the constitution!
'I AM'- PASSIONATE about fairness, crazy about the CONSTITUTION and in love with OPE-NESS! These are qualities required for a ruthless INDEPENDENT upholding of the constitution.
By doing this, we can make our Student Union fair, open and accountable.
'I WILL'- l) Publish the DEMOCRACY COMMITTEE MINUTES ONLINE, ensuring OPENNESS. 2) All VOTES in the democracy Committee to be RECORDED, promoting AC-COUNABILTIY. 3) Seek ways to ENHANCE THE UGM participation.
'I HAVE'- chaired my STUDENT COUNCIL, making sure that all clubs and classes are represented. Served as Head Boy allowing me to represent student concerns and created a mentoring system. I have also had to RESOLVE CONFLICTS by following the school 'Code of Conduct'. Set up a Youth Club, offering SUPPORT to disadvantaged youth.
Vote Rabi#i for Democracy Committee
Himesh Patel
My name is Himesh Patel, a second year BSc Economics student, current President of Pass-field Hall and an employee of the Students' Union.
Having worked at the UGM last academic year, I understand the difficulty in ensuring the LSE's Union behaves democratically. The Democracy Committee at the LSE requires an t EXPERIENCED and DEDICATED member to uphold the constitution governing the Students' Union.
With a good committee around me, I will work hard with them to ensure that democracy is upheld and any motions that are submitted are considered and channelled through the right means to improve your experience at the LSE. There is not much I can promise apart from the above but I will ENDEAVOUR to ensure more voices are heard and there is a real DEMOCRACY at the LSE where more students PARTICIPATE in the decisions of the Union.
Vote HP for Democracy. (Democracy at its best)
Aimee Riese
AIMEE RIESE VOTE AIMEE RIESE FOR DEMOCRACY COMMITTEE: The Democracy Committee needs an honest, independent, efficient and precise candidate. I am a highly motivated, enthusiastic and meticulous first-year.
At LSE, I already have experience as a news reporter for the Beaver and in organising a Grim-shaw Club trip, so am resourceful and accountable, with a high level of organisational skills. 1 aim to uphold our constitution to the highest and fairest levels. I believe every student, no matter at what point in their LSE lives, should feel equally able to engage and participate in our Union. I would like students to be increasingly aware of the way our Union is run and their role within it. As a fresh, passionate candidate, I will ensure increased accessibility and participation from more LSE students. I will restore confidence and integrity in our Union, whilst maintaining the highest levels of democratic commitment.
J'AIMEE LA DEMOCRATIE.
Jack Tindale
My manifesto emphasises three elements, experience, honesty and direct democracy. By re-standing for the Democracy Committee, I hope to expand on the efforts of the previous year by ensuring that this important institution continues to improve student engagement within the LSESU. If elected, I pledge to support efforts to return true voting to the UGM, to enforce constitutional rights and responsibilities for all areas of the students' union and to ensure that all elements of the school community are able to participate in campaigns during the difficult year ahead for university education.
I'm proud of the LSE and the student body. Participating in The Beaver, PuLSE and various societies has given me experience in all areas of student life here and a love for what the student body does best, activism and innovation.
Vote Tindale for a fair deal!
Josh Still
I make a difference in every community I join. At school I ran societies and organized conferences. Here at LSE I'm involved in student campaigns, I'm on the Student Staff Liaison Committee, I'm Co-ordinator of Bankside Peer Support Group and fundraising over £2,000 for Childreach International.
The Democracy Committee needs someone to make a difference. I've attended most UGMs this year and it doesn't achieve anything; two motions have been passed all year, and most LSE students are totally oblivious to it. I'd advertise it better, make it easier to vote on motions and make time for open discussion. But above all I'd listen to you. I'd set up a fortnightly forum where you can tell me how to improve democracy at LSE.
Vote Josh Still *1 for Democracy Committee and together LET'S STILL DEMOCRACY!

twitter.com/beayeronline
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ellect.wordpressfcom
*#555
Why vote?
Lent Term Elections are an opportunity to pick your leaders for the next school year. Students' Union officers do a lot -everything from representing students' needs on LSE's highest governing bodies to deciding how to allocate funding. Make it Your Union. Vote.
Where can I vote?
Students can vote online at www.lsesu. com/vote. Voting will be open from 10am Wednesday to 7pm on Thursday. You can vote on any computer on or off campus.
How do I enter my choices?
You should rank candidates in order of your preferences, with #1 being your first choice. You can rank as many or as few candidates as you wish. You may also vote to Re-Open Nominations (RON) If you do not see any candidates that appeal to you in a given race.
How are votes counted?
When there is a single position available - for example, the LGBT Officer - the Students' Union conducts elections with Alternative Vote. When there are multiple positions available - for example, the Democracy Committee -Single Transferable Voting is used. Both systems operate in a similar fashion; they reallocate votes once a candidate has been eliminated (in AV) or elected (in STV). For full details on the voting systems, visit http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/.
When will we know who won?
If you want to see it live, the results will be announced on Thursday night in the Quad from 8-11PM. In addition, the Media Group will be live-blogging and broadcasting the events, and full results will be posted on the LSE Students' Union website.
i-(cm
Fashion - Alice Leah Fyfe | Film - Aameer Pafei | Literature - Presca Ahn | Music - Masaya Tanikawa | Photo - Aisha Doherty
Satire - Luke Smoiinski | Sex and Gender - Alexander Young | Theatre - Chris Finnigan | TV - Simon Chaudhuri
/Mbcfm EooaB reviews ©ore Verbinski's first animated film
"The animation is terrific... you might forget that you're not watching a live action film"
he's soon dragged into a criminal brou-	three decades or so, Rango is industrial
haha with deadly repercussions.	light and Magic's first full-length feature
While it's Johnny Depp who will drag	animation. All in all, they've done alright,
the audiences to the cinemas, this isn't	White it does get a tad slow somewhere
one of his standout performances, and	in the middle, and it can seem so much a
he-finds himself easily matched by his	pastiche of Peckinpah, Ford and Leone's ¦
co-stars. Despite the hoo-ha surround-	classic Westerns that it feels a bit dry in
ing how Verbinski chose to record his	the end, Rango is definitely unique: there
cast's voices for the film (they didn't	aren't many animation: films out there as
just- do it in a voice booth, but on set, :	beautiful (and ugly) as this one. How far
in costumes, in order to give dialogue ¦	this curious mixture of spaghetti western
a 'raw' feel), the vocal work doesn't ,	and kiddie flick adtualiy translates into a
seem particularly inspired. The anima-	good film Is a different matter.
tion itself, though, is absolutely terrific: in
some scenes, (the ones without the furry	Rango is released in cinemas on 4th
anthropomorphic animals, obviously),	March 2011 you might just find yourself forgetting that you're not watching a live action film.
Though they have been the visual effects specialists for a phenomenal	¦
number of blockbusters over the last
which he seeks. Obeying this sage of the sands, Rango arrives, after a day of travelling and a couple of unpleasant encounters with a deadly hawk and an aloof desert iguana, Beans (Isla fisher), in the town of Dirt.
A dark, gritty place. Dirt; hardly welcomes strangers. Why should it? As one of its inhabitants, Prisciila {Abigail Bre-siin), says, they don't last long in these parts. But after a few little fibs about his past heroic exploits and another, now-fatal run-in with the hawk, Rango finds himself appointed the town's Sherriff, responsible for .keeping its people on the straight and narrow and solving their every problem.
First among these is that drought-stricken Dirt's most precious resource, water, is running dry. As Rango finds more and more dirt 6n Dirt's water crisis,1
Director: Gore Verbinski Screenplay: John Logan Cast: Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Bill Nighy, Timothy CHyphant Runtime: 107 minutes Cert PG
P>oul-searching, existential ;risis-burdened pet chameleon Johnny Depp) with a pen-;hant, but little talent for the hespian (it's difficult living in a mini-aquarium with only a toy goldfish and a headless mannequin for company) is catapulted out of his owner's car . into the'scorching heat of the desert. He meets a sage-like Armadillo with seemingly suicidal intent who,' taking a
breather from his jaywalking, beckons him to cross the desert to find that
I |CM
Film. Visual Arts.
Interview with baby son of the Whore of Babylon
serin * « 111 Ms Son of Babylon
It's two weeks after the UK release of Son of Babylon, which follows a Kurdish mother and her grandson Ahmed as they set off on foot in search of her missing son, and Ahmed's missing father, that I finally manage to get hold of Mohamed Al-Daradji. He just got back from Iraq, he tells me, where he's been touring Son of Babylon in a mobile cinema. For there aren't many cinemas left in Iraq. Those that have seen the film have done so without sound;, the projector didn't recognise the Dolby surround sound format. "There is no proper infrastructure to live in Iraq, let alone for a film industry", he says.
Still, Variety's 2010 Middle Eastern Filmmaker of the year shot Son of Babylon entirely on location in Iraq. It wasn't easy: "We had a lot of problems. We needed to bring everything either from Europe or the Arab countries." One scene, lasting only a few seconds on Baghdad's Republican Bridge, took a month to film. On another occasion, when his camera broke in the middle of the desert, Al-Daradji had to wait three weeks before he could go on: "I couldn't fix it, and there's nowhere in Iraq to fix it, so I sent it back to Paris." Neither are there any film labs in Iraq - "they were all bombed" - so Al-Daradji and his ' team sent their film back to London for
"l make films not just for the sake of art, but for change in Iraq
99
beyond cinema
processing. If only it were that simple: "there are no courier companies operat-
BBHBMHHHHI
ing within Iraq, so we hired a taxi driver to drive the film to Baghdad from Southern Iraq, took his picture, registration and ID, and had one of our colleagues wait for him in Baghdad." He sighs. "Sometimes I just thought, "What the hell am I doing here?""
Yet Al-Daradji wouldn't dream of filming in Morocco, Jordan or Spain. In spite of all the setbacks - the lack of expertise, transport, and security - the thought of shooting elsewhere somehow seems abhorrent: "When the camera is rolling on the streets of Baghdad, it means this country exists."
Born and raised in Baghdad, Al-Daradji left Iraq when he was eighteen to study Film and Television production in the Netherlands. Today he divides his time between Iraq and Leeds, where
his company, Human Film is based, and where (at the Northern Film School) he completed two Masters Degrees in Cinematography and Directing. His mission is to re-establish a genuine Iraqi film industry: "Films [like The Hurt Locker and Green Zone] can help to raise awareness of what is going on in Iraq, but at the same time, I wish there was something from the Iraqi point of view. I would like Iraqi's to go to the cinema. In the 1980s it was popular; I would get money from my parents when it was Eid and go with my friends to the cinema in downtown Baghdad."
As well as the Variety accolade, Al-Daradji took the Amnesty Film Award and Peace Prize at last year's Berlin Film Festival. Son of Babylon was also selected as Iraq's entry for Best Foreign Language
nana
Film at the 2011 Academy Awards. "As a filmmaker it's all fantastic", he says courteously. "But we still haven't achieved what we wanted. We made this film to campaign for the missing people of Iraq. I make films not just for the sake of art, but for change in Iraq beyond cinema." There are estimated to be as many as 1.5 million missing people in Iraq. Over 300 mass graves have been identified, with still more being discovered. "It's a very sensitive issue in Iraq", says Al-Daradji, and one that has affected him directly; his aunt lost her son in the Iran-Iraq war, and his brother-in-law went missing in 2009.
It comes as no surprise, then, that Al-Daradji is keener to talk about the didactic virtues of film than filmmaking itself: "Yes I'm an artist, I'm a filmmaker, but what film can achieve is the important
question in my life." He is most animated not in talking about his Iranian and Eastern European filmic influences, but in expressing his cause: "The problem is not just terrorism and al-Qaeda, it's education. Cinema can raise awareness and
66-.
Cinema can
raise awareness
and educate,
and people can
change with
education
educate, and people can change with education. Cinema has changed me as a person."
He's currently working on a documentary feature about thirty-two orphaned children living in a one bedroom house in Baghdad. "Every Iraqi has ten stories for ten films. We have a lot of drama, a lot of tales to be told."
Son of Babylon is showing on Saturday 12 March and Sunday 13 March at the Tricycle Cinema (www.tricycle. co.uk), and on Thursday 24 March at the Riverside Studios cinema (www. riversidestudios.co.uk). You can find out more about Mohamed Al-Daradji and his Iraq's Missing Campaign at www.humanfilm.co.uk.
Watercolour: More than just a wash of paint
We are often told not to judge a book by its cover and I would argue that we should not judge the Tate's new exhibition Watercolour just by its title, as it offers so much more.
The versatile nature of watercolour is reflected in the huge range of painting and subject matter gathered together in the exhibition, the medium acting as the uniting factor between the artworks. Thus the scope of the show is vast and spans many centuries, from the early use of watercolour in Britain, through the creation of illuminated manuscripts, maps and portraiture, to the abstract forms of Patrick Heron and Anish Kapoor.
"A fascinating insight into the history and varied use of a material that has been popular for centuries"
The exhibition showcases the adaptability of watercolour, whose very physical qualities, such as portability and quick drying speed, have resulted in its use in particular genres of art.
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The work on display in the exhibition demonstrates the large variety of effects that watercolour can create, from washes of light and almost transparent colour, to intense, vivid shades.
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It can also be adopted to capture the fine detail that was required for natural history illustration before the invention of photography. These physical qualities of watercolour are examined, for example, through their importance in the development of landscape painting, especially in the 18th century, when artists such as J.M.W. Turner and John Robert Cozens pushed landscape painting beyond the realms of topography.
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
"It aims to dispel some of the misconceptions surrounding watercolour"
The exhibition aims to dispel some of the misconceptions surrounding watercolour, such as the notion that it is an
inferior material to oil. This issue came to
..... ~ " ~
the fore in the 19th century when painters like Edward Burne-Jones developed the medium, creating a richness of colour and form that we can see in his astonishing work, The Merciful Knight, a piece that undermines the belief that watercolour is not capable of achieving depth.
The exhibition also illustrates the use of watercolour by artists who recorded the effects of war in the early 21 st century, evoking the horrors of conflict, as in the masked and hooded forms of Edward Burra. Furthermore, the sense of the dreamlike pervades personal works of those such as William Blake, who rejected the mimetic conventions of art and
y:':
instead created visions from imagination.
Watercolour offers a fascinating insight into the history and varied use of a material that has been popular for centuries with professional and amateur artists alike, which is celebrated through an eclectic collection of artworks that all can appreciate.
Georgina Lee is reading for a BA in History of Art at the Courtauld Institute
Watercolour is at Tate Britain, until 21st August, open daily 10am-6pm, admission £12.70 (concessions available)
(ctm

Literature,
LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2011
Highlights freifi Ill's third annual ©went celebrating the meeting ©f the oris and the social sciences
-(cm
son discussed the case of Randy Pausch's Last Lecture. Pausch, a profes- I sor of computer science who had never 1 written a book before, wrote a bestseller that was on the New York Times bestseller list for eighty-five weeks in the spring 2008. "Absence of track record is perfect. It sets the imagination free," said Thompson.
But Pausch's success has a sad footnote. "The most important factor [for Last -Lecture's sales] was that Randy Pausch died of pancreatic cancer later in 2008," Thompson said. In a gruesome development, the death of an author has become a point of interest for publishers.
The industry has been experiencing financial pressures over the last thirty years. Retailers' escalating discounts in the UK and agents' escalating advances in the US are squeezing publishers' margins. The digital revolution is changing the wholesale market. What does the future of publishing hold? "No one knows!"
Min Tang
Saturday, 19 Feb. Z
Prospect Magazine Literary Festival Event
New Technologies and the Reinvention of the Author
featuring Sam Leith, Lionel Shriver and Nigel Warburton
With the success of e-readers, the last rites are often performed on physical books, and subsequently on publishers. The panel - consisting of Sam Leith, literary editor of the Telegraph; Lionel Shriver, a best-selling novelist (We Need to Talk About Kevin); and Nigel Warburton, a philosopher renowned for his accessible 'Philosophy Bites' podcasts series - believed that there are many other aspects to consider in this paradigmatic shift.
The digital age has even had an impact on the writing process. While an unprecedented level of immersion is possible, the fear of unrestrained criticism is biting. New technology has brought undeniable practical benefits, such as accessibility and democratisation, by making it possible for anyone to publish, publicise and criticise.
The same ability also removes the vetting and support functions performed by publishers. Their decline is tied to the most important issue: sustainability. As prices are driven down and self-publi-cation becomes common, incentives for new writers to dedicate lengthy periods to an ultimately risky endeavour will decline. The Lessig model does not suit the novelist, but there are parallels and lessons to be learned from the software industry, for example, where such models have been implemented.
It is early in the day and new writers will be key in deciding what happens;
while established authors are unlikely to be affected by the changes, the recognition required for success is more difficult • in the immense virtual marketplace.
Aameer PateI
LSE Literary Festival lecture Through the Soviet Looking Glass
featuring Francis Spufford
Last Saturday, acclaimed writer Francis Spufford spoke to a small audience on life behind the Iron Curtain in the Khrushchev era. Surreal images of skyscrapers topped with winged effigies, artificial lagoons deep in Siberian territory complete with pale sands and far-off sunbathers, champagne and toothpaste - we gazed into what Spufford argued was a neglected window of Soviet history, when a Soviet equivalent of the American dream seemed quite possible and even existed,,'/;': albeit briefly, for some. This period of Vj$t societal well-being is the subject of Spuf- * r| ford's book Red Plenty.
There were many funny moments in mf the hour-and-a-half lecture, with laugh- ;£*f ing references to Khruschev ("stuffing his'j|| face with Fidel Castro") and the selection iffi of Soviet-style lamps. But the lecture 18 ended on a sober note, with a discussion; ft! of the event described at the end of Red j 15 Plenty: the moment when Khrushchev (oiMj the advice of his economists) drastically raised the price of meat, and incurred all * ^ sorts of social unrest. Spufford stressed *
that we should not see this as a comic | blunder of Soviet policy. Using the recent?' financial crisis as evidence, he argued that "we ought really to be laughing in self-recognition. Our [own] system comeS''-with inbuilt pitfalls".
Stephanie Chiang
• +€• —
journalistic
Thursday,
17 Feb.
Department of Media and Communications Literary Festival panel discussion Adaptation in an Age of Digitisation: its fans, practitioners, and foes featuring Shakuntala Banaji, Andrew Burn and Blake Morrison
Shakespeare has been the most adaptable of all authors. Shakuntala Banaji has studied the richness and adaptability in his plays that has made them suitable for countless interpretations. On the subcontinent, they have been used to create sympathy for colonist and colonised alike. In Bollywood, he remains an inspiration for modern interpretations relating to issues in contemporary Indian society.
Having written in and adapted to a wide range of formats, Blake Morrison highlighted the important but difficult task of remaining faithful when adapting material for modern audiences. The line between dumbing down and achieving accessibility is a fine one. Balancing new artistic direction with the intentions of the original author can also be a delicate matter.
Andrew Burn noted the importance of understanding the particular strengths and capacities of different mediums. Today, a novel may also be released as a film, a game and a cartoon - each one necessarily different. While the character depth of a novel is beyond the scope of ninety minutes of film or a role-playing game, other reasons for adaptation remain, not least the unique visual strengths of both media.
Aameer PateI
LSE Alumni Relations Literary Festival event From LSE to Hollywood: the legendary actor looks back
featuring Ron Moody
The evening with actor Ron Moody started off slowly.
The talk began with a series of prompts from the Chair, the questions forced and the answers restrained. As the evening progressed, however, the event became a show.
As the conversation deviated from the prepared structure, the audience was hurtled back and forth through Moody's mind, as if it had stumbled back through the last fifty years like Alice down the rabbit hole. Moody became everyone: James Stewart, Groucho Marx, Marlene Dietrich, Fred Astaire... until all that was missing was Fagin from Oliver!, his most famous role. Throughout the evening, he had disappointingly shied away from addressing it.
The reason why became clear at the end of the event, when four introductory notes left his mouth. What followed was pure Fagin. The entirety of "You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two" filled the lecture theatre as if I'd just popped in the DVD and skipped to the right chapter.
In that moment, regardless of how the evening had started, the audience saw Ron Moody as he was, is, and always should be remembered.
Jessica Warner
stick to the facts.
Ash also defended his own practice of writing the history of recent events, stating that such "history of the present" avoids the common flaw of retrospective determinism, and also gives a good idea of what a historical event was really like as it unfolded - "what it felt like, what it smelt like." But he warned that in order to be a good eyewitness observer of history, it isn't enough just to be there at the scene; by way of example, he criticised television reporters who covered the recent Egypt uprising from a hotel rooftop, and whose observations added little to the audience's understanding of the event. Ash observed drily, "You need to have some value added down on the ground."
Presca Ahn and Min Tang
POLIS Literary Festival panel discussion
New Ways to Witness Wars
featuring James Brabazon, Jiil McGivering and Ed Vulliamy
Most people learn about wars abroad from brief and formulaic foreign news reports, disseminated through print or television. "New Ways to Witness Wars" featured three journalists who have taken unusual approaches to the subject of war in recently published books. Documentary filmmaker James Brabazon read from My Friend the Mercenary, a memoir about his friendship with South African mercenary Nick du Toit. BBC correspondent Jill McGivering read from her first work of fiction, The Last Kestral, which centers on an embedded reporter in Afghanistan's Helmand Province. And Ed Vulliamy, an international correspondent who has worked for The Guardian and The Observer, read from Amexica, his account of the drug war in Mexico.
The authors' takes on foreign wars demonstrated little that was actually "new." The two excerpts Brabazon chose to read were predictably calculated to shock and awe: a graphic description of du Toit's torture in Black Beach Prison after his failed coup of Equatorial Guinea, followed by a gratuitously long passage about Brabazon's personal angst- replete with the tasteless inclusion of his young daughter as a prop in his emotional performance, and his cringe-worthy de-
LSE European Institute-APCO Worldwide Literary Festival Lecture
Facts Are Subversive: crossing the borders between history and journalism
featuring Timothy Garton Ash
Oxford Professor Timothy Garton Ash has had innumerable experiences of crossing national borders. But as the author of nine books of contemporary political history, he is also concerned with intellectual borders. Over the course of the talk, he addressed two divisions of "a virtual and not a physical kind": the division between journalism and history, and the division between fact and fiction.
Ash argued that the frontier between academia and journalism can and should be thrown open. The two fields often find faults with each other, to a degree that is "extremely silly and extremely counterproductive." Yet Ash said that the differences between good history and good journalism are small; good journalists and good historians both possess the instinct toward universal sympathy and the determination to get all evidence available. Most importantly, both journalists and historians have a responsibility to
The digital age has even had an impact on the writing process itself... the fear of unrestrained criticism is biting.
Department of Media and Communications Literary Festival discussion The Making of Bestsellers
featuring John Thompson
Have you ever written a book before? Do you have a book idea in mind that resembles the idea behind an existing New York Times bestseller?
Do you happen to have given a public lecture recently, or have you had an affair with a celebrity that has made you an overnight sensation?
If your answer to any of these questions is "yes," you may have the makings of a bestseller. According to Professor John Thompson, these criteria distinguish "a book" from "a big book".
But experience isn't a must. Thomp-
To be a good eyewitness observer of history, it isn't enough just to be there at the scene.
Friday,
18 Feb.
scription of hauntedly looking at himself in a mirror. Neither of these overwritten excerpts addressed the unpleasant ethical problems in his journalistic relationship to du Toit, a former colonel in the apartheid regime who asked Brabazon to film the coup in a favourable light. McGivering's reading from her "page-turner" novel demonstrated a milder strain of self-congratulation: in it, a reporter's improbable involvement in a post-battle recovery scene leads to her finding the body of an Afghan child before the soldiers do - a typical moral fantasy. The excerpt that Vulliamy read was unoriginal in a much more happy way: skilfully written, it demonstrated the empathy and tough-minded clarity that have always been the hallmarks of fine non-fiction writing.
Presca Ahn
[Photos: Chu Ting

ernes
Colours, block and graphic
Colours
On the scale from rust to russet Ice blue
Primaries red, yellow and blue Black. Of course. All combinations of (all of) the above
otos: Yan Giet
The Rodnik Band by
Philip Colbert
Originally from Scotland. Philip has Uvvd in iojidon f»r the past seven years
Estethica
^inoe its launch in 2006 Estethica has rapidly grown into the hub of London's ©thical fashion industry and is highly fegarded both in the UK and internationally. Over twenty cutting edge desgners, chosen for their design excellence and commitment to working in a sustainable way are exhibiting this season. The Estethica principles are: fair trade and ethical practice in the production process; the inclusion of organic fibres; the use of upcycled and recycled materials and fabrics. Designers you might recognise include Christopher Raeburn, Ciel, Ada Zanditon and Junky Styling (featured on The Apprentice). Also new for AW 2011 was the screening of a film made by The North Circular, featuring Lily Cole entitled "Metamorphosis" and The Fairtrade Foundation's presentation of organic cotton scarves from farmers in West Africa and India.The scarves are designed by Hussein Chalayan, Marios Schwab and Holly Fulton (NewGen winner) making this the first hybrid project presented by Esthetica.
KTZ by
Koji Maruyama, Sasko Bezovski and MarjanPejoski
Marjan and Koji studied fashion design at Central Saint Martins while Sasa was studying architecture. They are the business minds that stand behind the retail network of cult stores 'Kokon to Zai', combinging music and fashion, based in London and Paris.
They describe their designs as "strikingly graphic, not just in the sense of print - our designs are also veiy graphic in shape. Definitely youthful... KTZ comes from Kokon To Zai, which loosely translates as 'from here to then'. It's the journey, be it style or fashion. It should be the transgression or move- • ment of the wearer's feelings and ideas... Not the other way round."
www.kokontozai.co.ulc
February. Some argue it is the worst month of the year; it's weirdly short, it's dark and wet. To be honest, it's just a lesser version of March. So what did February have that no other month can boast, apart from the Clinton-monopolised celebration of pink greetings cards? The answer lies in the future; in your dreams and aspirations. It lies in your wardrobe - next season's wardrobe. Each February sees the revelation of tondon Fashion Week.
This year, held betweenl 8th and 22nd February, it was so close to home. Walking round campus last week, to and from the tube and around Covent Garden at lunch time, did you see them swarming? Like busy bees in platform wedges, frames for ijnonogrammed totes, coiffed and starch-cuffed, with glazed eyes, and very skinny thighs. These are partisans of the press-pass.
LFW moved to Somerset House a couple of years ago after 25 years in Kensington and its new central location has been the making of the event; with a new BFC fund going to sponsor new fashion talent. Somerset House is, of course, a prestigious and beautiful venue at the heart of London, close to colleges like Central Saint Martins and the London College of Fashion, which has made the event accessible to the newest talent and alternative visions from beyond W1; it has provided a setting for a new kind of vibrancy which West London cannot always provide. And people travel the world to visit this celebration of the fantastic.
And most of you know what happens behind the bravado and beyond those imposing monochrome banners. Exhibitions of the AAA/'11 collections are laid out' in the beautiful rooms of Somerset House, the fruition of hundreds of imaginations and the clockwork mechanism of a multi-million pound industry. Everything seen here will trigger a kind of design domino effect; themes and silhouettes, while many seeming outlandish now, will be snapped up by the business brains of the High street, from the higher end Reiss and Dover Street Market down to Primark and.certainly everything in between. Bloggers, photographers, models and buyers from all over the world come to seek their biannual dose o; aesthetic overload, and a cue for the pathway of design ahead. Most of the shows require a separate pass, and for the most part are attended by well-known fashion personage (i.e. not me) but we did manage fo get hold of a few passes to KTZ and Rodnik Band (see below and right).
As well as the Exhibitions and Shows of numerous designers from Aquascutum to Topshop, there were various other categories for recognition and awards:
Fashion Forward
Started in 2004, Fashion Fringe at Covent Garden focusses on encouraging the spirit of extreme imagination adventure and experimental design that London is historically known for. Designers will be asked to demonstrate an eiciting, original approach but also the potential to make beautiful sellable clothes. Previous Fashion Forward winners induce Christopher Kane, Erdem, Giles Deaccn, Marios Schwab and Roksanda lllincic.
This year's winners were Meadham Kirchoff (below), Peter Piloto and Todd Lynn
New Gen
Created in 1993 by the British Fashion Council, NewGen (New Generation) was the world's first scheme to support emerging designer talent. Previous winners of the award include Alexander McQueen and Matthew Williamson. Awards are given for catwalk shows, presentaitons and exhibitions.
New Gen Catwalk winners A/W'11:
David Koma - Georgian Designer from CSM
Dark reptile-inspired psychedelia
Holly Fulton - Scottish Designer from RCA Elegant and satirical femininity
Louise Gray - Scottish Designer from CSM
A punk-inspired cocktail of mismatched op- art
Mary Katrantzou (right)- GreekDesgier fomCSM
Romantic ornamental oriental
Michael van der Ham - Dutch Designer from CSM

m
Musi
Zonoscope
For me, Cut Copy's albums have always contained the perfect summer tunes. It's music that begs to be paired with sunshine: The upbeat, lazy sounds of Bright Like Neon Love took me by surprise, and the template of that sound has led to countless copycats. On their next album In Ghost Colours, Cut Copy took their sunlit sound tcthe dancefloor.
On Zonoscope, they don't deviate from the well-trodden Cut Copy path - but they do meander and take a less direct approach. The opening track, 'Need You Now', works as a song much in the way the album works as a whole. It starts slowly and unremarkably; halfway through as the song builds, it begins to seep into your body and you find yourself tapping your foot or bobbing your head to the beat.
By the end of the song, you're completely engulfed and realize the song has worked its way up to a highly enjoyable destination, though you can't quite recall the route you took or how you arrived.
66 Music that begs to be paired with sunshine"
The album works on the same level in so much as it takes hold unexpectedly without ever fully taking a grip at the forefront of your mind. Zonoscope finds Cut Copy working in more subtle ways than the all-out dance-bombast of In Ghost Colours, and it lacks the sheer exuber-
ance of Bright Like Neon Love.
Songs are crafted with transitions that have some ebb and flow, with a more delicate touch that allow the mind to wander. When this tendency to create more space and contrast falls away from the band, like on This is All We've Got' and 'Alisa', the results are less than spectacular.
The changes in pacing on Zonoscope, even when they don't necessarily work out, demonstrate how the band has tried to craft the album to be listened to more as a whole and less as a collection of songs. In this way, the album is better than the sum of its parts. As a whole, Zonosope is completely unremarkable. The sunny chorus of 'Where I'm Going' that just begs you to sing along and the hazy synths of 'Blink' and 'You'll Miss a Revolution' are exactly what we've come
Cut Copy
to expect of a Cut Copy album.
Fortunately, the template Cut Copy is working from is a solid enough foundation that just barely meets most expectations. A better album than most.
Spotting
What Becka Sunter, 2nd-year undergraduate in Geography, is listening to this week:
C.O.L.L.
Rihanna
Cee Lo Green
Ed Sheeran & Devlin
Hevy as a really Devy thing: Backstage with Devin Townsend
every arte! his chaos years*
/ /	reetings humans. I
I I / ¦ have come from far
I mm across the universe.
% M You shall fetch me ^^^^1 your universe's ultimate cup of coffee...Black!" exclaims Zil-toid, an alien warlord from planet Ziltoidia 9 on the hunt for the 'finest bean' to fuel his ship. Presented with a 'fetid' brew that failed to meet his Ziltoidian expectations, he declares war on Earth and battles Captain Spectacular in an intergalactic face-off. Ziltoid triumphs and becomes the 'greatest guitar player ever to have lived', only for Spectacular to expose his 'true nature' -a nerd.
Is Ziltoid real? In the 38-year old mind of Devin 'Hevy Devy' Townsend, perhaps - for him, the googly-eyed alien is more than just a puppet propped up by a heavy metal concept album. He was the result of 20 years' experience as a musician, producer and founder of several side-projects, including the infamous extreme metal band Strapping Young Lad. He has almost a dozen solo records under his own label 'Hevy Devy Records' and has produced for several others. With global tours, festival headlining appearances and intense media coverage however, Townsend'found himself becoming inseparable from his 'ridiculous' star persona. He decided to parody his ego-centric image by giving birth to Ziltoid, coinciding with that of his own son in 2006.
"When we had the baby, I realized that a lot of my persona in Strapping Young Lad was this idea that I was bigger than life, that I was out-of-this-world. Towards the end of Strapping's tenure we were headlining big festivals and stuff and as a result of that, there's this sense that you can present a version of yourself you want people to perceive," explains Townsend. "And as a result of that, your self-worth becomes entirely based on what other peoples' validation of you is.
"I mean, the person who watches the Antiques Roadshow in his underwear isn't as much of a commercial viability compared to a crazy-haired heavy metal guitarist-singer dude," he laughs, "But with an image like that, it's definitely going to oatch up to you. It sort of became a defense mechanism where I would literally hide behind this persona. It's easy
to put across this impression of yourself as being more than you actually are, so that's where Ziltoid came in."
He was a cathartic musical statement: Ziltoid personified everything that Devin wanted to 'take away from himself' after his son was born. Combined with the stresses of touring, promoting and a drug-laced alcohol-heavy lifestyle, Townsend took a long hiatus from the music scene to focus on production work. Spending more time with family at his home in British Columbia, he stopped taking drugs and made a vow to become sober. He even cut off his trademark 'skullet' hair. "This little dude personifies that sort of crazy energy and character I had back in the Strapping days. Look man, he even has the hair," jokes Townsend. "He's everything that I'm not now, I guess. I have to be more accountable in terms of what I say and stuff, but not with Ziltoid. He's like, I got no problems saying whatever I want to anyone I want, man."
"it's easy to think that you're bigger than life, that you're out of this
world"
The alien also represents Townsend's position on the glamourisation of artists in the music industry. "So you get these pictures of yourself in magazines and stuff, right? It makes people assume you're different, and it kind of inflates your ego. A lot. it's all a little bit silly," he says. "I'm not hating on fellow musicians or anything, but I just think anyone that believes fame is more than a social disease is gonna have problems.
"I'm an introverted person by nature, so yeah, fame is something I never looked for. I think it's a mental illness; it makes you prone to believing bad things over good things just by nature. I hope Ziltoid makes it though. I could hang out in the back and let him do all the talking."
With appearances on popular music-based video game Rock Band, a graphic novel and a possible musical in the works, Ziltoid had taken on a life of
his own. In stark contrast to his puppet's success, Townsend was having an identity crisis and struggled to compose music without the influence of drugs. He began to question his purpose as an artist.
"Quitting drugs gave me a lot of perspective on the way I did things. It was a big change for me and I'm not a person that deals well with change. I realised I couldn't really flourish musically without being high, or drunk, or whatever. I'm not the type of character that should be taking drugs. Music was using me as a tool," he recalls. "I had a clearer mind so I could look back and see that my emotional development tends to be mirrored, or at least represented in some way, by what I do creatively in my music.
"So, for example, with Strapping, certain visceral statements resounded very appropriately with my state of mind at the time, but as I got older, the things that made those elements important were worked through or a realisation changed my view, or what have you. Now, as opposed to when I was 23 when I started SYL, the things I would hope for, not only for myself but for people in general, is that as you grow, you learn to resolve those elements of life that caused you problems. And for me I guess it was the drugs."
Townsend insists that he has no moral stance on drugs. For him, drugs and alcohol were a 'rite of passage'
which were, again, cathartic. "Were drugs an important part of my life? Well, everything I do in my work is a reaction to my emotional environment so yes, absolutely. I believe that everything is applicable. What you eat, look at, perceive, the people you're with, all these things colour that creative fabric," he says.
"l realised I couldn't really flourish musically without being high or drunk..Music was using
me as a tool"
"I'm not like those types that preach about drugs saying things like 'don't do drugs kids! I'm high on life bro!' For me, it was my choice. I think I was trying to find myself with drugs, but I was taking myself further away from my core. A lot of the things that are truly valid are the real blood and guts of life, but they numb you from that. You end up writing about things from a metaphoric perspective, as opposed to a real nuts-and-bolts this is what I feel, this is what I see sort of thing.
"The brass tacks of who I am and what I wanted to say creatively were always being missed or viewed with a sense of self-importance or awe. It takes you away from the actual true heaviness of it. You're deceiving yourself in a way."
After a period of self-reflection and re-discovery, Hevy Devy announced a four-part album series under 'The Devin Townsend Project', which Ki released to critical acclaim in 2009. "All this creative personal change ended up being documented by these four records. As opposed to trying to make a chronology of these emotional experiences work in one place as some kind of schizophrenic statement, I decided it'd be better to span it out in quarters.
"So with Ki, it ends on a sort of musical epiphany. Then the next one, Addicted!, is more commercial pop-metal with a celebratory mood to describe the
relief that comes with an epiphany. And the whole idea of the next one I'm working on now, Deconstruction, is to get to the root of why I'm doing heavy music, to make it accountable for itself. It's framed by really making sure what I have to say is exactly what I stand by."
Fans have always come to expect an almost Meatlovian extravagance with Devin's solo material. The final album, Ghost, will eschew such 'over-the-top layering' for a different approach. "It's going to be passive and peaceful. A sort of beautiful statement that wraps up these four records in a way, so I can move on artistically. It's the end of the beginning."
The 'Project' concept reflects Townsend's unique approach to song-writing. "If I have a moment of emotional significance on some level, then I'd process my environment and make certain sounds that reflect those. Say if . something happens, I might make some sort of pattern with a decent musical footnote, then later on when I play it, I'm reminded of that moment," he explains, "So I'd keep logs to track that emotional development. What usually happens is they conglomerate into songs or albums that define a certain period of my life. All the things, the artwork, lyrics, aesthetic, it all resonates with those moments. So when the record is done, it becomes a snapshot of something. People who weren't even there could say, okay, I get what he's feeling from the music."
It appears Townsend is well on his way to finding himself, both as a person and as an artist. Perhaps 2011 will be the year he assuages his confusion about the universe, revealing to us the true nature of his identity. "Do I enjoy my job? Fuck yeah. The bills are hard to pay, stuff gets stuck in customs and my kid might hit his head on the side of a table, but I love it. I would be nothing without my music and the people who listen to it. I'm always flattered and honoured."
Hoping to release Deconstruction and Ghost this coming May, Devin Townsend will be touring the UK starting March 3rd 2011.
Visit www.hevydevy.com for ticket details.
ftlasaya lanikawa fonts to the heavy metal pioneer about Ultoid, sel
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PRIVATE B
now Tainted with Unforgiveable Atrocities-
iV. Private B.
Glee Series Blog
OMG. I'm sure you're all stilt in shock at last night's turn of events... 'spoiler alert*... Kurt has left McKinley?! I mean I'm all for Karofsky not being able to harass Kurt anymore, but what kind of message is it for the Glee writers to tell viewers that the only way to deal with bullying: is to move to another school? And with Kurt a Warbler at Dalton Academy, he is now the New Directions' competition?! This is too much to take!
In Monday's episode "Special Education", it's time for Sectionals, and it seems that Kurt's absence has left a huge hole in our favourite glee club, causing the club members to turn on each other in a way they never have before, as well as Puck needing to recruit a new member for New Directions.
The drama all begins when Emma. tells Mr. Schue that New Directions need to take.. . well, a new direction. Will, of course, acts like a besotted teenager and agrees with her immediately (yep, Mr Schue apparently still has feelings for Emma -1 guess he's already over the sexcapade he had with Terri two episodes ago), replacing Finn, Rachel and Mercedes' with Sam, Quinn and Santana for the solo spots.
In standard Rachel fashion, she throws a huge tantrum, only to have Santana throw her hook up with Finn in her face. Finn tries to pull a Ross ("We were on a BREAK!"), but with Rachel (Glee Rachel, not Friends Rachel), he should have known it would never be that easy...
Meanwhile, Mr. Schue's pairing of Brittany and Mike Chang for a dance duet (pure genius) for Sectionals leaves Tma worrying about Mike's fidelity and planting doubts in Artie's head about his relationship with Brittany. Oh yeah, and there's a magic comb involved. (Brittanyism of the episode: "I know I'm more talented than all of you. Britney Spears taught me that.")
So Where's Kurt during all this? Well, he's coming to realise that the "no bullying" policy at Dalton Academy is because no one there dares to be different. It seems that blending in is the only way to fit in, something we all know is not exactly Kurt's strong suit As much as I hate to see Kurt unhappy, it is kind of nice to know that Dalton didn't turn out to be all
"Tune in to see a shocking Vegas wedding and the answer to the big question: will Finnchel break up?"
that perfect and he does actually miss the McKinley gang.
With all the drama, this year's Sectionals turn out to be just as dramatic as last year's, except this time it's not Sue who's causing the havoc, nor the glee club's competition, but the New Directions members themselves! Tune in to see Quinn and Sam's sparkling duet of "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" (I'm not going to lie, the Black Eyed Peas have killed the song for me), a shocking Vegas wedding and the answer to the big question: Wiil Finnchel break up?! With Kurt now a Warbler and with the glee club falling to pieces, will the New Directions be able to pull it together for long enough to make it through to Regionals?
Friday Night Dinner
Channel 4, Fridays, at 22:00
Each episode of this new comedy revolves around the Friday night family dinner of the Goodmans, a dysfunctional Jewish family, full to the brim of so-called 'familyisms' which are designed to endear you to the show's characters. Starring Simon Bird (The Inbetweeners) and Tamsin Greig (Green Wing, and more recently, Episodes).
The Model Agency
Channel 4, Wednesdays, at 22:00
Premier Model Management opens its doors to give an insight into the world-class agency ttat lays claim to the careers of Naoni Campbell, Claudia Schiffer and Linda Evangelista. The show kicks off with N9W York Fashion Week but also promises to focus on London, Paris and Milan as well. Characters will include scouts, models, designers and photographers.
The Killing
BBC4, Saturdays, at 21:00
Although now currently halfway through this Danish detective drama, all of the previous 8 episodes are available on BBC iPlayer. A useful recap of the story is also provided at the start of each episode if you don't have the time to catch up. Each episode represents a day of real time in the investigation of the murder of a young woman and The Killing is unforgiving in its gritty portrayal of the investigation. The Killing is set to be remade in the US by cable network AMC.
Saif's fees have gone up by HOW MUCH?!?
We will fight to the last bullet!
WHAT YOU MISSED AT THE LOYD GROSSMAN TALK
SAEF GADDAFI'S PSYCHOLOGICAL TURMOIL OVER HIS STANCE
Loyd: Hokay. Any more questions?
Food Appreciation Society nutjob: Yes, er, um, have you got any tips for the entrepreneurs here tonight to get ahead in the business?
Loyd: Surre. It's rrrelly verry simple. All you have to do is make a pasta saaaurce, have a recognisable face, then take a photo of your faayce next to a pasta saaurce jarrr, and changeyourr name to Loyd Grossman. It's rrrelly verry simple.
Nutjob: Right, er, well, that wasn't the advice I was looking for really -Loyd: But it's rrrelly verry simple. Aall you have to do is just taayste people's food - you don't even need to cook yourrself - and say ridiculous things like, "This is aaaabsolooottlee fantaaastic. An explooowsion of flaaayvourrrs has just erupted in my goooorb. I love how you put the blomooooonge right next to the butternut squaarrsh! And now in the Yelloow Kitchen, Joan has cooked Nutjob: Yep, sorry, Loyd. I was hoping for some practical advice.
Loyd: But it's rrrelly verry simple. Aaall you have to do is just go into other people's houses - don't break and enterr, just make surre the door's unlocked - and, let's say there's a hippo on the mantelpiece, you pick it up and say, "I see this perrrson has a passion for hippoos. Perhaps they work with hippoos, perhaps they are a
hippoo themselves. One question stands out: whooo lives in a house laik this? Leeeet's look at thee evidence. Books on a bookshelf, a dooorr that was unloorcked, taaysty grub in the fridge. David, it's ohverr to you."
David Frost: Thanks Loyd. And now for the home anstuudio audiences, heers hooz-house...... ittiz.
[Cue silly jazz music]
[Reveal person from the '90s. You have no
idea who it is.]
STUDENT TUITION FEE SHOCK!
|Fact: 3 weeks ago, Sir Howard Davies starred in Fourteen Little Red Huts, a play ridiculing George B Shaw, an LSE co-founder who |grows overly sympathetic towards Soviet Russia.
To repeat, the play satirises a man who gets too close to a tyrannical |regime. And starred Howard Davies.
|Task: Think of a news item in the week which somehow relates to this.
mmm. An LSE bigwig who becomes a little too attached to a bar-arous tyranny which brutally murders its own people?
ba
Brainwave: Give up and write another fashun column.
PRIVATE B's CUT- AND-PASTE GUIDE TO MAKING YOUR OWN SATIRE:
Jackie O's Ugandan Prose
otsofSexual] xploits: Fit Finder is back!
Laura Aumeer says it's time LSI students put the foxxy back in Fit Finder with the all new Floxx.com
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m&m
J
Exams are on the horizon, deadlines are mounting up and stress levels are getting higher. Students will replace alcohol with caffeine as the main component of their diet. It will become normal to spend all night in tlie library, and arguments will erupt over study spaces. A year ago, a website relieved the monotony of studying in the library: FitFinder. It was criticised by the LSE, who asked students not to use it, and was shut down in May after UCL claimed it brought them into disrepute. But now the makers of Fit-Finder have hit back, launching a new site, promising to lighten up, and possibly heat up, study time in the library.
On FitFinder students posted short descriptions of people spotted in their university, who they fancied, such as "LSE Library LG: male, brunette, curly hair, waistcoat, bit of a Tory, he's gaw-wwwgeous". Anyone could read these and many hours were spent (or wasted) reading, writing, trying to identify people and generally having a laugh before the website was shut down.
But now there is a new website allowing lonely library-goers to post short messages about people who catch their eye:
Floxx. Once registered you can post about people you have spotted anywhere and view posts about people in the surrounding area. It is clearly already being used by some LSE students - for example last Thursday I read:"LSE libraty LG: female, brunette hair, fit geordie with fantastic legs. Shame about the horrible accent" -but has yet to reach FitFinder's popularity in LSE. Many students have not heard of it and it has lost FitFinder's appeal in its exclusivity to universities.
Last year, a spokesperson from the LSE criticised FitFinder for being inappropriate, insulting and creating a bad atmosphere, arguing that "if you are in the library, you are there to study". Undeniably websites like Floxx and FitFinder will upset some people and people will take jokes too far. But in principle are they really that bad? Anonymity is maintained, as no names or personal details are posted and for those who get upset by what they read, there is a simple answer: do not go onto the sites. If you are trying to work PDAs (public displays of affection, that is) are very annoying, and there are some things that should just wait until you get home. But I doubt Floxx is going to lead to a mass outbreak of student snogging in
I doubt Floxx is going to lead to a mass outbreak of student snogging in the library
the library.
FitFinder was set up originally for a joke and the ist rule of Floxx is "Never take life too seriously". These are not serious dating websites. I have yet to meet anyone who has hooked up in the library or in fact anywhere, through one of these sites. However, I do know of people meeting in the library through the old-fashioned concept of talking. Yes, there are other times and places to meet people, but with 24 hour opening hours and exams looming, some people will spend most of their time inside. Granted a library is meant to be quiet place, which has meant that glances, whispers and notes become important, if anything increasing romantic tension. Not to mention, you are much more likely to find someone who shares your interests (albeit academic ones) in the library, than you are in Cheapskates on a Monday night.
If you are in the library, you are there to study. But, everyone needs breaks and social interaction to stay healthy, physically and mentally. Floxx can easily provide the former, an amusing distraction to work, no different really to Facebook or YouTube. But for genuine interaction, nothing comes close to actually going up and speaking with someone.
Who actually lives in this "London"?
Rasha Touqan ponders the magic of a Londoner's social-
If someone had approached me last September, I would have been confident to declare myself quite well-adjusted. Never has that belief been so shaken, though, since moving to* London. Yet, it is safe to say that London is unlike anywhere else in the United Kingdom. It is also a safe assumption that most Britons would agree. Sometimes this can be a magical, whimsical experience, invoking an "only in London" smile. Sometimes you just want to run into a wall. It is controversial to say that London is the Marmite of English cities. You either love it or you hate it. So, this attitude may or may not affect one's social life and whatever connections one can make with people.
I have to admit that my personal experience has been diverse. I've lived in quite a few cities. Some were bustling, such as Cairo. Others were not as much, such as my hometown. I also lived at a university in the middle of nowhere for the past three years. It was called "The Bubble" by its inhabitants because you tend to live in an enclosed environment. So socialising and meeting people becomes the main course of action. It was

more than easy to make friends because there a social life almost took a lead over anything else. So, to move to somewhere that was a 180 degree change can be a shock to the system.
You can almost go to any city and say it is diverse. But London is on a whole other level than other cities in the UK. I can honestly say that half the people I run into on the street or the Tube are tourists. So, this may be the problem on the social front. Who do you meet who is actually from London? Where are the Londoners? Who are the Londoners? Or at the very least you can ask yourself, who actually lives in London? It's such a big place with rushing masses everywhere that you wonder about the lives of the people that you run into. What kind of people do live here? That is a question that always comes to mind.
Besides the hordes of tourists, I have observed that there are two kinds of people that do actually reside in London. First, there are the temporary dwellers. They could be here to study. They have a contract to work in London for a couple of months. Whatever their reasons are, they are only here for a short time. So, they are
m
like tourists, but with actual responsibilities. They tend to befriend their own kind - other temporary dwellers. The main reason is that they realise the fleeting nature of their being there and want to make the most of it. So, they engage in touristy activities, like the London Eye and 'adventurous' little visits to Camden town.
The second type are (you guessed it) permanent dwellers. Some are pure-bred Londoners through and through, although most of those come from the neighbouring counties. Others have just happened to live there for a long time, so they are honorary Londoners. Those individuals tend to already have their own groups of friends. They either made these friends at school, university, work or the night bus. They have had these friends for years and are quite satisfied with them. As a result, everyone else is at acquaintance level. So, it is rare to recruit new members.
As you can see, London social life can be quite complicated. Yes, there are boundless sources of entertainment to be enjoyed in the city. To list them, it would be a whole other article. Yet, as an Arab proverb says, "paradise without people is not worth stepping in".
Jackline O. Amaguru
The endofa Ugandan-Gaddafi love affair
The past week has been clouded with controversy over what I call "Blood Dime" - the money that has been retrospectively labelled dirty "blood money" now that the Libyan monarchy (Muam-mar Gaddafi himself emphasised that he is not a President, otherwise he would have resigned, so I'll assume he is a king) has metamorphosed into an monstrous rainmaker - literally raining bullets on civilians. In most of Africa, when it rains, it is considered a blessing. However, a rain of bullets is considered a curse on the taker of life.
'Suddenly' governments, institutions and individuals the world over are getting 'light bulb moments', falling over themselves to cut ties with the Libyan elite, including Saif Gadhafi, who seems to be number two in line to the throne.
When Ugandans saw Libyans taking to the streets in protest of poverty, high food prices, civil restrictions among others, we could not believe it - what,
with the money Gaddafi splashes out in Uganda, one would think they have no problems in Libya and Tripoli was paved with gold! Who would have thought that the 'invincible' Gaddafi, who told our president not to let go of power because revolutionaries do not give up power,
would be going through this?
Is this the same flamboyant Colonel Gaddafi that Ugandans know? The Gaddafi who is ferried around in his own fleet of cars and whose entourage literally clears Nakasero Market (a posh fresh food market in central Kampala) on their way out. Are we talking about the same Gaddafi whose security detail refuse to bow to Ugandan security protocol and even had a scuffle with our security boys at last year's African Union summit in Kampala? Is this the Gaddafi who literally camps at the compound of a top Ugandan businessman who is worth billions of dollars? The Gaddafi whose posters paint Kampala when he arrives? Well, no wonder Ugandans are in shock.
You see, relationships between Gaddafi and Uganda are deep rooted, despite going back only about ten to fifteen years. There is even a newly named Gaddafi Road in Kampala, leading to the big and glamorous Gaddafi National Mosque that he funded.
Gaddafi (or Libya) also lavishly funded the refurbishment of the Tooro Kingdom's palace in Western Uganda. The Colonel is known to have wanted to promote his pan-African ideas through African cultural leaders. However, he has had a special affinity for the child king of Tooro Kingdom and the small kingdom's pretty Queen Mother.
At one point, Muammar Gaddafi was in Uganda almost every two or three months (I am not exaggerating). He would arrive at Entebbe airport and, without stopping to call on President Museveni, drive straight to Tooro, a journey of about six hours. That raised not only diplomatic but other questions that were hot fodder for tabloids. "His heart is in Tooro", people would say. I dare not elaborate what that means in Uganda-speak.
One evening I watched something interesting on the news. The Queen Mother of Tooro was among the dignitaries on the runway of Entebbe airport bidding farewell to Colonel Gaddafi. He shook hands with the dignitaries including the Vice President of Uganda and when it came to the Queen Mother of Tooro, somehow, the Brother Colonel couldn't let go of her hand. Sensing the awkwardness of un-ending handshake and the cameras all over, the Queen mother literally had to
free herself from Gaddafi's grip.
+ -
i6
The Beaver i March 2011
Social
(
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IPllfii
Finally I managed to have a true East London night out, after a friend and insider got me on the guest list for two of the hippest clubs in East London.
For our London night out, we arrived comparatively late at the first venue, XOYO (pronounced Ex-Oh-Why-Oh), situated inear Old Street. This had the grdat advantage that there was no queue and we could go straight in.
Inside we encountered a big industrial hall:with two bars and a great crowd all facing the stage, where the current DJ was performing his live beats. The atmosphere was catching and we soon mixed with the crowd that comprised Shoreditch lovers dressed Central St.-Martins style, easygoing alternative types just there to listen to the music and people like us, who simply wanted to try out new tilings.
XOYO is not only a venue for live performances, but similarly hosts art exhibitions and other cultural events. The aim of the club is to promote arts "in an exciting new format where multi media arts and performance come together".
Like most of the clubs in Shoreditch
you should like electro or whatever can be mixed with it. Our event included a Bonobo DJ set - a mixture of chill-out and a fusion of hip hop and electro - Mr
44
I met Dr. Mercedes Bunz, one of the
panel, partying in XOYO
Thing (hip hop), Kutmah (indie), Stateless (electro/rock) and Lazy Habits (com-
bining big band and hip hop).
Many of the DJs performing are well-known, so you had better purchase the tickets in advance. Depending on the event, tickets will range from £6 to £14. Prices for drinks do not differ much from other venues in the area; beers are around £3.80.
At 2AM we decided to head to another bar/club called The Nest in Dalston, not far Shoreditch. Something I only know from Berlin: going to a club in London after midnight! Funnily, there was still a small queue outside demonstrating that the party was far from over.
The Nest is much smaller, one of these trashy and dark basement clubs with old sofas in the corners, where people put their jackets and later mix them up. It doesn't host any famous DJs. In fact the rule is to stay away from mainstream and discover new, cutting edge talents that are likely to make it in the future. So you probably won't recognise the beats, which hop between disco, house and techno.
The club further self-praises itself for the price policy. Drinks are cheap and if you come before 10PM there is no
entrance fee - after 10PM you pay only £5. Another good thing is that the club only closes at 4AM Thursday to Saturday, so it's the perfect venue for party people, who don't like to be in bed at 2AM.
Something I wasn't expecting to find in this kind of club was the fact that there was a sort of VIP area for DJs and special guests. Don't ask how I ended up hanging out there, but it was the perfect place to watch the crowd rocking. The type of people you meet here: young East Londoners with nerd-glasses and wildly mixed outfits.
All in all we had a great night out. If you are an electro fan, tired of mainstream and commercial clubbing or simply want to encounter interesting and creative people, East London is the place to be.
Some gossip in the end: after following the Media Panel discussion organised by the German Society one day earlier, I met Dr. Mercedes Bunz, one of the speakers at the panel, partying in XOYO. Seems like the right venue for media people.
Helen Craig looks over the successes of this year's Go Green Week
Go Green Week showcased both the serious and silly side of being 'green' at the LSE. An event packed week kicked off on Monday 7th with the promotion of sustainable fishing, meat free Monday and the part-time Carnivore Campaign. So far, almost 400 responses have been collected for the catering survey but there is still time to give your opinion on LSE introducing meat free Monday at http ://www.surveymonkey. com/s/K5FS-FXP. Over sixty-three students have been converted to part-time camivorousness and the LSE is now second in the university league on the matter. The Sustainable Futures Consultancy society also continued to spearhead their Smart Mug campaign and promote the Sustainability Projects Fund.
"Turn it Off Tuesday" saw over 50 LSE
students taking some weird and wonderful pictures of themselves "loving the planet", including some bin hugging and seasonal veg snogging, for the Degrees Cooler national photo competition. LSE , has been chosen as the overall winner of I the competition - so thanks to everyone i who took part! The student switch off campaign signed up lots more eco-Power Rangers, bringing the LSE total up to 440! That evening there was also excellent attendance at the Sustainable Revolution public lecture, where speakers included Mark Williams, an associate partner at Deloitte, Nick Heller, head of green business operations, Google EMEA and Sue Ridddlestone, CEO of BioRegional.
A rooftop garden workshop and cycling cinema was held on "Well-being Wednesday" to highlight the more active side of being a "tree-hugger". Over 20 stu-
dents helped create a new growing box to add to LSEs network of rooftop gardens. To stay up to date with the roof gardens' progress, sign up to 'LSE Gardens' Twitter.
Despite the terrible weather, Thursday was a fusion of fashion and ethical issues. There was an ethical bead workshop, ethical procurement petition, public lecture and a ReLove event, run in partnership with the Fashion society. Loads of clothes, shoes and accessories were bought on the day and it was a bargain fest for any label lovers.
Friday aimed to promote recycling and students tried to guess the amount of crushed cans in a bale. Answers ranged up to 30,000 but the answer was in fact only 648. A human banner was created in Houghton Street to spell out the letters for a national campaign to "cut carbon, not education" run by People and Planet.
Green Impact auditor training was also promoted throughout the week to get students involved in auditing staff departments across the LSE. The training has now taken place and we await the results to see which staff department will achieve the coveted Gold award!
Valentine's Day concluded the week of greenness by encouraging everyone to just love their planet a little bit more.
Go Green Week was a big success as it promoted the wide range of sustainability projects already happening at the LSE and helped to engage a wide range of students on a wide range of green issues. Thanks again to everyone who helped out. For more information about all things green at the LSE, visit www.lse.ac.uk/sustaina-blelse.
Micro
finance
news
Sunny Kasabwala turfs over LSE microfinance
What is microfinance, you ask? In a nutshell, it is 'banking for the unbankable'. Practically speaking, microfinance provides credit and banking services for those who do not have access to these amenities otherwise, whether it be because they lack collateral, credit history, proximity to a bank or some other reasons. It is a type of social business that has been made popular in the past few decades through the works of 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Muhammad Yunus, and the Grameen Bank. Their successful use of microcredit - small loans starting around $20 - with impoverished potential entrepreneurs in Bangladesh sparked this upward trend. In recent years, the field of microfinance has taken off at an unprecedented pace with a vast amount of microfinance institutions (MFIs) popping up throughout Asia, Africa, the Middle East, along with Central and South America.
With this rapid expansion, the developing field of microfinance faces many challenges. On Friday, 4th March, a group of students representing the LSE Students' Union Sustainable Investment Society, CEMS Club London and the LSE Students' Union Microfinance Society, with the support of the LSE Department of Management, will be hosting the Insights into Microfinance Conference 2011. This conference will take place in the Old Theatre, Old Building from i-6pm and will include a variety of panels and roundtables to be used as a platform for debate and discussion with industry leaders and pioneers on the forefront of microfinance initiatives around the world.
The aim of this conference is to shed light on new topics of commercialisation and mission drift of MFIs, discuss funding and impact of microfinance investment vehicles (MIV), and measuring social performance of MFIs. The conference will conclude with practitioners in the microfinance field, discussing the various ways students and individuals can get involved in microfinance. Selected attendees will also have the opportunity to network with invited experts and their peers during the drinks reception after the conference.
If you are interested in attending this conference or would like to find out more information, please visit our website: http://microfinanceatlse.com.
Green Week gang gets going
UA11U9
The Quad 2nd March 2 0:00-23:00
GG interviewed the candidates for the Exec Officer roles and posed the following questions:
a) Introduction and why aire you running for the AU Exec?	c) If elected, what skills and experience would you bring to the AU Exec?
h) If you could change one thing about the AU, what would it be and why? d) What isyour funniest or most embarrassing AU moment?
Sport
Contact Beaver Sports	" Yj
sports@thel»eaveronline.co.uk
02079556705	1st March 20111 The Beaver
AU Elections 2011
1)	Norayr Djerrahian:
a)	My name is Norayr Djerrahian, known to many as Noz, and I currently play 4th team Football. Without my inclusion in the AU my university experience would definitely have been compromised. I would embrace the opportunity of being a part of something, which has had such a positive influence on me.
b)	It seems for some freshers the AU initially can be an intimidating place. I would try my utmost, using various techniques to make them feel more confident around the senior members within the AU. For example, instead of just initiations, I would have more Wednesday nights central to fresher involvement.
c)	Responsibility, Confidence, and a Fair attitude are ideal in such an important group. With my involvement, decisions will be based upon all the clubs in the AU rather than the same clubs, which have dominated in the past. My creativity will also insure there is never a dull Wednesday night!
d)	My funniest AND most embarrassing moment in the AU was when competing in Mr. LSE last year. I sung the Armenian National Anthem in an operatic voice, which somehow ended up as a very entertaining talent, getting me through, only to be knocked out in the penultimate round for my shocking chat up line.
2)	Tara Lee:
a)	I'm a second year netballer, and a Zoo Bar and Salou veteran= great dedication to the AU! 1 want to run for the AU exec as the AU has made my time at LSE so amazing and I probably wouldn't have stayed without it. I owe the AU A LOT!
b)	More integration with RAG as I believe it will bring all our clubs together and publicise some of the smaller clubs better. The AU gives us all so much, and I think we should use our profile to give something back.
c)	I believe I have the approachability and social skills to help new members feel completely welcome. I'm also great at motivating groups and hope that I can use this skill to raise the AU to be the best it can be.
d)	Not knowing the sideline rules of Netball well enough, so that the referee had to clearly point and explain where I had to stand for different penalties...in the second term of my second year of playing. Probably why I'm not asked to play that often!
3) ©vie Fansq:
a)	Hi guys, I'm Ovie - in second year and part of the football club at LSE. I've absolutely loved my time in the AU, and it would be great to take this to the next level by contributing to the organisation of events, activities and the good times we all have.
b)	I believe there should be more focus on smaller clubs - it's easy to get left out amid big sports such as football and rugby. I'd hold regular meetings with club captains of smaller clubs to ensure constant inclusion in AU-wide activities.
c)	Having been President of the Social Committee at Rosebery Hall, I have a wealth of experience in organising social events, voicing student opinion and getting things done. I'm also a really nice guy, which I feel would be beneficial for communication purposes.
d)	Probably hustings. Not sure if it can get much worse than doing the salmon (commonly misinterpreted for the worm) and cracking out chat-up lines about eating chicken.
4} Joe Checldey:
a)	Hi, I'm Checkley, I'm running for AU Exec because it'd be good to have a fresher on the team - especially as we've been under-repre-sented in the Tuns this year. I'm enthusiastic about working for the AU because it's been my favourite LSE experience and it'd be good to give something back.
b)	Probably ban Stacey. Stick up for the FC a bit more, I think we're slightly demonized but we're nice lads, honest. Also try to free up more funds for equipment; would've been nice to have some balls for away games this year.
c)	I've got quite a lot of experience managing and working in teams; I was head boy at school and I am entertainment officer for my halls; so I'm pretty good at that organising-lark. I'm a people person and that would definitely help.
d)	Getting locked out of my room in halls stark bollock naked the other week after Pub Golf.
5) Alex Avlonitis:
a)	Hey, I'm Alex (Avion). Having been at LSE for 3 years, I think I've got a good grasp of how the AU works, especially coming from a small, and slightly under represented club. I'm hard working and really enthusiastic about the AU, and will be able to represent it well.
b)	Having come from the badminton club (which is rather small, in case you hadn't noticed) I'd like to get underrepresented clubs more involved in AU events, as well as ensuring that all the clubs get the funding they need whether they be big, or small.
c)	I think I'm good at understanding the demands of different clubs, and the AU as a whole. Having made some major changes to the LSEBC as Club Captain, I think I could offer my determination, organisational skills and enthusiasm to the Exec.
d)	Jumping into a baby pool in neon fancy dress with the netball team. -3°C (atleast). Chanting LSE loud and proud.
6)	Sarah tossg:
a)	I'm a fourth team netballer and would like to be on the Exec because I believe I can make a tangible difference to the AU. I'd like to be more hands-on and proactive and give something back to an organisation that has made my experience at the LSE amazing.
b)	I'd change the huge divide between the big clubs and smaller clubs to make the AU more unified. I feel this would not only help to improve the overall image of the AU with the rest of the student body but also increase the involvement of the smaller clubs.
c)	If elected I'd bring my organisational skills and dedication to the AU; I'd also bring my experience of the AU over the past 2 years and my knowledge of what went well and what I feel could be improved upon, and work towards an unforgettable year for the AU
d)	Where to start?! The number of times I have fallen over under the influence of the AU is impossible to count - equally it was pretty funny having a chat with 'god' on a pay phone in Salou on the way home -that event had witnesses fml.
7)	Hannah Franklin:
a)	Hi I'm Hannah "Frankie" Franklin part of the WFC. Last Wednesday I was a pint-balancing kangaroo, however I do have other skills that could be useful to the AU. I want to keep the AU fun: girls can have banter too.
b)	Improve the respect of the AU throughout LSE: Lets have "LSE OLYMPICS' sponsoring RAG involving all sports! Who can hold lotus position longest, sprint loom fastest, jump highest.
c)	Due to working in a gym for numerous years my admin and organizational skills are definitely up to scratch. Having not been in the AU in first year I know what is it like to look in on the AU -1 can help more get people get involved.
d)	Ashamed to say I don't remember many Wednesday nights (comes with the territory) but balancing a pint was almost as embarrassing as having no date or free champers at the end of Take Me Out!
8)	Josh Stacey:
a)	I'm Josh 'Malibu' Stacey. With the recent overhauling of the SU structure, I feel the Exec has been demoted to just an Events committee only, when it has the potential to be much more than this. I want to return the Exec to the position it deserves to hold within LSE.
b)	I think travel reimbursements should be closer to their true costs. Travelling in and around London is an expensive habit and I think the expenses system for the AU could do with an overhaul that was fairer to AU members.
c)	My commitment both on and off the pitch for the last two years is unrivalled, and this enthusiasm would be a valued asset to the Exec. Good relationships I hold with members of clubs other than football would also allow me to bring a less fc-biased view to the Exec.
d)	Numerous of the latter, but the one that stands out was a frankly dire performance at Mr LSE last year. Contrary to what I believed, the dance in Napoleon Dynamite was not a well-known 'talent' that people would enjoy.
9)	Tom LeBBion
a)	Hi, I'm Tom! I'm running for AU Exec because I've played rugby and been out on every Wednesday for 2 years and know what makes the AU click. The AU is family here at LSE and I'm committed to improving it for every club, big and small, next year.
b)	I would make sure the budget is fairly allocated to clubs, for example, accounting for whether their sport can or can't utilise free facilities Berrylands. I will make sure captains and individual AU members can benefit from more face-to-face time with Exec members concerning any AU issues, sporting or social.
c)	I already have ayear of experience as Rugby club captain, managing a budget, organising events, listening to opinions and working closely with the current AU exec. You can call me an admin wizard. I have experience working with the clubbing industry for Wednesday night organisation. I also love karaoke.
d)	Running round the corridors in a Calella 'hotel' in superman briefs looking like a deranged beached whale OR pretending to suck off Smedley on the carol stage after being caught fornicating in a 'sporting venue', only my balls fell out of my kilt, much to the delight of the crowd.
10)	Matt De Jesus:
a)	Name: Matt De Jesus
Occuption: retired Portuguese badminton player/Josh Olomolaiye's personal trainer
Reason for applying to AU Exec: To make every person feel as proud of being part of the AU as I am!
b)	I'd like to change the perceived negative image of the AU to others in LSE. The reason for doing this is that being part of the AU not only provide but enhances the University experience for many students, perhaps more so than any other society.
c)	Having been part of both Rugby and Badminton I believe I can understand and emphasises the needs of teams and AU members. Also being a 1st team captain for 2 years gives me leadership and delegation skills that are important in running the AU.
d)	Trying to shoot down a police helicopter on the way to a badminton match with an imaginary Strela 3
Hendnk Scheer
My name is Hendrik Scheer. I am a second year government student and captain of the LSE rowing team, and I am campaigning for the AU presidency. My promises as president of AU will be a STONGER AU, with FASTER communication, BETTER integration for new students while fighting HARDER for Wednesday afternoons off (WAF).
As president of the AU, I will demand a 'Director of Sport' at LSE, ensure that the AU becomes a significant part of LSE student life, as well as guaranteeing to help smaller and less resourced clubs get started. I will fight for Wednesday afternoons off, even for postgraduates, ensuring closer cooperation with sabbatical officers to prioritize the campaign. I promise more funding, organized career events, as well as better communication with AU Executives and The Beaver. We have been too complacent for too long - get ready for positive change under my presidency.
Brendan Mycock
l.Organise "Recruitment Events" aimed specifically at sports players, creating unique opportunities for employment.
2.Introduce a "Reference System" for AU members applyingfor jobs. Outstanding contributions to the AU will result in emails being sent to companies explaining how impressive and valuable these members are.
3.Create	events where drinking is not the core
4.Create	a "Mentoring System" where freshers will be assigned a mentor. This mentor will be a personal contact to assist them with training/ games/travel and social events. The AU can be an intimidating place and this system will make it a more personal, friendly and inclusive society.
5-Introduce an AU "Postgraduate Representative". They will represent and work closely with Postgraduate SU Reps to ensure sport is accessible and enjoyed by all.
6.Create an official partnership with RAG.
7-Offer greater media group support, through Pulse and The Beaver, making the AU more accessible.
trove
records. We drop our stash in the rooms upstairs and change into our bespoke get-up. The drinks are laid out and the craic is ninety. The feds are nowhere to be seen; tonight we are all packing heat! Later we land on Broad Street and a street of broads it certainly was. I'll not indulge you on the night's goings on, the guys can spill the beans. Let's just say drinks were bought and territories were fought and we lived to fight another day.
Remember the name....
Members of the A
Hurry and order your A Uball tickets now! Tickets go on general sale this week and you re, don't want to miss out on the social event of theyear. Be sure to login and bookyour tickets at http://www. lsesu. com/ents/ event/469/
Smedley's Corner
Stuart Smedlev
This Thursday marks the first anniversary of the death of one of English football's trailblazers. Unfortunately, it likely will pass with little fanfare, even though the subject of the occasion deserves to be remembered as a pioneer.
It was March 3rd last year when Keith Alexander, then manager of League Two Macclesfield Town, passed away unexpectedly the day after his side's fixture with Notts County.
The name may not resonate with many. But it should, for Alexander was to English football management what Jackie. Robinson was to baseball. It was he who broke one of football's last remaining colour barriers when in 1993 he became the first black manager in the history of the Football League after taking charge at Lincoln City.
His career would never take him further than the third tier of English football, with stops at non-league Ilkeston Town and Northwich Victoria following his first spell with Lincoln, before he again took the reins at Sincil Bank and then preceded to move on to Peterborough United and Macclesfield, his final stop.
But while he knocked down a door, few, sadly, have followed him. Today, despite black players making up a large percentage of those gracing the grounds of the country's four professional divisions every weekend, there are currently just two black managers. In all, there are 92 league clubs.
Those two are Notts County's Paul Ince and Charlton Athletic's Chris Powell, both of who have been in the hotseat at their respective clubs for less than six months. At the beginning of this season there had been just one: Newcastle United's soft spoken and hugely underrated boss Chris Hughton. He, however, was relieved of his duties in December, despite having guided a team of castoffs and unruly misfits to promotion back into the Premier League before making a better than expected start to life back in the big
time.
What then can be done about a situation that has to change?
In The Times on Saturday, Powell argued against the introduction of positive discrimination, insisting that managerial jobs had to be earned on merit. But when chairmen fill so many vacancies with experienced bosses, it's difficult to envisage this situation changing for the better. So far this season there have been 31 managerial changes, but just eight have led to novice managers taking over (Powell being one of them). It's an improvement on last season when 11 of 49 new bosses appointed were taking charge for the first time, but only just.
Instead, the Football League and Premier League need to take a leaf out of the NFL's book. Since the introduction of the 'Rooney Rule' in 2003, all teams seeking to fill head coaching vacancies have been required to interview at least one minority candidate in order to end their underrep-resentation in coaching circles.
And so far it has arguably worked. Not only has the number of minority head coaches increased from just two in 2002 to eight out of 32 today, but studies have shown that they are now no longer being held to higher standards than their white counterparts.
An introduction of such a rule in
engineering to some, but there needs to be something done to end the current situation. With few black managers having the prerequisite experience seemingly demanded of club superiors, introducing a system where they would at least be able to get an interview would allow them to get one important foot inside the door. It would be the first important step along the way to ending their underrepresentation.
Furthermore, it would be a great way of continuing the work begun by Alexander almost twenty years ago. He deserves to be remembered as the first of many, rather than the first of a few.
Saturday was an opportunity to enjoy one of my guilty pleasures - non league football, and the Blue Square Premier game between AFC Wimbledon and Altrincham.
Given the international make-up of the LSE's student body, it hopefully wouldn't be too much of a generalisation to suggest that its football fans' level of knowledge about the lower leagues in this country is small.
The non-league game may lack the glitz, glamour and aesthetic attraction of the Premier League. But it is no less entertaining, and - most importantly for hard-up students - cheap. At £7 a pop the Dons are well worth checking out.
Check out what the AU Exec candidates had to say in an exclusive interview with GG
Letters to the Sport Editors
Dear Editors,
Thank youfor the lovely areert box in whichyou published our last letters, and for placing a picture ofGollum above us. We noticed that Gossip Gol-lum was not titled - are we to assume that you have changed to a pictoral form of notation, and that we are now the defacto shitspinners?
We have a couple of conerns regarding your reporting of'Mr LSE'. The enthu-siasmyougive to thefact that Mr Rogers has three testicles is unfounded. As a matter of fact, f hasfive, and though only one works, we find this much more impressive (as do the ladies). The picture of Mr. Cook, which is disturbingly similar to the aforementioned picture, makes W wonder what happened that night. Your claim that a 'great wig' is required to win the title is also distressing -the whigs were dissolved in 1868, and by then they were far fiom 'great'.
In 'Arse of the week '.your censoring was inadequate. If you had meant to conceal the arse, as we would expect, your beaver was in the wrong place. If you had meant to conceal identity, we would point to the 'Lee'written on the jeans. We assume his mother wrote this on there. Wefind this cute.
We were pleased, however, to see that you took our advice fiom last week on board regarding Barcockjizzina in his pants. We would remindyou that to report he had 'jizzed himself' would have been a phallusy. However, leaving a solitary heading is notfair to your stresseareadership.
We are also watching xoxox.
Yacht undUU
The Beaver j 1 March 2011
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Gaelic gangsters: The Sardinian Job
The alarm clock reads 7:10AM. It's Saturday morning. I shake of the migraine from lasts night's pints. I throw on what-ever's clean as I listen to the daily grind grow outside my window. The bag is packed and my balls are pumped. I walk the unforgiving streets of Islington as I reminisce over lost comrades and my misspent youth. Deeny's stationed in the Alps, and Quinn's doing a ten-stretch in Kuala Lumpur. Last thing I hear Simpson's making a tidy sum in the racketeer- . ing business back in Belfast. 'You gotta make-it this time', they say. 'You only get one chance', I'm told. What do they know? This is my first taste of the ancient game of Gaelic Football. We're going to the British GAA university championships. I gotta make a name for myself in the annals of the LSE AU. Too long have the pussyfooters from Rugby and FC stole our plunder on the dance floor of Zoobar. Our vengeance is nigh.
I meet them at the Station, a bunch of wise-guys, wide-boys and back-street pushers, here's Captain Davy McCauley, Dermie h/ cCloskey, Ruairi Hourihane, Mikey O'Keefe, Paulie Holland, Benny McCoy, C Drky, Simey Rickenbach, Shaney Canavan, Ellie Vick and Vancey Power. We hop in the carriage just as the conductor blows lis whistle and the 8:23 bound for Birmir gham slowly turns it wheels. I think of he challenge ahead of us as the landsc ape scurries past. I think of my sweet] leart back in Sardinia, her hair shimmeri ig in the summer sun. "I'll do it for her" 11 ell myself.
Only a vhen we reach the pitch do we realise the enormity of our task. We have Glasgow, ] Nottingham and Birmingham in our group There ain't no changing rooms so we mal e do with a dusty old hangar. It probably 1 asn't seen action since D-day. We don ov r kit, ready for action, and make for the clearing over the ditch. First up is the Birmingham Brigade. We size up our opponents, it's 13 men on 12, we are outnumbered. Their waves of attack on the left flank prove too much and they infiltrate our b'acks. Dermie holds the line; it's
all about damage limitation now. Ruairi rockets over a consolation point near the end. We see out the rest of the contest and leave the field battered but resilient. Next up is Nottingham. Our fraternising with the enemy in the first 10 minutes proves our downfall. They must have had a sniper positioned beyond the thicket as Paulie hit the deck every time he got the ball. Also it didn't help that the ref was breaking our balls. Not even Shaney's heroic performance in goals could stop the onslaught. After the game we licked our wounds and reassessed the field of play.
Lastly we faced up to the boys from the mean streets of Glasgow. It wasn't gonna be easy. For the first time in the history of intervarsity Gaelic two McCauley bro's would be on opposing teams on a Gaelic pitch. This time we play to our strengths. The triumvirate of Davy, Ruairi and Mikey 'kept it in the family' and linked up well through the middle each securing a point with el capitano scoring two. It's taken three games but finally I come to grips with the hard and fast skills of Gaelic. So there I am, my foe running towards me with the ball. The ground is heavy and my legs even heavier. But my mind is sharp. Adrenalin kicks-in. I tackle him hard; get the ball in my hands and fist pass it on. Euphoria! Again I make a play this time scooping the ball off the ground and passing it on. Nonna Alias would be proud back home. Shaney seals the game off with a diving header into the goal, not exactly orthodox, but neither was my back heel earlier in the game. We leave the pitch with our heads held high. The LSE Gaelic football team finished 3rd in a hotly contested group with its honour intact.
We make it back to Shanahan's speakeasy in the city, our hide-out for the night. The hazy stench of hashish is in the air, Alex Higgins' long lost twin is pouring pints and made men are shooting pool in the back to the sounds of the Rasta man's
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