FYI...

I'm no longer actively posting on this blog, but the links on the right off the page are up-to-date to Easter 2008. All work after this point can be found at Community Care and Den of Geek.

Web 2.0 will turn us all into teenage girls

Why FaceBook Is Awful

If I wanted to keep in touch with these people, then I’d have made the effort to do so. After all, I have a MySpace account that I haven’t used in almost two years, how’s FaceBook going to be any different? I have much better things to be doing with my time than ‘social networking’ all day. Just say No to Web 2.0.

Why FaceBook Is Amazing

Like, OMG! I TOTALLY forgot that I knew so many people. I’ve got almost 50 friends in 24 hours! Wow! I must be an amazing person. I’ve led such a diverse and fascinating life, and at every stage, everyone’s wanted to be friends with me. Yeah, everyone wants to know me. I’m the best.

Why FaceBook Is Awful

No-one’s friended me in, like, forever. I’m never going to make 50 at this rate! Why won’t Seth reply? We go way back, we’re best buds, chizzy bezzas. What’s his problem? What’s my problem? Why does no-one like me? Man, I always make too much effort, unless I’m making no effort at all. No, it’s because I’m just so mediocre. I ignore my work all day long, and this is how my so-called 'friends' reward me. I’m so unspeakably wrong and everyone hates me and I wish I could just DIE.

Canada vs Britain: Round Three - Toilets

Toilets should be the same the world over. Most of us have the same pieces of kit, after all. But they're not. Otherwise this would be a very short post, and I would have done something with the last ten minutes of my life other than dribble on about the lav.

Lets also make it clear now that as an entry about toilets, there’s lots of peeing, pooping and other mildly icky words ahead, not to mention one example of peeing off three-storey buildings on to public streets. I’m being serious when I say that I’m about to have a shower now, because writing this has made me feel so grubby.

Don’t eat and read.

Doors

In Britain, toilets are nicely hidden behind full-sized doors. Canada normally just has a piece of two by four to provide privacy. Indeed, you see all of everyone from about the knee down, and the chest up. As a tall person, this means that you can see people whilst you’re trying to wipe your arse. Having a face-to-face conversation with someone whilst doing so is like patting your head and rubbing your stomach. Plus, it’s disgusting.

Miniature bog doors do have a few advantages. Firstly, all dumping inhibitions vanish out of the window. What’s the point of stressing about what people may or may not hear of your lav-bound experience, if they can see for themselves that you are straining away? (Not from personal experience. NOT.)

It also means that it’s much easier to share newspapers and often conversations with the person in the stall next door. I used to work somewhere where it was commonplace to waste a morning doing so. The downside is, of course, that regardless of what you are talking about, you are effectively engaged in the early stages of cottaging. It's lucky that toilet cubicles in Canada, like the UK, do not have miniature drill shops in them.

Oh, and, AND, not a single toilet door lock works in Toronto, as they’re all these strange little rotational dooleys, instead of nice big slide locks. That means you have to wrestle with a lock that someone’s had their germy mitts over. And the doors are that little bit too big that you can’t really just climb over them.

Urinals (or, The Unbearable Lightness of Peeing)

Toronto has way more individual urinals than London, and they are all spaced out to prevent penis envy. London’s boozers has troughs to wee in, like primary school, or crams them altogether, like a row of miniature flower vases stuck to the wall.

Torontonian weeholes are enormous porcelain affairs with wraparounds that mean it’s more like peeing into a fullblown hanging garden. But somehow being given plenty of room to pee in leaves you knowing that something is at the very least slightly amiss, like Logan's Run.

What have Canadian men got to hide down there that means they need so much privacy to pee in, when they virtually shit in each others laps? (That’s more Japanese, but you get my point.) It’s like when you use individual changing rooms: it feels like progress, but you can’t help but feel that we’re leaving our communal pissing roots behind. You know, like our forefathers did in the war. Getting back to a trough after peeing in such a strange and alien land provides you with the same earthy grounding that taking a dump in the forest does.

Loo seats

I always find it horrible when anyone – male or female – leaves either bit of the loo seat up. Even if lifting it up means revealing a floaty surprise, walking in on an open loo just reminds you that someone’s been using it. No-one wants to think about you on the lav. (Incidentally, I have the same stance on buying loo roll. Everyone who walks and drives past you will know that you use a toilet when you are carrying your jumbo value pack home. Eurgh. Face facts: nothing of any historical significance was achieved by someone carrying a multi-pack of Andrex Quilted.)

At least you have that option in London. In Toronto, no-one even owns the top liddy bit of the loo. Madness. In fairness, they probably ran out of porcelain after making their Royal Deluxe urinals. But you’d think they could put a curtain over it or something.

The Outdoor Pee

This should be easily sewn up by Britain – after all, as a nation foundered on mild alcohol problems, we should be virtually swimming in Enoch Powell-style Rivers of Piss. But we’re not. Why?

- By day, everyone’s too polite to do so, unless you’re in a bus station, in which case it’s positively encouraged.

- By night, everyone’s lost too many body fluids through throwing up to possibly have anything left to pee.

- Plus, as our country is the size of a gnat’s chuff, there’s always someone standing about five metres away from you. Public decency dictates they should be at least seven metres away.

So Toronto is kind of the winner by default. Not only are there are plenty of ground level options, but if you’re drunk enough (as a former housemate once did), you could always just pee off the third floor and onto the merry pubgoers of Bloor Street.

Or you could just hold it til you get home. The choice is yours. As Ray Winstone almost said, what are you looking at me for? I’m not going to tell you where to pee.

Fake Bathroom Attendants

Are actually a major international problem that the UN should really do something about. In bars in London, Toronto, and Cardiff I’ve gone to the loo, and ‘been served’ by a bathroom attendant who obviously doesn’t work in said bar. Weird.

Still, nothing can escape the fact that Toronto’s loos are horrible and silly and people might as well just go directly into Lake Ontario, considering the existing options.

LONDON 2 TORONTO 1

Canada vs Britain: Round Two - Food

As anyone who’s ever met me/ seen me/ heard my name knows, food and drink are both very important to me. Apparently, in the way I’m settling who the better nation is, second only to Press Screenings. But such is life. For these reasons, this post is the length of the world - but I promise you'll learn stuff about Canada that you'd never have imagined.

Onwards!

Pub grub

British pub culture comes in for a lot of stick, but Canada still seems pretty blooming keen to nick our best ideas. There are more British pubs than Irish pubs in Toronto (the most authentic of which would pass for rural Gloucestershire, if they got rid of the red phone box in the bar). But like all the best British exports, they’ve taken it and made it better. And cheaper. My old local was open til 4am and would serve plates of nachos and wings the size of you for just a few bucks. Which nicely brings me onto…

Weird, freakish oversized produce

Because wings are the only things that North Americans have unfathomably supersized, and made better, as it means you have more chicken to eat. But they do the same thing to a lot of fruit and veg. If you produce a carrot that’s about the size of four normal ones stuck together, it’s just watery orange ick. Buy more than three tomatoes in one go and you have to arrange home delivery to help with the size of your shopping.

Supermarkets

Indeed, shopping at all is a veritably veritable minefield. For all the communities that Tesco might oppress, and as annoying as their ads are, you have no idea how nice it was to come back home where the food is cheap, the choice is plentiful and the supermarkets are properly run. All supermarkets are the size of Co-ops in Canada, are really expensive, and are run like it’s the 1950s. If I didn’t have a hippie market at the end of my road, I wouldn’t have been able to afford to eat past October.

Fast Food

Let’s keep this one short: Wendys, good when you’re too tired to care what you’re eating; independent fast food, which is virtually extinct here; hot dogs for a dollar (50p) which were like God’s fingers. Canada wins.

’Ethnic’

There is no edible Indian food in Toronto. I once had a chicken makhani that I could swear was made with Marmite. On the other hand (and this might be slightly tempered by the fact I lived next to China Town), loads of noodle bars. On the other other hand, that also meant bubble tea, which is basically a weak-as-wee milkshake with tapioca lumps in it. Asian kids love it. No idea why. On the other other other hand, sushi EVERYWHERE at a price you could eat every day. But there’s no getting away from the lack of Indian. That is unforgivable.

Cheese

Canadians are proud of their cheddar. They are fools. It all tastes like Cathedral City (I am quite the dairy snob). And I ate a lot of it, working in a supermarket. All my co-workers heard for the entire time I was the Cheese Wench was my whining about how good English cheese is. Really, we rock. Plus, most Canadians act about four when you’re dealing with pate, which they think is just about the strangest thing you could ever choose to eat. Other ludicrous self-delusion exists with:

Wine. Actually, make that all alcohol except beer

Because the government are the only people who can sell it, it means the selection runs to about six different, nasty Ontario wines which are REALLY EXPENSIVE. It also means that you can only buy them at a few select places, as opposed to everywhere like you can here. Really, not even supermarkets can sell it in Canada. Works for beer, though, as it means they have an entire wall of local brewery options, and not just an EU beer lake’s worth of Carling. The rest of it: madness. Sobre, horrible madness.

Breakfast

On a Canadian food-related note, it’s worth knowing that pancakes and syrup are actually quite hard to be found (six months, and I don’t think I saw maple syrup on offer once), but there are eggs everywhere. Scrambled eggs. Eggs Benedict. Coffee with Powdered Egg instead of Milk. Before eleven am, odds are your waitress will be made of eggs. If you don’t like eggs, tough. Starve, fool.

BUT, Canada has one almighty trump card in its pocket that Britain could never hope to overpower: Tim Bloody Horton’s.

It’s got better coffee than Starbucks and at half the price (incredibly, Canada seems to be one of the few places in the Western world that has largely resisted Starbucks, and their godawful burnt coffee).

It’s a café version of Greggs. There are cakes and pastries and soup and chilli and other edible delights. And bagels – bagels! – which I have yet to find a decent one of since my return. Okay, I only looked in Sainsburys, but they didn’t have any. You get my point.

It’s been priced by Hyper-Value. I bought plenty of meals with the cents off my bedroom floor.

In short, I don’t know what it is, but I miss it like an amputated limb. It’s like the thing if you’re British and go abroad, and need something you’d normally get from Boots. You just don’t know where the heck you’re supposed to get it from.

And for that reason alone, Toronto evens the score to:

TORONTO 1 LONDON 1

UB40 were on to something

Job hunting leaves you flooded with two conflicting emotions at the same time. Like Kryton in Red Dwarf wrestling with the concept of ‘ambiguity’ (what do you mean, you didn’t see that episode?) you never know whether to be filled with frustrated anger that the whole process takes so long, or bored with all the time you have but can’t enjoy, because you don’t have a job.

Things can be seriously exacerbated, though, by mean potential employers who mess you around at every possible turn. Quite luckily, one of only two interviewers to not have acted completely out of line is also the one who’ve offered me a job – yes, I’m officially no longer a burden on society come Monday – but there’ve been plenty of others who didn’t do the same.

For one thing, it turns out it’s virtually impossible to get a job. I know this bit isn’t the fault of employers, but out of about 25 applications I sent out, I got five interviews. What is frustrating is that only two of the 25 sent a receipt of application, so then you start worrying about whether they got it. Taking five minutes on the closing date of applications to send out a brief e-mail to all the people who took the time to apply doesn’t really seem too much to ask.

Then there was the interview that held in the middle of a working office, so the entire office could hear the answers I was giving. (Actually, the worst interview I ever heard about was for a girl I lived with in Toronto who was asked to take her shoes off and walk across a café, to demonstrate her skills for the café owners’ dead father. At least that didn’t happen to me.)

But most frustrating is the waiting afterwards. If an interviewer tells you to expect a call within a week, then receiving a letter three weeks later is almightily rude. Ditto rejecting someone after an interview by e-mail, a situation made far worse when the employer offers interview feedback, and then doesn’t reply to further e-mails. (Then again, that was the person who when they first rang me up to offer me a job interview, I told them to wait a moment as I was having ‘bacon issues’, so that might be partially my fault.) It’s all very well to say that you can call the employer, but I’ve worked places where people doing so had their applications end up in the bin, so I’m somewhat disinclined to do so.

Aside from my new employer who did exactly what they said on the tin, only one other interviewer had the decency to reject me by phone and offer feedback they actually provided, roughly within the time they said they would. It’s not quite the warm, fuzzy welcome to the world of work I was hoping for.

Canada vs Britain: Round One

Press screenings are wonderful things that lead to undeserved smugitude in one of two ways. Either I actually have something to write it up for, and I can be smug that I’ll have a byline in the near future. Or, the more likely occurrence, I’m there with a grown-up journalist as an Ordinary Joe, in which case I get to see a film before the rest of you plebs.

Now, North America is good at treating even the Ordinary Joe’s as if they were descended from God himself, as well as seemingly having more outlets for film reviews. So you’d think that Canada would be able to whoop Britain into the ground in the category of Treating Journos Like They Are Made Of Gold, or something similar.

Let’s look, shall we? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…

Venue

If Kirsty and Phil taught us anything, it’s location, location, location. It was the name of their programme and everything. London provides an easily accessible site in Central London, a dedicated press screening site with brushed aluminium and fancy glass and lights and sofas and shit.

In Toronto, they expect you to get the subway to the furthest point out of town you have ever been (this is no lie), wend your way past several bottle stores and endless homeless people, before finally settling into some Moronplex seven hours after setting off.

People

London provides an efficient greeter, and fast, free bar service. The screen is filled with film-o types who all look vaguely familiar, from Channel 4 list shows. This provides more ‘oooooh, where do I know them from?’ fun than even Hot Fuzz can muster.

Toronto has filled all the empty seats in the press screening with prize winners from stations like Hoochy Radio and Booty FM. You’re squeezed into the screen with the city’s finest berkitude who insist on hollering, screaming, crunching and even ‘you go, girlfriend’-ing their way through the film.

Before the film starts

In London, as many free drinks as you want. And nibbles, if every bowl didn’t already seem to have someone effectively facedown scoffing them. Point is, free stuff.

In Toronto, security personally scan you, confiscate your mobile*, check your bags and then continue to film you with nightvision cameras throughout the movie. Also, as there are hundreds of hollering idiots that need distracting before the film starts, two of Booty FM’s finest insist on ‘entertaining’ us for a small eternity before the film starts.

SCORE: TORONTO 1 LONDON 0

* This may seem like a good idea to stop people filming the movie, but it’s worth bearing in mind that North America is several years behind us in terms of mobile technology or penetration. Even the best phone money can buy in Canada has an optional strap-on Kinetograph in lieu of a camera.

Ghost Rider - the true story

Ghost Rider should have been awful. The trailer was shocking. It stars Nic Cage and Eva Mendes. And there hasn’t been a good superhero film since X-2.

Here’s why, in spoiler-filled short, I was wrong:

• Nothing makes a superhero film worse than a production team that’s more concerned with minimising plot holes than with having a rollicking good time. No worries here – people’s powers come and go, and one major character literally vanishes whilst onscreen for no reason whatsoever.
• It has some truly hilarious dialogue. And not lazy nonsense like the Fantastically Dull Four, but actual laugh-out loud ha has.
  
• Several sections of city, be it roads, buildings or innocent bystanders, are incinerated for no good reason. By the good guy.
• It features the Carpenters on the soundtrack. RAWK!
• Nic Cage ignores his ‘best friend’ for the whole film. When he dies, Nic Cage still doesn’t even acknowledge the poor bastard.
• There’s a horse made of fire. It’s officially the best horse since (a) Bravestar’s sidekick Thirty/Thirty, (b) Alison Goldfrapp’s glitterball steed. The three of them could certainly brighten up Royal Ascot.
• There’s no moral undertones.
  
• There’s no moral tones.
• There’s no morals.
• Nic Cage gets hurt a lot. He may have minimised his normally annoying self for this film, but it’s still Captain Bloody Corelli we’re talking about here.

UPDATE: In my haste I forgot Batman Begins and Blade Trinity, which are both recent and decent. Spiderman & 2, Hellboy, Constantine and the Fantastic Four are still rubbish, though.

'Backed by vast endowments'

So, here's a barking idea.

The prime minister will today pledge £200m to universities if they raise £400m in private cash donations. The move is designed to promote a culture of individual giving to higher education similar to the US, where Ivy League colleges regularly reap millions of dollars in donations, backed by vast endowments.

'Private cash donations' are only going to come from one source; alumni who have gone on to achieve great and marvellous things, and are happy to sign a cheque for the institution to whom they owe so much.

Spot something wrong with this arrangement? Anyone who currently succeeds in life having been through an average undergraduate humanities degree (I know nought of what sort of loyalties science or postgraduate students may feel) is really going to have done so in spite of their university. I don't think I know anyone who feels they owe anything to their academic stomping ground. Three years of being packed in to subjects like cattle, a central administration that produces more bureaucracy than a Soviet ministry, not to mention holding student and academic in equal contempt, doesn't exactly pull on the heartstrings of graduates when said university comes a-begging.

As it happens, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I might get onto a postgraduate journalism scheme in September. People seem to come off them genuinely engaged with the subject in a way that undergraduate life was lacking. Having academics with enough time to help their students, instead of being crushed under a pile of paperwork that puts the NHS to shame and class sizes on a par with the Maldivian population, sounds quite frankly amazing.

Postgraduate dreamage aside, universities first have to earn loyalty of their students before they start coming cap in hand to ask for moolah. My alma mater Cardiff evidently thinks they have this one cracked; having graduated, they're a bit too keen to keep tabs on what I'm doing and where I am, doubtlessly so they can try and pump me for cash later. Well, I'll save you the bother, Cardiff: I'm self-evidently never going to have any cash to be pumped for, so you might as well save the paper.

Setting the tone

As an Unemployed I currently have a giant bucket of time to kill, so now seems as good a time as any to make blogging happen.

I feel that, having been away for so long, I need to set the intellectual level I have arrived at having spent four months in Toronto killing lobsters, being hit on by the city's elderly gay community whilst trying to cook chickens, and generally being as important to society as the average humanities graduate deserves to be.

I've spent the past month marveling at the way the dryer in my new flat makes all my clothes smell like baking. In one case, it actually led to actual cake making out of sheer inspiration.

Turns out I've only been drying my clothes. I haven't washed them since I moved out of Toronto. That was December 20th. That means they haven't been washed in two months.

I'd feel a fool, except the smell of muffins is to relaxing to get het up.

Student Media Awards 2006

Guardian Student Media Awards 2006

Winner of Best Columnist award
"Andrew writes like a self-assured, polished columnist, with pieces ofsubstance that had clearly entailed much reporting and research. The pieces were well constructed and sought admirably to get to grips with
student life. "
Jonathan Freedland, policy editor, the Guardian; Simon Jenkins, columnist, the Guardian; Lucy Kellaway, associate editor, Financial Times; Allison Pearson, columnist and author

Runner-up Best Critic
"Andrew's review of When A Stranger Calls made us laugh, and that goes a very long way. Keep it funny, and you should never be short of work."
Charlie Brooker, writer, the Guide; Peter Bradshaw, film critic, the Guardian; Charlie Skelton, writer


Cardiff Student Media Awards

Winner of Best Columnist award
"Andy Mickel won it for me for his Littlejohnesque pursuit of People & Planet, his vivacity over the longish haul of international student recruitment, but most of all for his skewering of Dr Cliff Arnall's grottiest day: good research, which told me things I didn't know as well as a sure grasp of the wider issue (mindless press, vapid PR pandering)."
Peter Preston, ex-editor of The Guardian

Winner of Best Interview award
Judged by Laura Barton, Features Editor at The Guardian
The interview is here

2nd Runner-up in best gair rhydd section
"Third place goes to the Comment section if only for Andrew Mickel's persistence. His demolition of "Doctor" Cliff Arnall was very good and based on talking to the man not just looting the web."
Meirion Jones, Producer at BBC Newsnight

Editorial - Deus Ex Expo

Let's stop working on mega-projects and start building Toronto

The plan to host a World's Fair in 2015 was on its deathbed as we went to press. Bids for the event are due tomorrow (Nov. 3), but earlier this week, the provincial and federal governments couldn't agree on who would pay the multi-billion-dollar deficit the event usually rings up. And as an online exclusive report on the Expo process by Eye Weekly's Andrew Mickel (available at eyeweekly.com) shows, that's a good thing. If we scrap the Expo, we can get on with the business of building Toronto.

If by some miracle of backroom wrangling a bid goes ahead, we won't hear until December 2007 who will host Expo 2015. (Milan looks like a stronger contender than Toronto right now.) That's another year of expensive preparation for an event we have no guarantee of winning. For the fifth time in 20 years (see bids for the 1996 and 2008 Olympics and Expos 1998 and 2000), Toronto will probably narrowly miss out on hosting a major international event.

And if our bid is successful? That's even worse news. Expos cost a lot: conservative estimates put the Toronto bid at over $4 billion. To a politician with vision, that price tag buys the city a world-class makeover and some tourist dollars. If you don't embrace that vision, all it buys is a barely perceptible international limelight on Toronto for six months and some world-class white elephants.

That the event could increase tourism by some degree is beyond question, but it would be a very poor return for the money involved. It wouldn't put Toronto on the map as it did for Vancouver in 1986; Expos have become anachronisms. New technology is around us every day and nations hold a daily fair of what they stand for on the internet. Besides, staging a showcase of the world in multicultural Toronto is pointless.

The biggest loser in this sorry tale is the port lands. Throughout successive bidding for two Olympics and three Expos, development of the proposed site has been on hold. It's time we abandoned our daydreams of an international mega-event and started looking at developing the GTA's largest tract of underdeveloped land in a way that serves our long-term needs.

What the Expo bid has managed to do is revisit our city's unstoppable disbelief in its own worth. From the insecure days of Art Eggleton, through the bombastic nonsense of Mel Lastman and now to David Miller's flaccid push for an Expo, dreams of rebirth on the world's stage have pointed to an obsession with the city's international standing.

Expo would still tie up city agencies, public and private money, and political capital for the next decade.

Beyond the Expo, the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation is scheduled to spend $1.5 billion in the wider district over the next decade. The plans won't deal with the port lands for years, and will involve less money than an Expo. But local politicians should be putting their efforts into making existing plans work, rather than chasing deus ex machina solutions for the waterfront's woes.

Why wait for Hungary to build us a new pavilion in four years that we can jerry-rig into a hospital a decade from now instead of working to improve healthcare now? Why hold the TTC hostage to what the Expo team want, instead of helping make current services work? Why build a second exhibition site in the south end of the city, instead of affordable housing?

In short, why are we waiting for an international committee to declare Toronto a great city, instead of making it a better place to live now?

World's Unfair

If the Expo bid falls apart this week, Toronto may dodge a bullet

The eastern portlands have been the Cinderella of Toronto redevelopment for over 20 years. Rather than develop them directly, the city has attached revitalization plans to international event bids (the Olympics in 1996 and 2008, and Expos 1998 and 2000). It's currently a prospective site for Expo 2015. The potential the event does have has swung the city behind it; council is almost unanimously supportive and public opinion polls show support for the bid topping 80 per cent. Yet the fundamental numbers the Expo is based upon are optimistic at best; at worst, they would cost the taxpayer billions.

To be in the race, the city needs to have a bid entered with the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) by tomorrow (Nov 3), with the question of whether the provincial or federal government would foot the bill for the loss-making event so far thwarting a bid from going forward. If no bid is entered, portlands development will go back on the developmental backburner it's been on since its industrial heyday. But considering the massive financial risks involved in an Expo, would the city be dodging a bullet by pulling out of the race for 2015? And what would a fifth bid failure mean for the portlands?

World's Fairs, as Expos are fustily known, have had a mixed history. While the era of Crystal Palaces and Space Needles provided a world showcase of new technology, these days they are the poor man's Olympics. Like the games, Expos can mean tourism, prestige and legacy assets (the leftover buildings) for host cities. But unlike the games, there is no guaranteed income; while Olympics regain much of their cost through broadcasting rights, an Expo stands or falls on attendance figures.

The Toronto plan originally envisaged 72 million visitors over the Expo's six-month period. Michel Frappier, Chief Operating Officer of the city's World Expo Corporation still insists that would be "doable," despite several studies claiming otherwise. The equivalent of the entire combined populations of Canada, New York State, Michigan and Ohio would have to visit to meet the total.

Even with scaled-down plans, number crunching the Expo still involves some eye-watering numbers. The replacement estimate is 40 million, but many suspect this dramatic reduction may still not be enough. It's the same target as Hanover's Expo 2000. They barely achieved 17 million visits (millennium theme notwithstanding), and consequently had to deal with a $2 billion deficit.

Can Toronto succeed where Hanover failed? Last year's event in Aichi, Japan, recorded turnstile figures 17 million higher than expected. However, it garnered less than 5 per cent of its audience from overseas, so Toronto should expect to rely solely on a North American market.

Michael Shapcott ran a community group opposed to the Toronto's previous Olympic bids, Bread Not Circuses, and remains skeptical of the prospects for international mega-events. "One of the biggest aims of the bid is American tourists and they're not coming to Toronto," says Shapcott. "That's not to do with the city, that's to do with the American economy looking like it's tanking."

The odds of an American trek north are even weaker when you consider that as the US has failed to pay its membership fees to the BIE since 2002, which means it can't have a pavilion. Without that kind of hook, interest by the American media and public could be as low as the marginal international coverage that recent World's Fairs have garnered.

To make an Expo work financially, it also needs to come in on budget. The current plan is costed at $2.8 billion � numbers that Mr Frappier calls "incredibly conservative" � but few projects on such a scale even come close to original forecasts.

Vancouver is currently preparing for the 2010 winter Olympics. There are still four years until the opening ceremony, yet already the British Columbian auditor general has reported the bid will probably cost the province more than double the original prediction.

"I do not think this is a priority for Toronto at the present time," claims council candidate and former mayor (and former Eye Weekly columnist) John Sewell. "We've got lots of problems with the here and now and the last thing we should be doing is asking for very, very large financial commitments by other levels of government for something that's eight or nine years away."

Currently, the Expo won't pay for itself. Even with full attendance, on-budget construction and the value of new developments, there will still be at least a $700 million deficit. It's this number that Ottawa and Queen's Park are currently tussling over.

Of course, as Council rebel Rob Ford points out, in the end it "all comes out the same taxpayer's pocket".

But Frappier last week insisted that there won't be a deficit at all, with early reports of one being mistaken. "This is very high finance, but when we looked at the numbers it's the cost of investment," he says. "The cost [of the deficit] is $2.2B, resulting in $1.5B of legacy assets.

"It's not a misunderstanding. It's an investment."

If a bid does go ahead, could Toronto win? Until last Friday, only Turkey's Izmir has declared a bid. But with Milan throwing it's well-designed hat into the ring, Toronto would have a real fight on its hands. The city has already secured the backing of all levels of government, and is so outwardly confident that Provincial President Filippo Penati even tried to talk David Miller into renouncing Toronto's bid and supporting Milan. To underline how well-organized their bid team is, Milan representatives have had key meetings with Tokyo and Shanghai, the host of Expo 2010. The bid has full government support, good communication and successful lobbying; in short, everything that Toronto's been lacking.

Of course, even if a Toronto bid goes ahead, the portlands won't necessarily win the Expo. But from London's abandoned Millennium Dome to Atlanta's commercialized image to Hanover's financial ruin, a world of white elephants shows that big events can bring doesn't necessarily justify their bloated excess.

The area falls inside Councillor Paula Fletcher's ward. "There's the potential for it to mean much faster buildout of the portlands, that's the upside. But there's also a well-founded concern that it could mean the corporatization of the portlands."

This is, after all, the event that spawned the Vancouver McBarge. "The portlands is a wild area, people like that aspect," says the Councillor. "We've got community gardens, small sailing clubs, and dogs off-leash areas."

Should Toronto submit an Expo bid, then there would be no word as to which city would win the Fair until December 2007, preventing further large scale development until that time.

As it is, the city's Central Waterfront Strategy does contain some plans for the portlands outside of the bid. They are, however, nowhere near the scale of development the Expo bid would facilitate. "We are doing some park projects," says Waterfront Revitalization Corporation spokeswoman Kristin Jenkins, but for now the corporation is "focused on the West Don lands; we're many years away from focusing on the Port lands."

In terms of its own aims, major questions still dog the Expo bid. The venture is intended to put post-SARS Toronto back on the map, yet even the success of last year's Japanese Expo failed to become an international talking point. The potential of the event to aid the region's tourism and the Expo's solvency are both held hostage by the fortunes of the contemporary American economy. And while the event would provide legacy sites in the portlands, it's difficult to see why the city doesn't have had the confidence to do it outside an international event bidding process that neither guarantees a positive end result nor comes cheap (bid costs currently total $2.1 million).

As it is, we'll find out tomorrow if Toronto is in the race, or whether the portlands will once again have lost its direction � but at least be freed of the yoke of hosting an Expo.

Boll Fighting

Director Uwe goes Postal on his critics

VANCOUVER -- Uwe Boll has never been a conventional filmmaker. Shunned by Hollywood and consequently forced to raise funds for his movies himself, the German director's recent projects have been based on videogames, making way for such bargain-bin botherers as Alone in the Dark and BloodRayne. These movies are certainly not famed for being good, but Boll's internet critics (by which we largely mean "trolls from IMDB forums") go slightly further, having quite literally called for Boll's life.

A lesser director would just shrug off such derision. Then again, a lesser director wouldn't have used Romanian prostitutes as actors in BloodRayne. Nor would a lesser director undertake a film like Boll's current production, Postal, which is derived from a videogame so violent it was banned in Australia. And a lesser director certainly wouldn't box five of his biggest critics and film it for future use as a DVD bonus feature.

When Boll first put out a call for critics willing to box him several months ago, his loudest detractors fell oddly silent. But as Boll pointed out to Eye Weekly right before the fight -- in annoyed, Teutonic tones that suggested he should be allowed to do otherwise -- "I cannot force people to come here. They are really pussies hiding behind nicknames from the internet." Instead, a ragtag bunch of publicity-hungry scrappers, including one journalist who's never seen a Boll film, signed up late last month for a fight in Vancouver, where Postal is shooting.

Speaking of Postal, the movie seems set to take Boll to a high watermark of controversy, and the boxing match stunt perfectly complemented it. The overarching plot of the film remains baffling -- neither cast nor crew could shed any light as to what it is about -- and a gentle rummage through the script doesn't provide good signs. What's clear is that it's another shoot-'em-up, this time with hillbillies and an attempt at political commentary that spares no one. Even the Queen isn't sacred in the Raging Boll's latest:

"We will fuck Queen Elizabeth," he says, presumably about the film. "We want to kill Chinese drivers over 50. We have Little Germany in the movie. There is a mini-concentration camp also. I think we make fun out of everything. This is the best approach."

And the suicide bomber named Mohammed in the script?

"Look, it's only a guy, his name is Mohammed. Every Arab number five is Mohammed."

The film ends with George Bush and Osama Bin Laden skipping hand-in-hand through a field. A big-screen Daily Show, this ain't.

Predictions about Postal aside, the boxing match was always going to be an uneven affair, pitting Boll -- a trained boxer -- against three interweb geeks and a 17-year-old. But the final knockouts came even faster than expected. For the first victim, webmaster Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka, it couldn't finish fast enough -- he tried to rush Uwe before the bell in order to get disqualified on a technicality. Floored by a direct punch, he rebuffed Boll's calls for him to get up and carry on, arguing, "No, you hit me in the face."

The next competitor, Variety intern Jeff Sneider, put up a more spirited fight -- his effort was rewarded post-fight with an oxygen mask. Toronto's own Chris Alexander, from Rue Morgue magazine, made it the furthest by going deep into a second round with Boll, but even he was dispatched with some serious-looking cuts and bruises. The last hope was amateur boxer Chance Minter, 17, who'd spent two days skulking around in a hoodie like the Sith Lord of Boxing. Forgetting, perhaps, that the kid wasn't a critic, Boll pulled no punches: event sponsor www.goldenpalace.com threw in the towel for Minter after just one round -- no doubt keen to avoid a reputation for child abuse.

In roughly 10 minutes of actual fighting, all four critics were dispatched with little to show but an impressive array of bruises, both physically and to the ego.

But the whole one-ring circus, not to mention the apparent content of Postal, points to a bigger question regarding Boll: does he genuinely care about his films and the criticism they receive? Or is he a fantastic self-publicist capable of stringing together any old schlockbuster to make a buck?

While in Vancouver, I spent a day as an extra on Postal (be sure to look out for my acting debut on the film's release -- you can spot me as a gun-toting hillbilly with a full-length mullet, doing naughty things to my "wife" on top of a dryer in scene two). On set, the director seemed to spend virtually all of his time on the phone. Conflicting direction from sundry assistants led to chaos and re-shoots.

Boll does provide a spirited defence of his work, though, and is determined enough to get his films made without Hollywood money. "If you're Eli Roth, and you're the son of Joe Roth [sic], then you say after Cabin Fever that it was so hard to make your first movie. Or the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola -- she had it so hard, all that bullshit. The thing [that] pisses me off [about] the internet critics -- I had no connections to the film industry."

Boll is clearly as passionate about his ideas as he is about self-promotion -- and those are passions so vehement he's willing to hit people in the head over them. But his regard for detail in execution seems to be missing, which doesn't bode well for the director's prospects of breaking his trend of box-office bombs. It's a massive challenge to meet, but when you're dealing with Uwe Boll, you never know what might happen between now and Postal's 2007 release date. "I like Man on the Moon with Jim Carrey," he says. "Sometimes you have to do something really, like, strange. Why not?"

The Protector

Tony Jaa's performance in Ong Bak has been carefully replicated in all of the broadest details of The Protector. As a simple country hick, he has to avenge stolen valuables by traveling to the big city. But the film is so keen to charge off in several directions at once that Jaa seems to have almost become an afterthought.

The basic plot comes close to being an outright spoof, as Jaa murders bad guys and innocent bystanders alike in pursuit of his elephant, which was snatched by Australian thieves. Past the first 15 minutes of slow-mo pachyderms, the film is composed entirely of fights across Sydney, with a higher baddie count than the entire Death Wish series. A new major enemy turns up at least every 10 minutes; human colossus T.K. (Nathan Jones) and dominatrix gangster Madame Rose (Xing Jing) provide interesting feet fodder. Amidst the vast array of corrupt cops on Segways and henchmen on rollerskates, though, it�s difficult to pick them out.

Indeed, the redeeming features of the film are packed away in three isolated five-star fight scenes that deserve better than their surrounding padding. A fight up five floors of circular stairways in one continual camera shot beats anything out of Kill Bill just by its sheer scale. A later bone-shattering onslaught, meanwhile, is Xeroxed straight out of the end of Volume 1, and the final payoff scene creates a pace that is so desperately missing elsewhere. Yet various sub-plots wander in like remnants of other films -- whilst any plot point will inevitably be arranged around excuses to show off Jaa�s prowess, it�s all so episodically disjointed that it feels a little too much like a video game, even for the genre. Wait for the decent scenes to turn up on Youtube; the rest is pure filler.

Student guide content & listings

Contributions included the cafes and booze sections, as well as student stereotypes for jocks, nerds, hip hop kids and granolas.

I've never felt so American in all my life.

Step Up

There was a poster outside the screening for Step Up that featured a ticket stub from Save The Last Dance. Coincidence? Well, yes. But the comparisons are unavoidable. Channing Tatum plays a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, grudgingly serving a community service sentence in an arts school. There he falls for a ballet student (Jenna Dewan), and much street ballet and flirtatious brew-ha ensues.

Of course, this film is all about dancing and beautiful people. Considering many of the leads have been drafted in from their full time occupations as dancers and singers, this is quite fortunate. Tatum spends the first half hour uncomfortably sloping around the 'hood like the Second Coming of Snow; his sulking presence is a hollow effort to hang the whole movie on. Yet both he and a semi-naked Jenna Dewan seem to know that they're really just there to pout and bob around a lot. There are certainly no plot surprises in store, but the style and tone are spot on. The arts school buzzes with Fame-style energy and impromptu fits of dancing. The choreography itself should be enough to satisfy So You Think You Can Dance fans, and the extravagant waste of Rachel Griffiths as the whisperingly elegant school director adds an unlikely touch of class.

Step Up is straightforward enough to do the job for fans of such dance films. Everyone else might as well save the ticket cost.

WHAT TO READ

Seeing as this blog is heading non-stop to 250 articles, I thought it was about time to start pointing out the best stuff. Because I'm just nice like that.

COLUMNS
I started my series of columns looking at an academic who was using the Cardiff University for his own purposes, and ended them looking at international students paying to have their dissertations written for them. I also spent many weeks in opposition to the lecturers boycott, from the beginning to the bitter end. Outside of Uni, I've also written about Welsh Assembly politics, returning often to drug funding and arts management.

And just to make sure everything doesn't get too heavy, satire on Doctor Who, eco-warriors (which kept on going), what I've learnt at Cardiff Uni, and even Jade Goody provide good ol' page padding.

POLITICS
Much of the best politics comes from interviews, with First Minister Rhodri Morgan, as well as with all candidates in the 2005 General Election campaign for the marginal of Cardiff Central (Lib Dem, Labour and Conservatives). And elsewhere on Spiked Online, I wrote a piece on international news channels.

FEATURES
I cannot stress enough that this piece on celebrity stalking is satirical, considering how many people are confused. Interviews are always worth their weight in gold, so see the award-winning one with student icon Dr Karl Kennedy, and prison writer Erwin James shortly after his release. And elsewhere in the 2004-05 Cardiff RAG Mag I edited, this was a blind date between Essex and civilization.

TRAVEL
Have a quick shifty at pieces for Quench Magazine on Bolivia, South America and Hungary. I also penned a couple of pieces on a hitchhike to Amsterdam for website uniyearbooks.com, as a means of securing sponsorship from them.

REVIEWS
To mix my metaphors, I've more than milked the gravy train at Buzz on music, film and books, although I've always done my best to squeeze free films out of Quench as well. Food is covered in Itchy reviews for everything from greasy spoons to bars.
And in other reviews, the manager of the Cardiff Glee Club was for some reason annoyed by these reviews (here, here and here). Which I personally blame on him for having such a nasty venue.

NEWS
Doing the news at Buzz for six months has meant doing a wide range of stories. No stone is left unturned in our coverage of the new Assembly building, big arts events, to the dubious someone-sent-us-a-press-release work of Vernon Kaye.

James Dean Bradfield - The Great Western

The ever-risky first solo outing has paid dividends for the Manics man, producing an album of startling originality. Avoiding the trap of falling onto one staid sound, each track has a different trick up its sleeve. From opening all-out pop That’s No Way To Tell A Lie, through to the soaring finale of Which Way To Kyffin, there isn’t a dud track here. He’s won this cynic over; this is a grown-up album with surprises at every turn.*****

James Dean Bradfield - That's no way to tell a lie

Blackwood’s favourite son releases his first debut work, and sounds a lot like Lloyd Cole. Mercifully missing the student politics of recent Manics, it’s all comfortingly held together with some poptastic drumming, of all things, and even some full on sha la la-ing towards the end. ****

Jamie T - Sheila

The ‘young man with a talent for modern day storytelling’ is a risky label to use, reminiscent of Hard Fi and other scally nonsense. But this single drips with lyrical genius and earnest vocals. Jamie T has a gift for song that marks him with that other notorious label– he’s one to watch. ****

Royksopp - Royksopp's Night Out

Shameless cash-in ahoy from Royksopp, with this live album picking a select few of their best tracks from their first two albums. The albums themselves were masterpieces, but that was largely thanks to the impeccable production values that the name Royksopp is synonymous with. This work is totally unnecessary, and for any fans of What Else Is There? in particular, it’s just plain painful. Get the originals instead, and pretend you just didn’t know this blemish on their career existed. **

Model Morning - Your Worst Enemy

Model Morning a deceptive band. On first listening to their album it sounds like a retro 80s shoegaze band, but as it goes on it suddenly creeps up on you with some more inventive riotous rock. Fashion Gay is a much-needed jolt after the first couple of dirges on the album. The songs are in places dark, bitter and pained, building songs with soaring vocals to make something that bit more epic. Competent, but it’s not going to set the world alight.
***

Relative Strangers

Boring psychiatrist Richard Clayton discovers his boring parents aren’t actually his, before his slightly less boring real parents turn up. This film is in the unenviable position of trying to recreate smugfest Meet The Parents, but fails to capture the comedy that kept it afloat. Implausibly dough-faced Ron Livingston is so monotonous he makes even Neve Campbell look like a comedy natural; Kathy Bates and Danny DeVito could be a great double act was this film not so almightily – say it with me now – boring. *

The Automatic - Not Accepted Anywhere

What’s that coming over the hill? Cowbridge’s finest’s debut album, as it happens. The big singles Monster and Raoul are fairly representative of what’s on offer. The surging electro disco feel never lets up, with the album speeding away and never sitting back for a break. This can get a little wearing and the more one trick pony-esque aspects suggest they will have to evolve a fair way for album number two. But if you like the singles, then you’re in luck.****

Clap your hands say yeah - Skin of my yellow country teeth

Drowsily mumbling the over length of the entire record, Alec Ounsworth’s vocals makes a homegrown feel for the band that is underscored by jangling guitars on this pretty catchy single. The record’s something of a grower, but give it time and it soon sounds like the tune of a harassed summer. ****

The Sleepy Jackson -Personality

Is celestial pop a valid descriptive? Well, heck, I’m sticking with it. The Sleepy Jackson harness a kind of Pet Sounds noise, with more vocals and orchestra sections than you could shake some candy floss at. If anything, there’s a risk of it all becoming a bit cloying, with the album meandering rather than explicitly going somewhere. But that’s really only a case of ‘too much of a good thing’; each song is produced to a highly polished standard that it’s hard to ignore. ****

Lorraine - Transatlantic flight

Lorraine were heralded as the new Pet Shop Boys, and first single I Feel It certainly heralded good things. But this single is a little flatter. The electropop still tugs away at the heartstrings, but it doesn’t really feel like it’s going anywhere. A grower, but nothing to rush to HMV for.
***

Masters in deception

Sat up here in gair rhydd towers putting together our final paper of the year, we’ve been blessed with a university that seems more than willing to give us lots of material to work with.

An enormous carnival of ineptitude seems to be slowly edging its way around campus, be it cancelled graduations, the absolute farce of exams at the medical school, or the fact you can now just buy your qualifications here without bothering to do any work.

A postgraduate friend of mine has recently been offered his dissertation to be written for him in exchange for money.

Ever felt that Cardiff University is more geared towards making money out of you than actually getting down to some education? The consumerisation of education here is not a new phenomenon, but it is certainly something that is gathering pace. And one of the easiest ways for the university to make money is through international students.

While undergraduate course costs are capped, universities can charge whatever they like for postgraduate courses - over £40,000 for the most expensive in the country. And with so many international students taken on at exorbitant rates, they unsurprisingly feel like consumers. Having paid for the privilege to study here, they expect a guaranteed qualification out of the other side of it.

This would perhaps go some way to explain why some students have paid to have their dissertations written for them.

But there is more to it than that. For many students, the language barrier is so high that they would have little choice but to find someone else to write their dissertations for them. The anecdotal evidence points to some international students relying on ghost-written dissertations and group work to pull through subjects they would otherwise fail.

The department in question says that English levels are ensured by language tests in order to join the masters scheme. When a British student off the course claims that “some of the students I do group work with are shocking; I’m amazed they make it here from Heathrow,” then it’s time to think otherwise.

This is not a problem that the university does not know about. It is alleged that last year four students were ejected from the course as their dissertations were clearly not written by them, although the University will neither confirm nor deny this. Whilst they were written in word-perfect English, the students could barely even speak the language.

But this is clearly not enough. A current student claims that “international students go home for the summer, so they can’t be kept tabs on…maybe there are different standards. I’ve had work handed to me that’s obviously been copied off the internet as it still has the company name on it.”

Is the University willingly turning a blind eye to the problem? An incredible story has emerged from one postgraduate module earlier this year. While a lecturer was out of the room, two students ran down to the logged-in computer and opened the module’s exam paper on the screen in front of 300 students. Then another student ran to the front and took a copy of the paper on disk.

Think this sounds ridiculous? It gets better. Other students unhappy with what was going on took pictures on their phones and showed them to the university. But with the student in question denying that the files copied across, all they had to do was make a half-hearted apology in front of his fellow students, and no further action was taken. The examination paper has since been replaced.

Academic staff have limits as to how much they can do, with subjects often limiting the contact time they have with students to just an hour a week. But shouldn’t it be possible for a department to test students on how much they actually know on their topic, much in the same way that Vivas are used in other subjects (effectively interviews on the year’s work)?

These are incredible stories that show the depths that the university will go to keep hold of fee-paying students. To international students the problem represents a massive blemish on the reputation of the majority who not only complete qualifications here, but often do so with the handicap of not using their primary language. And for the rest of us, the reputation of gaining a qualification from a university willing to take money as a higher priority than learning is self-evident.

The risk as always here is that the University is overspending the dividend we have of being an English speaking university. As I’ve written before, we currently have strong interest in postgraduate courses because for foreign students there is a premium attached to Anglophonic universities, coupled with a belief that British universities are of a high standard.

As universities in foreign students’ home countries improve, not to mention the various visa barriers that are being erected by the government to block international students, then they are not going to be convinced by the empty rhetoric of our standards.

The numbers of foreign students coming to Cardiff has slowed over the past four years, and is now such a small increase it doesn’t register a change.
Short-term money chasing does nothing but frustrate the long-term chances of the university maintaining standards in the face of international competition.

Masters degrees are already touted in emails from US institutions, for those willing to pay enough money. How long before the click-and-buy masters come to the UK?

You’ve probably noticed by now that we have avoided mentioning the name of the department in question. To do that would sabotage the reputation of the people that actually do the work they’ve paid an incredible amount of money for. But this is a warning to the department that what goes on in your grubby money-making schemes does not go unnoticed. The gair rhydd team will be keeping an eye on the story next year.

The short-term solution is for tightened standards in departments that currently do not monitor their international students closely.

But there’s a darker, more engrained problem beneath that the university doesn’t seem even remotely interested in dealing with.

SOUL less

It’s no secret that moral posturing is the default of the Students’ Union, but the morals in question do often prove to be somewhat disposable things.

The new favourite plastered around the Union building are notes that the Union promotes responsible drinking, on the bottom of Drink The Bar Dry posters. It flies in the face of the whole point of the event: one last gloriously irresponsiblechance to lose control of your self-restraint and gag reflex with your friends before the end of term.

The Union has something called the SOUL campaign, a Save Our Union Licence plan to stop students from disturbing people on their way home. It’s what’s behind the people handing out lollies on and off throughout the year, to try and make you keep your trap shut when you go home.

The Union also puts out a ‘Unity’ newsletter to its neighbours to keep them informed about what is going on.

Very commendable, but in the case of the SOUL campaign, based on flimsy half-truths.
First off, it quotes a local AM as saying that the Students’ Union is the “only licensee still adhering to the voluntary agreement discouraging drinks promotions”.
That would be the same Union that has cheaper drinks than Meths Night down at the homeless shelter.

More impressively, it also notes that the Union “has not sought to extend opening hours beyond those previously agreed”. Well, until it got its licence extended to 4am.

The Union says these weren’t central tenets of the campaign, but just notes in supplement to it.

But does that really change the fact that the Union is telling neighbours one thing, before disregarding it and doing something completely different?

The Union only maintains morals on a pragmatic basis – as soon as they get in the way of some other benefit, they’re shed like a snake’s skin.

Face less

So, Berliner, eh? Weeks of frantic work have paid off, but there are definitely a few problems with going Guardian.

Byline photos, it turns out, were created just to mock writers. I’ve been happily slumming in facial anonymity on these pages for six months, and now look what’s happened. Yes, hello puddingface, I’m talking about you.

Be reassured that in person I look more like the offspring of Mark and Jeremy in Peep Show; Peter Crouch; or Hugh Grant left in a test tube too long.

So the next time you think that wall to wall colour, pin-sharp digital printing and well-designed space is a good idea, just think of all the ugly, mewling faces up on the fourth floor and reconsider.

Old Boyo Network

It’s been seven years since the Welsh Assembly was inaugurated. Through virtually all of it, the Assembly has been headed by Rhodri Morgan, a First Minister with something of a two-sided reputation.

To his supporters there is ‘clear red water’ between Cardiff Bay and Westminster, a professed Welsh policy style that shows this isn’t just New Labour rhetoric in action. To his detractors he’s under Number Tens’ thumb, running a district branch of national Labour government rather than leading a proud nation.

He certainly doesn’t do himself any favours, having a reputation for sitting on the fence on the big topics – just look at his non-committal stance on supporting Blair over Iraq. It looks like the biggest issue on campus today, the lecturers’ boycott, isn’t going to be any different. “It would be very unwise of me to take sides,” he says. “It would just be great for everyone to get around a table and thrash out a deal that is fair to everyone - employers and employees.”

There’s something reassuringly Old School about Rhodri Morgan. There’s no attempt at a polished performance like there’s been for every other politician I’ve interviewed. Proper Old Labour; I get the impression I might get clipped around the ear at any moment.

And this has always been the inherent tension in his administration, balancing a pragmatic plan for Wales with what being a Labour government has to mean today.
He did try and bring in top-up fees for Welsh students last year, and was only blocked when the defection of the late Peter Law meant that he didn’t have the Assembly numbers to push it through.

For now it looks like Welsh top-up fees will be off the table. “We have no proposals to change the policy as we’ve only just brought it in,” he says. But this isn’t going to change the fact that his was the government that tried.

In place of top-up fees, the Government has been forced to pay the difference over and above the existing tuition fees. Still, the new policy has come under attack.

“We’ve heard this criticism that in some ways what we’ve done, with us paying the lost income to Welsh universities for not having top-up fees, is against the interests of Welsh students as they’ll be financially induced to stay in Wales to do their higher education.

“But what were we supposed to do? We can’t have the Welsh quote taxpayer unquote subsidising the English higher education system.”

The Welsh taxpayer paying for England? It’s not something that you would ordinarily hear of (or, in this case, believe).

But it is difficult to separate whether what I’m listening to is Welsh bluster, or just a politician not answering the question. In some cases it seems clear that the question is just being avoided (see gair rhydd 806 ).

A simple question on whether Mr Morgan agreed with calls to introduce a full-time scientific adviser was met with a five minute mini-speech on the virtues of IBM and Motorola. There never was an answer to the adviser question, just an admittance that they are “not fully exploiting the Welsh potential in science”.

Still, there is unlikely to be any major policy pushed through in the Assembly as long as Labour goes without the absolute majority it enjoyed for six years.
Many have scoffed at the suggestion by The First Minister and Secretary of State Peter Hain that any other party would be strong enough to take over, but Mr Morgan insists that “an anti-Labour coalition would be formed with the Tories in it”.

Is there any chance of a return to the days when a Lib-Lab coalition ruled? “I don’t think they’d be interested and I don’t think we’d be interested,” he says.

There has instead been some pretty underhand legislating in the form of the Government of Wales Bill.
Currently passing through the UK Parliament, it is the first extension of Assembly powers since it was first set up. The current Assembly structure has been criticised by the current presiding officer as being ‘horrendous time-wasting’, something the First Minister says has, “nothing to do with our side of the house, really.
“We stay this side of the exhaustion, but only just. Ministers work every hour God made, and what the Assembly work is not a matter for us.”

Instead, the changes will leave potential AMs forced to choose between trying to join the Assembly through only one of the two routes that they can currently take - they can either be constituency AMs (like MPs), or ‘list’ AMs - a top-up system to ensure a fair representation of the vote.

Morgan is convinced there’s something wrong with the current system: “It’s deception on the electorate really. People who’ve been defeated in a constituency sometimes imply that they are the representatives of that constituency.” By complete coincidence, Labour will be major beneficiaries of the change in rules, which have also come under heavy fire by the Electoral Commission.

The UK Labour government has vowed to push the Bill through, despite heavy criticism from all sides.

I still can’t decide whether I was on the receiving end of politicking or just a blustering personality. In fairness, I did always sense a fair contempt for being there, and a large awareness that the First Minister knew he was doing us a favour by giving us an interview - you can’t say the same thing about a lot of image-conscious politicians.


STORY UPDATE
In issue 806 we reported that the Assembly Government had announced they ‘expected’ Local Health Boards to fund Herceptin on the NHS for early stage breast cancer, despite the fact it has not yet met the necessary safety standards for its intended use, nor has the costly drug been properly costed.

“I don’t think it was suggested that Herceptin is dangerous, was it?”
Despite the fact the drug still has an as-yet-to-disprove link to heart disease for its intended use, and that oft-quoted study on its effectiveness was funded by the drugs company (both facts that appeared to come as a surprise to the First Minister), the Government chose not to wait for advice from the NHS body for testing such matters, but pressured health boards anyway.
Does he think this, therefore, creates a dangerous precedent for the many, similar forthcoming drugs?
“As a precedent, no I don’t think it’s dangerous, because Herceptin is entirely unique - well, it won’t be unique for very long - but it is a unique category as far as I’m aware, as it’s the first of what appears to be a family of very, very clever, smart drugs.”
Confused? Despite questioning the First Minister several times on the topic, the best he could muster was “they will either bankrupt every drug administration in the world, but nevertheless they will save thousands of lives, or they will have at least a moderate benefit in saving lives.”
If the clueless government don’t get a better idea of what they are doing soon, all that will be left is a bankrupt NHS.


In issue 812, we reported on changes to arts funding in Wales. While the Government currently gives money to the Arts Council Wales to give out to arts institutions, under the ‘Bonfire of the Quangos’ the Government is going to start funding the ‘Big Six’ arts institutions directly. There has been a lot of criticism that it could potentially lead to censorship of the arts.

The First Minister was resolute on the idea that there is no potential conflict of interest in direct funding. “We said that we would resist any attempt to - what’s the word - censorship, or restricting the freedom of the arts community to experiment and occasionally to fail in experimenting.
“Funding decisions will not be decided in that way.”
But even if that was true of the current government, what guarantee is there that a future government would do the same? Isn’t that exactly why there are institutional safeguards, like using the Arts Council to keep funding depoliticized?
“Whether you do it indirectly through an Arts Council or whether you do it directly because the sums are big enough in regards the Big Six, then you might as well just get on with it.”
As it is, it has proven difficult to find people willing to speak out against the changes for fear of the Assembly. The changes have, if nothing else, created a legacy of stunted pluralism.

Poseidon

Four stars, Dir: Wolfgang Peterson Starring: Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas, Richard Dreyfuss

Another wet afternoon, another blockbuster remake. But Poseidon has cheated by being – wait for it – quite good. Obviously not with a good script or acting, despite being helmed by drowning specialist, Das Boot director Wolfgang Peterson. That has quite rightly been jettisoned to leave nothing but spectacular set pieces and the joy of people dying in amusing ways. In short, this is a fantastic guilty pleasure of a disaster movie.

Like the original, after a massive wave hits a cruiseliner we follow a group of passengers make their way to the top of the overturned boat, with a surprisingly high body count for a 12A. There are only a few modern touch-ups: the tidal wave becomes a ‘rogue wave’ (make your own War on Terror joke), there’s some gayness, and Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas warbles a bit.

The opening doesn’t look optimistic, with blue screen effects that shame even Doctor Who. But by the time the boat flips, and that happens in double quick time, you can just sit back and admire the inevitable watery grave. The B-list cast just underline that the director knows what the audience are really here for, with only Josh Lucas’ death eyes and the perpetually shrivelling Kurt Russell (prolonged periods in water are not a good idea for the living prune) to mention.

I can’t remember the last time a shlockbuster was this well made without trying to shoehorn in some morals and teach me something. In fairness it could have done with a screaming Shelley Winters, but Fergie does get killed off. At sea, it turns out, lady lumps are not much use. Check it out.

The Omen

Two stars; Dir: John Moore Starring: Live Shreiber, Mia Farrow, David Thewlis

The Omen is supposed to be an all-time classic horror, although I was always slightly baffled as to why. American diplomat Robert Thorn (Shreiber) is moved to a new job in London, but he increasingly suspects that his own son is the Antichrist. Lord knows it would make a cracking episode of the House of Tiny Tearaways, but this remake (especially for the 6/6/06 – geddit?) is composed solely of what feels like shot-by-shot revisiting of the original’s most iconic scenes, with an enormous pile of extraneous guff thrown in for no clear reason.

This could have rattled away to fill up a couple of hours had a half decent editor been brought in to cut it down, and more fun been made of The Omen’s legacy. The opening half hour seems to house about three different introductions to the film, whilst Thorn’s tour of Europe is so prolonged you’d think he was trying to milk a Eurorail ticket. The pointless reshooting of the original’s best bits is perhaps the biggest loss. Given the dullard tendencies of the first, there was certainly plenty of room to make an improvement.

Still, one of the best features of the film is watching how they’ll make the prophecies of the coming of the antichrist fit world events – much as the Daily Mail has been predicting for years, the EU is actually an integral part of a Satanist plot.

With such a decent cast, there are some redeeming performances. Mia Farrow plays the nanny with such obviously deranged intent it’s clear from the outset she’s no Mary Poppins, but her relish brings light relief to the otherwise po-faced action. David Thewlis is also solid, even if he’s just playing himself; Michael Gambon, as usual, is criminally underused. But Liev Schreiber is his typically blank self on which to try and hang the whole film – the parallels between his performance here and The Manchurian Candidate are telling. The Antichrist, meanwhile, does little but squint to indicate evil (perhaps if he got new glasses, the world wouldn’t have to end).

The vacuous Schreiber is probably the reason there are so many shots to make you jump, in an effort to inject some life into the proceedings. Bog-standard shots of animals skulls in Satanist robes and the like do little to suggest this is worth watching.

Fans of the original will find nothing new, and newcomers will find what nothing more than a stale story that, more than ever, doesn’t deserve a second coming.

State of the Union

Having got bored of boycotting their own work in this country, lecturing über-Union NATFHE have gone international.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to bleat on about the assessment of our exams again. Who needs to criticise the union for that, when it is lining itself up for criticism with their boycott of sections of Israeli academia that won’t publicly distance themselves from ‘Israeli apartheid policies’?

Blimey. Good to see that isn’t an emotionally loaded proposition that was put before the conference. It’s pretty much the same as insisting that British academics have to proclaim their opposition to the War in Iraq to not be ostracized from their peers.

Is this really the academic way to get things done? To bar one side from even taking part in the debate on the future of the region goes against the principles they profess to be protecting. Barring one side of the debate means there is no debate at all.

Even while freedoms may be curtailed on the ground, the benefit of academia is that it comprises its own self-contained realm of discussion - and freedom of expression is essential to make that work. The Oslo peace process, for example, was kickstarted by links between Israeli and Palestinian academics. The importance of freedom of expression is not an abstract concept; it is the concrete basis for peace.

Instead, the union is trying to introduce politics into academia. Was I the only person who thought the point of a union was to represent their members’ interests in employment matters?

Anyway, in a thoroughly unusual piece of timing, the union doesn’t actually exist any more. My favourite inept unions NATFHE and AUT merged last Thursday to create the UCU, so this is the last chance they had to create such a hate-filled message.

Interestingly it is almost exactly a year since a boycott of Israeli academics by the AUT was overturned in the name of freedom of speech.

But the topic is muddied somewhat as there is more than one debate going on. There’s the question of freedom of expression; but underlying it there is also a debate going on about the validity of the state of Israel.

Regardless of what you think of the unions choosing to boycott Israeli academics, there is little doubt that the real arguments going on here are about the political hue of the unions rather than a great defence of freedom.

I’m not going to suggest that there is something anti-Semitic underlining the action. But why has Israel been singled out? Why not Russia or China?

It has been argued that Israel is different as Israeli academics are in a unique position of being free to criticise the creation of the security fence. An academic in China is not going to have the same freedom to criticise the state. But the AUT also supports the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, in defence of the socialist state. Cuba is hardly world-renowned for upholding academic freedom.

Instead the dividing lines of what the unions are willing to support or criticise are arguments professing a concern for freedom of expression, when all they really do is reinforce casual stereotyping of the political spectrum.

Still, every cloud has a silver lining. With the unions fighting themselves, their united front on negotiations over pay here stands a greater chance of collapsing.

Learnage

This is the last Mickelodeon; apparently the ‘-odeon’ suffix is too tabloid for next week’s fancy effort. So I’m taking this last opportunity to impart what I’ve learnt in my time here.

• There is nay a boy in this university who hasn’t used hair straighteners at least once.

• It takes exactly two years to plan how to open a burger bar.

• If you took all the Bob Marley posters from first years’ bedrooms and laid them end to end, you’d probably get arrested.

• You never really made it to the second year unless you completed the Blackweir Tavern Challenge (39 minutes – have it). Its end was the biggest loss to Welsh culture since the passing of Owain Glyndwr.

• If you’re going to crap yourself and lie outside the front of the Union, don’t wear white trousers (fortunately not from personal experience).

• Need to ask IT about a problem? Don’t bother, they really do not care.

• You will never again live somewhere with so many greengrocers.

• Friday nights may come and go but Factory is for life.

• There isn’t a famous person alive who the Welsh won’t try and lay ownership to. My favourite from famouswelsh.com: ‘Cilla Black, one Welsh grandparent’.

• That whilst there may be departments for Japanese, Archaeology or most fantastically Astrobiology, you will never meet anyone who studies them.

• If you miss Mr Scruff now, he’ll probably be on again within the fortnight.

• Without departmental secretaries, the uni would probably collapse within 15 minutes. Now THAT’S a strike people would notice.

• That after four years here, the only Welsh words I know are for: disabled, fire exit, people of the valley, free word, Wales, Cardiff, Monmouthshire. This has, or will never hinder me in life.

• No-one really knows what the All Nations Centre or the Temple of Peace and Health actually do, but they have lovely names.

• However ropey our university may be at times, our Union beats 14 kinds of crap out of every other one in the country.

Lending patriotism

Celtic head-scratching ahoy for the next couple of weeks, as Wales and Scotland have to decide whether or not they support the ol’ enemy of England in the World Cup.
This may sound like a rather minor thing, but in the minds of politicians, football seems to be perceived as a chance to connect with the ‘working man’. Think Gordon Brown’s revelation that his underwear all comes from M&S, or David Cameron’s choice of Benny Hill to play on Desert Island Discs.

They’re all about the grand political gestures, appealing to an electorate that politicians appear to think consists entirely of working men’s clubs and bored housewives, flicking through Bella and Pick Me Up.

It’s Rhodri Morgan’s turn next, with Wales’s First Minister announcing that while he’ll support England, he’s going to support their opposition if the fans start causing trouble.

Hardly the most constructive comments to be making on the debate, is it?

Old Rhodders has a history of sitting on the fence on just about any topic going. From whether to support Blair and the invasion of Iraq, to the lecturers’ boycott (read next week’s interview with the First Minister to find out more), the fence is very much there to be sat on.

So why couldn’t he just keep his trap shut now as well?

There was no gain to be made from making such a ridiculous statement about England fans making ‘trouble’.

All it’s done is ignore the enormous efforts that the authorities have gone to here to prevent hooligans travelling to the event from England, as well as reinforcing the impression that England fans are a bigger problem than their violent counterparts in countries such as the Netherlands.

Fuelling the grassroots

Budding musicians have until the end of the month to enter the international unsigned music prize, Diesel-U-Music. These are awards with an impressive pedigree of talent - Tom Vek, Mylo and DJ Yoda all found their break in these televised awards. Covering seperate rock, urban/hip-hop and electronic genres, there's a lot of room for bringing your own style into this grassroots event, and it doesn't even have to be in English. The global prize has already had hundreds of entries, so be sure to upload yours soon.

Vinyl Resting Place

Vinyl junkies everywhere are in luck this month, with Cardiff-based Catapult throwing the metaphorical doors open on their new online store. As the largest independent record store in Wales, the dance music specialist can now expand its base from its home in the city's High Street Arcade, and build up a wider following. The new state of the art online store is there for you to order both vinyl and all the DJ equipment you could ever want, as a new one-stop shop for DJ-ing needs. And as if that wasn't enough, there's free delivery on all vinyl over £14.

Word up

For those who feel like getting a bit lyrical this month, the Cardiff side of the Tri-Nation Poetry Slam is looking for new performers. If you think that you can work your way through a three minute performance in front of crowds cheering and jeering you on, then it's time to join the team and get practicing in time for the Bristol Slam in September. If you think you've got what it takes, or just want to see the lyrical action for yourself, then get in touch with the Adamsdown poet and Cardiff captain Christopher Brooke.

New foundations

Defying conventional laws of time, Architectural Week runs from Fri 16 to Tue 25 June, and Dyffryn Gardens are showing off their new buildings to the public. Putting up new structures in Grade I listed gardens is no easy task, so to show you how the new visitor and education centres are being sensitively constructed, the project architects are on hand to show you arond the site, before they are opened to the public in August. Although the new buildings are taking on the same dimensions as the neighbouring Edwardian lodge and Victorian buildings to ensure they fit it, they're both contemporary in design. The education centre, as a more hidden building, even has a green roof - not something youd normally expect to find at a traditional country pile. You'll need to call ahead to book for Dyffryn on Wed 19, but check the website to see what Architectural Week events are on in your area.

Green Day

If you find yourself filled with an urge to seperate your plastics on Sat 10 June, there's a good reason: it's World Environment Day. To celebrate, Fete of the Earth will be held in the Hayes, Cardiff. There's a wide range of organisations involved, with 23 loval schools joining up with everyone from spillmaster Dwr Cymru, to the food specialists of Riverside Market. There's also plenty on in South Wales for those who'd rather see the environment up close; the day falls in the Gower Walking Festival, which runs - or rather, walks - from Mon 3 to Sun 11 June. Priced at £2 each, they range from scenic family walks to watercolour challenges. Or for those who'd rather get nautical with the day, there's a Gower boat trip to see the coastline in the area for £25. Both have to be booked ahead, so contact the Mumbles Tourist Information Centre to go green for the day.

Swansea Flicks

Swansea's inaugral film festival runs from Mon 5 - Thur 8 June, bringing together workshops and films from around the world, and a little closer to home. Domestic talent is on show with Jealous God, a star-crossed lovers tale from 1960s Yorkshire, with Jason Merrells and Denise Welch; whilst Love Ludlow has been brought in from America, and stars Miranda's geeky fella from Sex & The City, in a girl's choice between her family and her boyfriend. South Wales, meanwhile, is represented by the premieres of family drama Teenage Wasteland, and Carmarthen-based horror in Footsteps; both are shown on Thur 8 and are followed by director Q&As. To establish the calibre of the event, Welsh comedy legend Victor Spinetti will be putting in an appearance at the awards to round the four days off. The event runs across several Swansea venues, and will also see the beginning of the Swansea Bay Film Society.

Cave Monster

A small Welsh national nature reserve has beaten the big names in the world of 'Britain's Finest Natural Wonder' to take the national title. Beating competition from world icons like the Giant's Causeway, Loch Lomond and the White Cliffs of Dover gives it an instant kudos that the geological wonder has so far lost out on. The Dan yr Ogof National Nature Reserve is the only place in Wales for safe family visits to see an underground world of lakes, rivers and 40 foot underground waterfalls - it's little wonder that the caves have become a massive underground classroom to kids. It was enough to convinve the prize's jury - including explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, actress Prunella Scales and wondergob Janet Street-Porter - that this was a site worthy of recognition. A new oak plaque will be unveiled in the colossal Cathedral Cave as part of a Geopark Day at the site later this month.

Snap Decision

Fast-paced photography gets going at Cardiff's Millennium Centre this month, when this year's Photomarathon comes to town on Sat 24. Over 12 hour entrants have to shoot 12 photos on 12 given topics. Organiser Betina Skovbro has brought the quickfire photo challenge to the UK from her native Denmark, and says that whilst the photos will be judged, the Photomarathon is really all about creativity. "Topics in last year's highly successful event included 'jackpot', 'over the line' and 'street life'. Those who took part had the pleasure of seeing their photos on show in an exhibition that was visited by over 1800 members of the public." With public transport free al over the city to get sneaky shots from Rhiwbina to Riverside, all anyone needs to enter is a 35mm film camera and the ten pound entry fee; but some good footwear to leg it between Kodak moments would probably be a good idea too.

De Rosa - Mend

Coming from a Scottish art-rock background throws up hefty expectations in terms of style and innovation these days, but De Rosa don’t really deliver. The energy on standout tracks Camera and Hopes and Little Jokes make great self-contained songs. But the hefty dose of Scottish folk heritage elsewhere on the album feels shoehorned in, as if the band is trying a little to keenly to find an identity. The Glasgow cries of Cathkin Braes and New Lanark just end up ringing hollow. **

The Magic Spring

Richard Lewis, Atlantic Books

Subtitled ‘My Year Being English’, {The Magic Spring} follows the author’s search for authentic English roots. Much morris dancing and folk plays ensue, with Richard Lewis’ dry but friendly style really trying to find out something about Englishhood. The whole project does feel as if it’s going to topple over into a Danny Wallace-esque ‘project’ at any time. But Richard Lewis obviously has a real aching to find something that is tangibly part of his own identity that pulls it through.

Senor Coconut and his Yellow Orchestra - Yellow Fever!

German/Chilean “electrolatino” interpreters of Japan’s answer to Kraftwerk? Senor Coconut may sound like a Eurovision headache, but it works. Taking laidback latino grooves and mucking around with them on the synths brings fun to the album; but everything is so carefully produced that something barmily beautiful has emerged. The best tracks are those that don’t pay tribute to the Japanese Yellow Magic Orchestra, but even they are techno-pop quality. It’ll have you electro-mamboing around your living room in no time. ****

Days of being wild

Directed by 2046’s Kar Wai Wong, this 1991 film follows 1960 playboy Yuddy in Hong Kong. The film follows two girls fight over him, whilst he gets to lean back in his own oedipal subplot. This film is so full of summer passion you can almost feel the sweat pouring off in a film that, with the fractured narrative, makes it feel like it’s a dream. A fantastic performance from the late Leslie Cheung as Yuddy anchors an incredible film. Hypnotic. *****

Matt Kirkpatrick, owner of Shot in the Dark

So how long has Shot in the Dark been running now?
Shot in the Dark’s been running four years now. It was owned by an ex-business partner who bought it from, of all places, Atlantic Coffee Shop. The idea was to convert it and make somewhere decent to go.

What marks Shot in the Dark out in Cardiff?
On Wednesday we have an open mike night; on Sunday we have bands doing acoustic sets. And the rest of the week we have DJs, the best known being Moneyshot.

Where do you think is the best place to go in South Wales for food?
Greenhouse, great veggie food and fish. It’s well priced and good quality.

And for drink?
One, the new place in the Bay.

What about going out?
Going out is crap in Cardiff. You might as well get on a train and go to the Jazz Café in London.

And what do you think overall of the scene in South Wales?
It’s crap; everything in Cardiff is run by big brands. What it really needs is, over time, for independent people to bring more things in.

Cafe Cesso

Waterfront Museum. 01792 456100

After their first store on the Bryn-y-mor Road in Swansea, Cesso’s second venue pulls together the same fine coffee and food. But it also brings in later openings (10pm at weekends), licenced premises and Heavenly Ice Cream from Mid Wales. A fine new venue in fine new surroundings.

Monkey

13 Castle Street, SA1 1JF. 01792 480822 / www.monkeycafe.co.uk

By day it serves home made food and drinks, but Monkey is really all about the nights, with something different on offer every night of the week. Cramming so much into the schedule means that the nights take in everything from rock to dub, making it much more than just another café bar in Swansea.

Oddverse

25 Charles Street, Newport, NP9 1JT. 01633 223559

Newport is somewhat short on café bar culture, but Oddverse is seeking to bring something new to the café scene. Right at the heart of town, Oddverse serves up homecooked food throughout the day. Best of all, it can be enjoyed out the back in the café’s garden.

Capsule

48 Charles Street, CF10 2GF. 029 2038 2882

Capsule brings together art, chow and supping in one fine venue. There’s an Italian focus to the menu by both day and night (although it’s only open nights Thursday to Saturday). Great music, free wi-fi and the ever-essential Sky Sports News in the bar round it off.

Cameo Bar

3 Pontcanna Street, CF11 9HQ. 029 2022 0466

Whilst the Cameo Bar used to be velvet roped off just for Pontcanna’s media set, it now throws its doors open to us proles by day. It’s still a stylish event, with art deco surroundings to enjoy the food. The place still turns members-only by 7pm, though, so don’t order any slow-roast food.

Henrys

8-16 Park Chambers, CF10 3DN. 029 2022 4672

Henrys is a complete chameleon. By day it’s full of resting shoppers taking advantage of the well priced menu; by night it turns into an old school cocktail bar. Whichever guise you visit it in, it guarantees comfortable supping space; but if it’s full, then the nearby Cantaloop and new Fat Cat are similar.

Capesso

2 Mundy Place, CF24 4BZ. 029 2022 5374

Café Capesso offers everything that it’s local rivals do – good coffee and food in a comfortable sofa-and-magazine environment. But as a little something extra, the whole place can be booked in the evenings for free. When you’re tired of holding company socials in the dingy basements of local boozers, it’s worth looking Capesso up.

Bar En Route

138a Cathays Terrace, CF24 4HY. 029 2040 4444

Tucked away so snugly that most locals don’t notice it, Bar En Route is one of the newest additions to Cardiff. Whilst its coffee isn’t to be sniffed at, the bar is really here for the impressive selection of imported beers. Pretend you’ve never heard of Carling and settle down with Belgium’s finest.

Shot in the Dark

12 City Road, CF24 3BJ. 029 2047 2300

Despite the many young upstarts, Shot in the Dark easily remains the best around. The coffee is first rate, with a massive tea selection to boot. The food menu, meanwhile, would be essential munching if it wasn’t for the even better tapas. With the late opening hours, regular music and cheap prices, it’s unbeatable.

U-Carmen eKhayelitsha

120 mins, 12 (Tartan Video, DVD), ****
Set in a South African township, Bizet’s opera is brought to life in a world of gangsters, poverty and menial work. Sound like one of those Channel 4 musical documentaries? Well, it pretty much is, with worthiness, seediness and a lot of fun made of the operatic numbers, and it’s all the better for it. Pauline Malefane as Carmen is a passionate lead to an energetic cast. An ambitious project that does all that you would expect, if nothing more.

The Naked Soldier

Tony Sloane (Vision Paperbacks)
Following Tony Sloane’s life in the French Foreign Legion, The Naked Soldier is a cut above the normal military tales of Andy McNab et al. The extremes of training and life in Djibouti alone make this intriguing, but it could really do without Sloane feeling he needs to say how hard everyone in the Legion is every other sentence. Plus there are some fantastic typos, particularly his training in the Moroccan desserts. A decent, if lightweight read.

The River King

95 mins, 15 (Momentum, DVD)****

Policeman Abel Gray is sent to investigate the death of a local private schoolboy, whilst seemingly being aided by the spirit of the dead boy himself. With the restrained pace, snowscapes and carefully created characters it’s oddly reminiscent of Al Pacino flick Insomnia. Edward Burns leads a competent cast as the coolly scrupulous policeman, although the presence of Mac from Green Wing is offputting. The plot does end up in a brave if foolhardy place, but the characters do enough to make the film solid.

The Young Knives - She's Attracted To

She’s Attracted To (Transgressive Records)

Jerky corduroy pop doesn’t get much better than this. Sounding like a barney in 1970s suburbs, The Young Knives rock like a punked-up Jarvis Cocker from start to finish. And with a sentiment of ‘you were screaming at your mum / I was punching your dad’, who are we to argue? ****

The Collingswood Story

18, 80 mins (Anchor Bay, DVD)

Collingswood has made a name for itself amongst horror fans, although it’s hard to see why. Student Rebecca has been keeping in contact with her boyfriend at home by webcam, but after they meet a cam psychic, the truth about her new home emerges. The central conceit is 90% is on webcam – but it adds nothing, and has distracted the makers from creating any originality plotwise. The last 20 derivative minutes are tense enough, but it’s not worth the wait. **

Camberwick Green

U (Universal Pictures, DVD)
Windy Miller and friends reappear in 13 episodes, from both the posh end of Trumptonshire, and the depths of your childhood. Of course, everyone who isn’t Windy Miller always gets lumped together as ‘friends’ because no-one can compare with the cider-making, oat-chomping little fellow. Still, there’s mileage to be gained from baking overlord Mickey Murphy and Mr Dagenham the car salesman, at least until Windy wanders back on screen. Even after the nostalgia’s worn off, Brian Cant’s singing is a perennial treat. ***

As tears go by

18, 102 mins (Tartan Video, DVD)
Kar Wai Wong’s debut feature follows low-level Triad member Wah (Andy Lau) as he tries to look after both his visiting sick cousin Ngor (Maggie Cheung), and ‘little brother’ Fly. Like any Wong film this is carefully shot from start to finish, but with the subject matter there’s little room for his normal atmosphere-building tricks. An understated performance by a rather underused Cheung, and a charismatic Lau mean that, even though this isn’t Wong’s best, it’s still well worth a look. ****

Dead Horsemeat

Dominique Manotti (Arcadia Books)
Police chief Daquin follows drug-trafficking, politique and criminal intent across the racetracks and brothels of Europe, in another solid piece of crime fiction by Manotti. You can tell the author’s an academic by the meticulous attention to detail in locating her book, following the perversion of May ’68 ideals. But it makes a rather strange bedfellow to the near-Mills & Boon descriptions her characters are treated to. Solid enough crime fiction, but there’s nothing here to offer anyone else.

Gravity Dip Records Sampler - Past, Present, Future

A rip-rollicking ride through 25 tracks from Gravity Dip. The real emphasis is rock, from a typically angsty exclusive Hundreds Reason track, to the more indie rock soundings of Ordinary Boys supporters, Young Soul Rebels. But the indie / alt sounds provide the best on offer, with Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly, Metronomes and Jacob’s Stories both pitching in downtempo treats. With only a few rock-by-number fillers, Gravity Dip have amassed a pretty tidy range of talent.
****

Freddie Stevenson - Body on the line

Singer-songwriter in the plainest sense of the phrase, Freddie Stevenson’s sound veers from Scottish pride to album filler, and back again. At its best, the lyrics are creatively put together, but the vast majority of the music is just plodding. Hangdog provides a more engaging downbeat tone, as does the homely St Catherine’s Day. But tracks like Lost American and If You Don’t Kiss Me just completely flatten the album. With obvious talent being completely smothered, this is mawkish to the last.
***

Best delis - Delizia

28 Newton Road, Mumbles SA3 4AX / 01792 366828

Like many delis, Delizia has a full range of cold meats, Italian olives, as well as fine oils and jams. But the real speciality here is the drink. Delizia specializes in wine, and can help you find the perfect drink to go with a meal. And for everyone who's bored of coffee then there's tea galore, from Wales and beyond.

Best delis - Wallys

42-46 Royal Arcade, CF10 1AE / 029 2022 9265

Delis come and go, but Wallys has seen them all off. There's a vast range of imported sauces, pastas, seends and fruits. The counter at the back of the shop stores the real quality products. Be sure not to try just the incredible range of meats and olives that are obviously on show, as the hidden cheesecake is the real delight.

Best delis - Madame Fromage

21-25 Castle Arcade, CF10 1BU / 029 2064 4888

A fine new addition to the food scene in Cardiff, this is much more than the name would suggest. From breads and pates to imported oils, this deli covers the lot. But it's the specialist chocolate counter that's truly exciting; one side of the shop is set aside for the finest handmade chocs. And if you fancy a bite at lunch, get one of their baguettes fulled with your choice of their cheeses. At only three pounds, it's about the size of Geoff Capes forearm.

Buzz Food and Drink Guide Introduction - eat, drink, play...

Buzz has always paid special attention to food and rink throughout South Wales. From the best restaurants to the hottest bars, nothing escapes our eagle eye.

But something has changed recently in Welsh food. A flurry of innovation in producing quality produce, from fine cheeses to specialist beers, has meant that there is more top quality domestic produce available now than there ever has been. Food fairs nationwide - from here to the Ideal Home Exhibition and back again - are completely dominated by the Welsh. The hard work of so many people in the industry to take advantage of this Welsh renaissance has spread Celtic cuisine further afield than anyone could have imagined.
Combine this the regeneration of South Wales' cities and it isn't surprising that we're finding ourselves so awash with great venues making the most of the new Welsh tradition. So it seems like a good time to finally unleash Buzz's first Food & Drink Guide.

No stome has been left unturned in bringing you the best places to get a bite or a banquet, to settle down a quiet drink or make an all-nighter of it. First up, we've hunted out the best bars around today. With more fine hotels appearing in South Wales seemingly by the day , we've also taken a liik at the hotel bars. And for those wanting a drink after hours, we've rounded up the best late night bars and nights out.

The real beneficiaries of Wales rediscovering its own produce have been establishments serving traditional food. So we've hunted down the best traditional pubs and the best fine dining. Gastropubs, too, have gone a long way to recover their tarnished reputation by refocusing on the ingredients; the most innovative are here. Restaurants representing different nations' cuisines are also making a greater mark than ever before. Until recently, South Wales suffered from such an unadventurous range of restaurants that going for a Chinese was a truly exotic option. Now, we don't just have truly innovative Indian cuisine that'll put the memory of luminous orange chicken kormas to bed; from France to Malaysia, there's a world of food on our doorstep. And finally, we've got the inside view from food and wine festivals and organic markets, so you can take the fine food home with you.

FOod and drink is changing so rapidly in South Wales that it needs continual exploration, and we'll keep you abreast of the latest developments in Buzz. But in the meantime, fetch the elasticated trousers and stock up on Alka-Selzer. All that food and drink isn't going to consume itself.

Green to the core

Have you not been seperating you plastics? Been leaving your television on standby? Taking the odd bath? Well, you might as well have just kicked a panda to death in a foot-crazed killing spree, you monster.

Or at least that’s the impression that I’ve been getting recently. Being a highly impressionable lad, the BBC’s Climate Chaos season and persistent badgering by every newspaper about either jetting off to foreign climes, or how far my runner beans have been flown in to make my dinner is giving the impression that the world is on the verge of collapse because I forgot to recycle my Coke can at lunchtime.

Well, I’m not going to argue with the ‘world is on the verge of collapse’ bit. But the coverage of green issues has recently got to such hysterical levels now that it’s totally unsustainable. By this time next year the BBC can look back on its climate change season in self-congratulation before completely forgetting it and moving on to something else; eco-tourism will (mercifully) be forgotten as an exercise in page-filling. The words ‘food miles’ will elicit a blank look from even the most hardened environmentalist.

Indeed, one of the worst offenders has to be eco-tourism. Rather than working out how regular tourism could be changed to be better for the environment, eco-tourism has been hived off into its own bizarre little self-contained world.

It’s obvious that few would go on (or even be able to afford) suggested green travel. But it’s become impossible for the Guardian in recent weeks to have a travel section that is anything but an eco-tourism special. It’s all or nothing; either you spend a fortnight flagellating with willow sticks in Djibouti (having swam there to prevent using, horror of all horrors, a plane) or you have to stay at home in your grimy lives for the summer.

All reporting on any environmental front has taken on Newsround-esque qualities (this columnist’s premier source of current affairs). News editors are faced with having to incorporate an environmental dimension to stories that wouldn’t normally have to accomodate it, so it just gets ostracised into its own screeching, self-important world.

It’s easier to shoehorn all your conscience’s need to provide coverage of climate change et al in one fell swoop than bringing it into reporting on a wider basis (re: Newsnight’s Ethical Man).

It has become impossible to report on environmental issues in any real context. The real questions about how to deal with environmental catastrophes such as the Three Gorges dam are easily ignored because coverage of it is hived off from the wider picture. If the economic benefits and reasoning behind why the Chinese government were brought into the equation then the monstrous end result would not be so easily brushed aside as eco-ravings, but more easily understood as an exercise in autocratic wielding of power.

Students’ Unions are, in many ways, the apex of flagellation with no resulting benefits (although there are mercifully many that are much worse than us). We’ve debated about condemning far away companies for their environmental and social policies. Yet do we have decent recycling facilities? Do we heck. After venting so much green steam, few have the time left to put anything in place.

In the end, environmental issues are always going to play second fiddle to bigger stories, be it the importance of the economy, or maintaining a secure energy supply. But at least that puts it in a context that is absent from the current round of green noise.

In the mean time, we might as well just settle down to some enviro-baiting and wait for sanity to revisit the debate. So what if you’re a-kicking the panda from this great distance? At least you’ll be able to cross Djibouti off your holiday list this year.

Springer Ban Y'all

It’s just two weeks now until the wonderous musical extravaganza that is Jerry Springer: The Opera comes to town, amidst ecclesiastical heckling from the Archbishop of Wales and various Christian groups.

So far the Culture Minister in the Assembly Alan Pugh has stayed out of the affair, leaving the Wales Millennium Centre to make their own ‘artistic decision’ to let the show come to town.

But it’s a useful little example to illustrate the problems with the new funding system the Assembly Government will bring in for the arts I wrote about a couple of weeks ago (Arts with a Capital F).

Arts Council Wales currently gets money from the government to allocate to the arts organisations. But the government is setting up a new system that will mean they control the pursestrings to the major arts bodies in Wales.

The new system would mean that it would be incredibly hard to create anything that raises as much controversy as Jerry in Wales, be it through literary agency Academi or the national theatre organisations.

The government could threaten the future of funding for an organisation that tried to do anything risky. Or, in the more likely scenario, the bodies wouldn’t even attempt to stage anything controversial for fear of what it might mean.

It would pretty much guarantee the end of anything Jerry Springer-esque being made in Wales. Instead we can expect plenty of touring around schools and the Valleys in the name of equality to access. It’s a triumph of social engineering over any intrinsic value of art.

In the meantime, the government has been forced to carry out a review of the future of the Arts Council, to try and suss out what’s going on. But it’s worth going to see Jerry in the meantime; if the government gets its way, Wales is unlikely to produce anything similarly challenging out of sheer fear.

Doctor Who Ep 11: Testing Times

Billie Piper and David Tennant step out the Tardis onto Woodville Road
BP: Bloody hell, it’s not Cardiff in 2006 again, is it?
A Welsh bit part actor, dressed as a Pearly King, wanders past an Underground sign hung outside Hyper Value with ‘London Station’ written on it
BP: I mean, London. Hello, are you common? Can we be friends?
WBPA: Yes. Tidy. All my friends have gone missing, isn’t it? They all took delivery of these things called ‘exam timetables’, and vanished into that ominous building.
Gestures at the Arts & Social Science Library
Audience: Why does everyone everywhere in the universe have a Welsh accent?
Russell T Davies: Shut up, that’s why.

Scene opens in the library. Rows of ill-looking, expressionless students work in silence
DT: Oh no, these poor students are being forced to work despite the fact that there’s no point. It’s as if someone has taken all the humanity out of them.
AUT General Secretary Sally Hunt enters. Extra tentacles provided by BBC Graphics, powered by the new Spectrum ZX
DT, as boggle-eyed and shouty as possible: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? YOU’VE MADE THEM LEARN DESPITE THE FACT NO-ONE’S GOING TO MARK THEIR WORK!
The Doctor presses a button or something equally stupid
SH: No! I’m filling up with humanity and caring about other people! It is making me die for some reason!
Sally Hunt explodes. The library celebrates quietly.

Audience: Hang on. Isn’t this what basically what happens every week?
Russell T Davies: No.
Audience: Oh, okay. *claps and lauds with critical praise as most original thing that has ever been made*
Next week: some calculators steal people’s emotions, before the Doctor destroys them by filling them with the humanity they have so far suppressed, whilst Rose befriends yet another Welsh prole

When a Stranger Calls

Dir: Simon West
Starring: Camilla Belle, Katie Cassidy, Derek de Lint
87 mins, Cert 15, NO STARS

Simon West, the director with such pedigree as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, has implausibly been allowed to make another film. A remake of a 1970s slasher, babysitter Jill is harassed by some prank calls in a large, secluded house. There’s a lot of banging, which inevitably transpires to be the cleaner, the cat, or at one particularly stretched point, the ice-maker. She’s eventually chased around for fifteen minutes, the credits roll and everyone goes home. That’s it; there’s not even a feeble twist, outrageous gore, or any nudity to keep you entertained. The thing is so sanitised it will probably end up on heavy rotation on CBeebies before the year is out.

The cast has evidently been put together from the most glassy-eyed folk that the director found loitering on street corners. Jill (Camilla Belle) has done the impossible, playing a B-grade Jennifer Love Hewitt. Her visiting Tiffany-Amber friend has ‘Stab Me’ pinned to her back; no-one else has more than five lines. And the music is consistently kept at such unrelenting, highly-strung tension that the composer has probably since been hospitalized with a hernia.

Still, I always try and find good points in any film. These are literally all of them.
15 mins We get to see the house the film is set in. It’s like Kevin McCloud’s wet dream, with Architectural Digest features as far as the eye can see. Is that hardwood walling? Recessed bathroom fittings? Cantilever staircases? Why yes, it is. House porn is the one redeeming feature of the film.
35 mins Jill eats a popsicle. I like popsicles.
60 mins Jill runs into a tree.
75 mins Jill falls out of a tree. Jill is not proficient at trees.
87 mins The ‘film’ finally finishes. A cinema rejoices.

Goody two-shoes

Writing about 'Welshness' in a Welsh newspaper is a notoriously difficult thing to do; one false move and you'll be strung up faster than you can say 'hypocritical'.

But one thing that has consistently bothered me whilst living here is a common blithe insistence by many Welshies that people from outside of Wales don't know anything about it, whilst at the same the accusers invariably don't know their Dover from their Doncaster.

The South Wales Echo, however, has truly outdone itself this time. With Jade Goody visiting town to sign books, 'journalist' David James took the chance to try and belittle her in one of the most painful pieces of writing to grace the paper recently.

THe interview that Jade Goody had been good enough to give the paper consisted of them asking questions on Wales, and making snide comments when she didn't get them right (despite the fact she actually managed to get most correct).

It would have been less obnoxious had the author managed to realise that Bermondsey-born Jade, with Bermondsey being in London, is not an Essex girl. It seems that have escaped the patronising author that Essex, constituting the most populous county in Britain, is not in London.

Sarcastic comments about her knowledge of geography are somewhat undermined by statements about the 'Essex girl who knows all about tormented family life and London slang yet has no idea what asparagus is', or most impressively of all, slagging off the 'Bermondsey-born Essex girl'.

Considering how ultra-sensitive an organ the Echo is with anything it perceives to be even slightly anti-Welsh, perhaps they would life to take a few geography lessons themselves before they start having a pop at anyone else.

Social AUTcasts

Bored of the boycott yet? Of course you are. It's been almost ten weeks now, and with the unions rejecting a 12.6% pay rise offer, there's still no end in sight to the most ridiculous industrial action since the matchmakers strike.

You may have noticed from the increasingly strained headline that this is a topic we've stuck with for a while, but it was only last weekend that the national media sat up and noticed the gentl academic massacre unfolding in campuses around the country.

Now we're stuck into the exam period we can start to see what effect it's really having. People here at Cardiff will have their exams (although the same good luck wasn't extended to Aberystwyth students, who have had 45 exams cancelled). Even if we don't have any clue when we're going to get our marks back, at least once the boycott is over and everything is marked, we'll have full degrees.

Despite what the AUT may claim, the action is still having on students here and now. I had the good fortune to have lecturers who have willingly returned coursework, now that we have exams around the corner. Without it, I'd be blithely drifting towards a 2:2 in one module, and wouldn't be able to rectify that in time for my exam.

Don't believe any boycotter who suggests that their actions will not have any effect on students' a student who doesn't get their coursework back in a particular module is at an immediate disadvantage.

Working in the other direction, one module that normally has a test on supervised computers has had to be left to the wilds of Blackboard, for students to complete whenever they wanted in a 24-hour period. There were therefore no controls on what resources were used or whether people worked together, in what is known in testing circles as 'a piece of piss'- and this contributed to students' degrees. The AUT action is creating an absolute balls-up of the exam period.

Stilll, the good nature of my own lecturers does help to underline the difference between them and the AUT leaders, such as the union's General Secretary Sally Hunt. An offer of 12.6% was made by the university representatives - and the AUT management didn't even bother putting the offer to their members.

Whist 12.6 per cent may not be enough to make up for the low pay of the past few years, it means the issue can be set aside for three years. Heck, 12.6 per cent in any other profession would be jumped on. To not even put the offer to the AUT members shows that there isn't really much interest in resolving the issue. Sally Hunt may believe that lecturers 'expect their employers to treat them with dignity and respect', but it isn't a courtesy she is willing to extend to students, given how long this dispute is being dragged on.

Still, it's an interesting note on which to be kicked out of the educational system. A significant number of the graduating year (me included) are the lucky folk who've been the educational guinea pigs for most of our lives. There the experimental Key Stages, followed by the newly split A-level system; graduating late is just the last chance the education establishment have to dump on us from a great height before we enter the big wide world.

But what really riles is that the unions continue to argue that the boycott is not their responsibility, but that of the government and the employers. No, they are responsible for low pay. The morally reprehensible action the AUT insist on pursuing is squarely their fault and no-one else.

It's clear that the lecturers' action is going to have an effect on students. For any lecturers who are reading this that are supporting the boycott, then please consider the effect you are having, before you ruin the past three years work of your students.

Fear of the week

As I mentioned last week, exams and coursework never fail to bring on a season of terror and fear for poor people who don't get to leave the house any more.

Yesterday I had to walk to the other side of town, past all sorts of people that might try to assault me at any moment. When I bumped into someone I knew the relief was so overwhelming I almost asked them to walk me home.

It's putting me in touch with some of the true terrors of my childhood. Hmmmmm...

• For a long time as a child, I was convinced that Jesus that lived in the window of our downstairs loo. If I missed the toilet then he wouldn't love me anymore.

• One for the Essex contingent: the giant in the Jack and the Beanstalk part of Never Neverland, Southend-on-Sea. Although in retrospect it looked uncannily like Zordon from Power Rangers.

• At the end of the local news on TV the slogan 'Closer to Home' came up on screen, but the slanty writing made it look like it said 'Closed to Home'. I was convinced that my arents would get taken away for intercepting military broadcasts.

• For much of my 11th year, I was gripped by an unassailable fear of Dover Prison.

• For as long as I've sat exams, Ive had a morbid fear I'm going to wee myself when I'm sat there waiting for it to finish. (why do so many of my terrors have to be urine-based?)

• Between the ages of about eight and eleven, every time I had a shower I was convinced that Attila the Hun was going to get me.

I'm not really sure at what point in the year I started using this column as a psychiatrist couch, but don't worry: I only have four issues left to purge my mind of this nonsense.

Next week: The priest, the vestry and my secret shame

Revision

Revision. Odds are that you are reading this column because you’re desperately trying to avoid doing any. Heck, that’s why I’m writing it.
But is revision all bad? Let’s weigh up the evidence:

BAD

• Learning is dull.

• You suddenly realise that the whole year’s lecture notes haven’t been put onto Blackboard. A little wee comes out.

• It’s really sunny outside. You are not outside.

• Having been stuck in your room revising all day, when you finally get to see your friends you have nothing to say to them.

• On the same note, being cooped up all day makes the outside world very scary. All of a sudden, you suspect everyone of surreptitiously carrying knives.

• Unlike lecture theatres, writing on the furniture in your house makes you lose your bond.

GOOD

• You can examine all the snack opportunities of your corner shop.

• TEA!

• You will not miss anything in Friends, Neighbours or Scrubs, as you will watch them all four times a day. Sometimes in succession.

• Your senses will be so dulled that any moving colours or sounds will suddenly become amazing. Really. Even ITV1.

• Parcels are one of God’s finest inventions. If any are delivered, you will be in the house to accept them.

• Your room will never be tidier than when you have to revise.

• You can text in The Hits’ new show; send your name and they’ll display facts about that person on telly. Mixed success so far: I’ve gotten ‘Fred West lived at 25 Cromwell Street. With his wife Rosemary he kidnapped young women, of whom they murdered 12 and hid their bodies at the house’ on screen, but ‘Timothy McVeigh’ just resulted in some facts about a man who runs a pub in Yorkshire. Think of your own mass murderers, and join the fun.

• You might pass your exams.

Early Learning Centre

Things have finally come to a close in the Union’s elections. There has not been a longer event in the history of the world with the following exceptions: the Siege of Sarajevo, the Hundred Years War, and Steph’s pregnancy in Neighbours.

So, for the last time, let’s talk elections. I promise, as my solemn vow, to never mention them again after this.

Now the whole thing is behind us, we have a President who has vowed to kick UWIC students out of Come Play on a Saturday.
As a policy, it’s fair enough. It is our university, so it’s fair to give Cardiff students priority. Saturday nights are always going to sell out here, so it also makes business sense. And considering GI Joe found his way into office, it was evidently a pretty expedient move politically.

But as many people will remember out on the campaign trail, our new President anchored his speeches on the cheap joke that if he wanted to go to UWIC, he wouldn’t have worked as hard in his A-levels.

There’s obviously a pecking order in terms of universities and, let’s face it, we get the small pleasure of being above UWIC (heck knows there are fewer unis we get to beat in the league tables every year).

But is it really useful for the new representative of us all to take the piss out of people from another institution we may have to work with in future?

I know it was all just done in jest, and I’m sure that UWIC students are hardly going to hear this and develop a complex about their university.

But whilst it may be okay to start banning UWIC students from Come Play, there was never any need to stick the boot in and slag them off in the process.

Marking the disaster

On April 26, 20 years ago, Reactor No 4 at Chernobyl nuclear power station in what is now Ukraine exploded. In what has become a totemic symbol of the problems with nuclear industry. To mark the anniversary, Plaid MEP and chair of nuclear campaign group CND Cymru, Jill Evans, visited the site.

The land is now largely deserted, with the locals banned from returning to the site - although this is a rule that many of them choose to ignore.

Despite being one of the most lethal places on Earth, Jill still got to visit the reactors up close. “We went to the power station. There were originally four reactors, but even after the explosion, three were kept working.

“We did go into Reactor Four, but there’s a sarcophagus over it now. The problem is that is has cracks in it now. There’s a new project to replace it, and the EU’s helping, as it’s in everyone’s interest to keep it safe.”

Whilst it’s only really safe for visitors to quickly pass in and out, there are some people who have to work there constantly to keep the site safe. “We were only allowed to stay there for twenty minutes. There are very few people there – we just saw some of the scientists who go in by train. They work four days on, four days off.” Without the work of scientists in the area – in particular the ‘liquidators’ who sacrificed their own lives in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, the site would be a far greater hazard than it is now.

“We also met some of the residents who’ve gone back. One man told us that four to five days after the explosion, as the Soviet Union were trying to cover it up, that it was only then that they were told they had to pack their things up and leave.

“They were taken to Kiev. The land they were given was very poor. Despite what the government said, they went back to their land. They had chickens and a pig and were growing their own food.

“They were still angry the government were still promising them that they would be rehoused, but nothing was happening.”
Still, despite the enormity of the disaster, it may not be clear why a Plaid MEP would be visiting the area.

As it happens, the region’s ties to Wales are surprisingly substantial. 350 North Wales hill farms are still contaminated and working under restrictions – having had substantial quantities of radioactive material dumped on them by wind and rain. They now suffer the worst effects of the disaster outside of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. But there is at least one good story to come from Wales links with the regions. “The other link with the area are the many children from Chernobyl with leukaemia and other cancers. They come every summer holiday to breathe in the clean air in an uncontaminated environment.”

To mark the 20th anniversaries various reports have been released to try and quantify the effects of the disaster. But whilst the official World Health Organisation (WHO) report suggested that just 4,000 people die a year, four other reports released suggested the rate to be 700-1500% of that level. Jill says that, even now, the worst is not fully acknowledged. “One reason [for the discrepancy between reports] was that the WHO looked at just Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, as the worst affected countries, instead of all of Europe. I’ve heard another report is coming out with even higher numbers for the cancer rates. What it shows is we need a proper independent inquiry. A lot of the results are only showing themselves now.”

Despite having had the worst nuclear disaster happen on its soil, and with the clear-up still costing Belarus, Ukraine and Russia hundreds of billions of pounds a year, Ukraine is still pushing ahead with nuclear power as a solution to its energy needs. Jill remains unconvinced by the need for it. “I can’t understand it myself. I know they’ve got to make a difficult decision, as they don’t want to be reliant on Moscow.

“But we know that big nuclear companies who’ve lost their big contracts in places like Germany are pushing hard in countries like the Ukraine. “

The cost of the continuing clean-up is phenomenal. In neighbouring Belarus alone, the bill currently stands at £131.5 billion. It is not surprising that the disaster has left such a long shadow over the use of nuclear power in Europe, and effectively stopped its use in many countries. In the UK alone, a government report last year noted that there was enough radioactive waste being unsafely stored to fill the Albert Hall six times, in what would definitely amount to some pretty bizarre concerts.

Considering we cannot even keep control of our own nuclear waste, it’s no surprise that Chernobyl still poses so much relevance to the decisions we make about our energy future.

Balls

I’m a big fan of advertising in all its forms. Many others feel otherwise. But you can guarantee they’d be the first to start crying if Barry Scott, the Duracell bunny and the Scottish Widow vanished overnight.

Without ads on TV, we'd never get a chance to go to the loo during Lost. Without it on billboards, we wouldn't have anything to look at whilst walking down roads (on a side note, the best poster ever was in my home town for Alfa Romeo - 'Because people from Chelmsford expect more than just the average'. They really, really don’t.) So all in all, it's pretty lovely.

But every two years our advertising screens are lent over to either the World Flaming Cup, or Euro Flaming [insert year]. You can forget about the Muller Rice captain (actually, I think he was forgotten about long ago, but you get the idea). Every programme insists that everyone’s gone football mad.

McDonalds announce their promotions are for ‘real fans only’. Pepsi insist we’ll tell our children about fictional Xbox winning football homecomings. And footballers apparently end every training session with a Pringles kickabout. Should the Muller Rice captain ever be resurrected, odds are he’d be shoved down a park for a quick game with archive footage of the 1966 England team.

It’s bad enough you can’t move for Flaming football championships through the whole summer without Ronald McDonald turning on you too.

My worst World Cup memory was during France 1998. I was on a French exchange and was staying with a particularly odd French family. I ended up stuck with celebrating French folk for what was the longest weekend of my short life.

But it’s at least good to know that we’re not the only people that turn into complete eegits come the quadannual events.

In the meantime, I can only suggest that anyone else of the same mindset as me settle down with some nice VHS tapes and blockade your self into your house. It’s going to be a long summer.

The Third Manifesto

Turning to a completely different kind of manifesto to the ones I’ve looked at in the past few weeks: there seems to be a sudden urge amongst intellectual organisations to pen their principles and beliefs for the world to revel in.

The one making all the big waves has been the Euston Manifesto, penned by a mix of academics, and claiming support from journalists and bloggers.

The manifesto is aimed at opposing tyranny, racism, whilst developing freedom, human rights and equality. In short, it is a talking shop of the Left.

At the same time, the Manifesto Club tried to launch their own new declaration of ideals. The manifesto is aimed at developing ideas of freedom, human rights and equality. In short, it is another talking shop of the Left.

To give the Manifesto Club credit, they at least have the lofty ambition of ‘reclaiming the Enlightment’. Blimey. But both projects underscore a particular problem in leftist thought: no-one knows what to think any more.

The Euston Manifesto can’t even decide on the big topic of the day, whether or not to support the war in Iraq. It’s proponents have been split straight down the middle, so no agreement has emerged.

The Manifesto Club, meanwhile, is largely composed of members of Spiked Online. I spent a month there last summer. Whilst there was doubtlessly enough ideas bouncing around the place to keep their current affairs venture afloat, they certainly couldn’t be put into the straightjacket of manifesto principles.

It looks like there’s about to be a rather sizeable outbreak of intellectual posturing - it’s pretty much what blogging was invented for.

But what shouldn’t be ignored is the fact that there’s enough life in the Left that it can support two such ventures at the same time. At a time when talk of the New Right seems to be increasing by the day, it’s good to know there’s life in the old dog yet.

Strike three

52 days. That's the amount of time it took from the AUT starting the assessment boycott until they bothered to write a letter to the gair rhydd, attempting to explain to students what the hell they think they're playing at.

The boycott of students’ coursework and exam papers was started on 8 March, in protest over pay. The level of support that the unions are ‘enjoying’ from students are shown by the fact that, as I'm writing this, there's a small number of somewhat sheepish lecturers standing outside the Students’ Union, trying to win over student support for their boycott.

As it stands, if their action continues, no-one in the third year will actually be able to graduate. Everyone else will not be able to find out what marks they have, so no students will know whether they will have to take resits, let alone what marks they have.

The original action was hard to argue with. The one day walkout from university had clear effects for students that could be worked around. The lecturers had a good reason to strike. There's no disputing that they have been given a bad deal. But they cannot possibly expect support now.

Today’s letter is 52 days overdue. The attempt at a ‘consultation’ outside the Students’ Union today is a case of much too little, much too late.

The letter also shows that nothing has changed in the AUT’s attitude. It wouldn’t have mattered if their members had explained to students properly why they are stopping us from graduating, but that hasn’t happened. The letter is composed of a very long list of whining, but not much else.

It seems to have completely escaped the AUT that whilst they're trying to push the university into giving them a better pay deal, they're actually punishing us. It wouldn't be as bad if they actually had the consideration to explain to us what they are doing.

The fact is that if the AUT respected students enough to tell them what was going on, they would have more support and have a much stronger chance of getting what they want from the university. But they’ve forsaken the chance of students caring about them by not doing the same in return.

I’m going to make this as simple as possible for any hardcore AUT members reading this. I’ve paid thousands in tuition fees to come here, and am over £10,000 in debt. I have no control over the wages you are paid, and after the sheer arrogance of your union, I quite frankly don’t care. Seeing as you don’t have the courtesy to tell me why you are putting in jeopardy the likelihood of me passing my degree on time, and you have taken months to tell me why, then don’t bother me in the street and expect my support.

It does aggrieve me to have to write this about the body that supposedly represents people that I’ve worked with for almost four years. But there’s a pretty sizeable difference between my lecturers who tell me their own views on the boycott - which seem more than reasonable - and the AUT decision-makers who are keeping this action going. Having spoken to students in other departments it is largely the same across the board.

But in the end, I don’t care whether it’s the lecturers or the university that backs down first, as long as our work will finally get marked. I’m almost at the end of university and have enough to try and deal with without having to think about that.
Coincidentally, I’ve got 52 days left until I’m leaving the country. It would be pretty darned great if I could have a degree by the time I leave.

If not, I’m going to have a heck of a time explaining to employers across the Big Pond why those crazy striking Europeans mean I don’t actually have a degree.

The Spinto Band - Did I Tell You

Off-kilter pop all the way, with The Spinto Band releasing the second single off their forthcoming album. The bittersweet, jerky vocals underline a pounding, feelgood tune. Being both unhinged like The Flaming Lips (who they are supporting on tour) but still acting like the sound of summer, this is top notch stuff.
****

Come and see

Young Beylorussian farmboy Florya is forced into fighting invading Nazi forces, but the horrors of war confront him as he tries to return to his decimated village. Considering this film was made behind the iron curtain there is remarkably little propaganda; instead the constant, grinding hell that Florya witnesses simply makes this a realistic anti-war film. The visual touches from director Elem Klimov – who insisted on using live rounds for accuracy – makes sure this is more than just a harrowing, political statement.
*****

The Hole Truth

Cardiff's New Theatre will be getting all frank this month, with The Vagina Monologues coming to town. Having had such acting talent as Kate Winslet and Glenn Close, and full-on man-eaters from Jerry Hall to Honor Blackman, there's a strong tradition to uphold. Who have we got to do that? Um, Laura from Eastenders. Still, the surprisingly funny and talented Josie D'Arby (see Look Around You for solid gold proof of that) is also on hand, so it won't all be slap-faced chip frying at dawn. You can catch the Monologues from Mon 15 to Sat 20.

Info: www.newtheatrecardiff.co.uk / 029 2087 8889

Night at the opera

The Welsh National Opera is opening an online auction to bid for some unique prizes, to raise money in its 60th anniversary years. Amongst the prizes up for grabs are a Parisian couture ballgown worn by Lesley Garrett in a production of The Merry Widow, and lots of other props and costumes from the star-studded 60-year history. For those who’d rather get stuck into opera themselves, there’s the chance to be an extra in the WNO’s autumn production of La Bohème, or even to train with the company’s Music Director Carlo Rizzi, to conduct an aria with the orchestra.

Info: www.wno.org.uk

Balls to the lot of you

A new softball league is being set up in Cardiff, and they’re looking for new recruits to join in the fun. Softball is basically relaxed baseball, or ‘rounders’, as we used to call it in my day. Softball keeps the fast pace of baseball and, more importantly, the giant gloves, but doesn’t require you to take up steroids to join in the fun. In Cardiff, mixed-sex, mixed-ability teams rule. The Tuesday night league has already got many major firms from the capital involved, so even if your ball skills are a bit soft, then you can at least get networking in the outfield.

Info: 029 2064 9862 / www.trytime.org.uk/cardiffsoftball

Sale of Glamorgan

The University of Glamorgan’s annual art competition came to a head in April, with Emrys Williams announced the winner and Anne Evans, the student prize. Winning the second largest national art prize means they take home a rather tidy £3,000, as well having their winning works bought by the University, and put into their permanent exhibition. The other entrants – comprising nine professional artists and two students – are available for purchase in the show. The exhibition of the entrants is at the university’s Oriel y Bont gallery until the 12th May, before touring at the Wales Millennium Centre from the 19th until the end of July.

Info: www.glam.ac.uk

Four by war

A new campaign has been launched to try and end the damage caused by off-road vehicles to valuable wildlife sites. Despite the ideas put out there by every 4x4 ad since the dawn of time, it’s actually illegal to drive anywhere but on the road. The new campaign, launched by the Countryside Council Wales, have noted several local areas that have borne the brunt of it, from the Kenfig National Nature Reserve in Porthcawl to Blorenge, despite the fact it is in the Blaenavon World Heritage Site. Any readers who want to report illegal offroading can call the number below.

Info: www.ccw.gov.uk / 07748 037416

Playing to the crowds

A new organisation has been set up by the Arts Council of Wales to help increase public access to the arts. Already 76% of the population goes to an arts event at least once a year, but Audiences Wales plans on increasing that. Joanna Davies, the Chief Executive of the new body, said “There’s so much to be enjoyed in Wales, and the quality of work being produced is of such a high standard, we want to help everyone to enjoy it and become more involved.” It’s the latest in massive reorganisation of arts funding and management and Wales: the new organisation is a result of a merger between several local arts marketing organisations, and there are plans underway to expand into the rest of Wales in the near future.

Pod People

Trying to pry the podcasting market out of Chris Moyles' clammy grip, a new podcast is being set up to host the best of new Welsh music. The Pop Factory's new venture is effectively a fortnightly audio fanzine, bringing together news, gig highlights and interviews with Wales' best new bands. Jen Long, Ifor Bach DJ and host of the new show, says that it's high time Wales got its own music podcast. "Since the end of Sound Nation there's been a big gap in Welsh music journalism and podcasting is the new medium; we'll be the first podcast on Welsh music." The first episode will see interviews with the Poppies, Inner City Pirates, The Hot Puppies and The Automatic, as well as with various labels and promoters, from events like The Camden Crawl and The Great Escape. Look out for the first edition later this month.

Info:www.tpfrecords.co.uk

Board Free

On April 30, Swansea based Dave Cornthwait embarked upon a 1000 mile skateboarding route, from John O'Groats to Land's End. The famous 'length of Britain' route has never before been attempted by any type of skateboard. But it's all just a warm up for a bigger project: a 5000 mile skate from Perth to Brisbane to raise thousands for the charities Link Community Development, the Lowe Syndrome Association and Sailability Australia. Starting in Perth in late April, Dave hopes to raise a minimum of £50,000 through online donations from the general public, and via fundraising events and collections due to take place en route. If successful, BoardFree Australia will be a world record journey on a skateboard, breaking the current record by a massive 2000 miles. In addition to the attempted distance, BF Australia is inviting skaters of any age or ability to join the jouney, hoping to also be the largest communal skate event in history.

Info: www.boardfree.co.uk

Shot from the hip

Legendary photographer David Bailey has heaped praise on a photograph by a graduate of the University of Wales, Newport which has scooped first prize in a prestigious competition run by the Guardian Weekend magazine. 24-year-old Anastacia Taylor-Lind’s portrait of a Kurdish woman soldier from the Iraqi frontline was acclaimed as “like the classic portrait of Che Guevara” by David Bailey. Plucked out from over 9,000 entries, the winner now gets a commission from the magazine, a cash fund and computer. To get the award-winning photos she had to sleep with a rifle, practice which should come in useful as she plans to visit two other of the world’s hotspots with her prize money. For anyone who wants to follow in Anastacia’s footsteps, photography society The Hipshot Collective will meet at Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre on May 13, for a spy-themed day of photography.

Info: gethinnadin@yahoo.co.uk / 07713 153980

Phoenix - Long Distance Call

French indie poppers Phoenix have always been underloved considering the pedigree of their last albums, particularly United. But Long Distance Call is a rather mediocre first single for the new album. The careful acoustic sound is still here, but the vocals are straining for a sound that doesn’t suit the band’s unpretentious attitude.
***

Leonardo Da Vinci

Released to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the book’s publication, the book’s on hand to try and salvage Our Leonardo’s reputation from Dan Brown. The passion of Martin Kemp (alas, not the same one) shines through on every page, with detailed drawings and precise text that draws you into Da Vinci’s world. It could do with some restructuring as the author has a tendency to follow every thought up at great length. But his dedication to his subject ultimately makes it thoroughly readable.

Cheaper by the dozen 2

Steve Martin’s family sees the Baker family’s holidy disrupted by the relationships, races and general cinematic clichés against Eugene ‘American Pie’ Levy’s family. There are occasional nice touches, with his tomboy daughter’s first crush distractingly good. But there are just too many kids to care about any one, so many are underdeveloped. So, it’s come to this: a film has been released where Tom Welling is, implausibly, underused. Put this back on the shelf and grab the surprisingly warm first film instead. **

The Adventures of Blake and Mortimer

Anchor Bay’s cavalcade of crap continues with what feels like the world’s longest episode of Tin Tin (it’s made by the same people). Professor Mortimer and spy Francis Blake make real Boy’s Own adventures, so expect lots of mad scientists and trips around the Empire. Which would be fine as 10 minute cartoons, but each plot has been stretched over such an interminably long time that it leaves you feeling soft in the head. An essential for Tin Tin fans only. **

The Raconteurs - Steady As She Goes

Jack White leaves mad drum lady behind and buddies up with living charcoal sketch Brendan Benson: The Raconteurs are here. With ex-Greenhornes Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler driving this first single forward on bass and drums, White’s and Benson’s vocals are free to forge this radio-friendly instant classic. ****

Binary Finary - The Lost Tracks

Binary Finary have been living off the back of 1998 since, well, 1998. The eight year sabbatical has provided 16 tracks for this album. Of course, eight years in music is a long time and the rest of the world has moved on. Whilst this album takes trance effectively through electronica and progressive beats to give it a fresh sound, there’s no getting away from the fact that the while album sounds like it is ten years overdue. For hardcore clubbers only.
***

Tunng - Woodcat

Following on from last year’s fantastic This Is Tunng, this first single off the new album suggests the follow-up will be even better. Woodcat starts as an earthy, folk song, and although it develops some unnecessary over-production, the signs are that Tunng know to keep the knob-twiddling in check and focus on the music.
****

The Food Taster

Set in the kitchens of a Renaissance Italy palace, this light read follows the trials of food taster Ugo DiFonte, as he tries to protect his daughter Miranda from the excesses of his brother, the Duke and every man with a pulse. This book does provide a convincing historical social tale. But this is a holiday novel that’s been released four months too early: completely absorbing and with a fast moving plot, but totally lightweight and forgettable.

Fat Albert

‘Hey, hey, hey, it’s Fat Albert’: six words with massive cultural capital, but not in this country. Fat Albert was an American 1970s cartoon series, and this 2004 live action remake is an uncomfortable pastiche cum tribute, much like The Brady Bunch Movie. It would get by on its nostalgic charm; but this isn’t our nostalgia. Still, it does have a scene with one of the Good Charlottes and Aaron Carter, so it isn’t all bad.**

How to get ahead in advertising

This 1980s satire on Yuppiedom is starting to show its age. Richard E Grant is a brilliant advertising executive who comes to recognise how vacuous his profession is, but is still haunted by his old ways by a talking boil. Some of the speeches in the film are startlingly prophetic and Grant does provide a convincing focus for 1980s unhinged excess, but it all strays so far off the satirisation of the media with the boil nonsense that it’s easily forgotten. ***

Q&A: NHS Deficits

With Patricia Hewitt

Q: Is the NHS in serious financial trouble?
A: Ha ha, no! You crazy! Hear my laugh at how foolish a question you ask: a hahahahaha!

Q: But what about the hospitals that are laying off staff because their deficits are so deep?
A: They’re only running a bit of a deficit, which is effectively like not running one at all. Apart from the ones that are in quite a bit of deficit, but they’re only in quite a bit of deficit because we’ve given them lots of money.

Q: Wouldn’t these problems never have developed if you properly managed how you put money into the NHS in the first place?
A: Look, this government has put more money into the NHS than anyone else. Now what do you want, us or the Tories? Hmmmmm? Why, just last week David Cameron said he wanted to boil babies.

Q: David Cameron wants to boil babies?
A: You’ve heard that too? Then it’s true! Plus, my car is greener than his.

Q: Those nurses over there – are they booing you?
A: No, they’re booing the Tories, who stood on nurses faces and raped doctors for 18 years.

Q: That’s not really true, is it?
A: Look, the important thing is waiting lists are shorter than under those baby-boiling, face-standing Tories. Now what’s more important, truth or waiting lists?

Q: Well, truth…
A: Nevermind that, look over there! Charles Clarke is setting free people who are drug dealers AND immigrants! And John Prescott is sleeping with people! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an appointment to get off scot-free from all my mismanagement.

Arts with a capital F

It’s no secret that politicians love a good acronym. Without DEFRA and MI5, Quangos and the DFI, some politicians wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning.

But none hold a torch to the total alphabet soup that is arts management in Wales. There are documented cases of people actually going mad when having to go from the ACW to the NAW, and from the BBC NOW to the WNO.

The Assembly Government has in the past year started a fundamental reorganisation of the whole stinking pile of them. As an idea, it seems great - cut through the post-devolution mess of dozens of instititutions that manage arts for a population of just 2.9 million people.

Some of the changes are the standard sort of institutional rearragements that you’d expect from a government that likes to look busy.

But some of the decisions are truly damaging. Currently, the ‘Big Six’ art institutions in Wales, including the National Opera and literary agency Academi, are funded through the Arts Council Wales.

The Assembly Government has put in plans to fund them directly. The popular Arts Council chair, Geraint Talfan Davies, was opposed to the decision. And when his reappointment in the post was due, Alan Pugh decided to replace him, to the opposition of absolutely everyone else involved.

From the opposition parties in the Assembly itself who have defeated a Government motion on the issue, to every member of Arts Council Wales - many of whom are reportedly on the verge of resigning - the Government is standing alone on pushing forward with the changes.

What may seem like a minor institutional change could make major changes in future. If any government decided that, for example, a book being supported by Academi was controversial, then the Government could prevent it from going ahead, as they would now directly hold the pursestrings for the body. The end result of this aspect of the Government’s ‘Bonfire of the Quangos’ is potential censorship in the arts.

Beyond the Arts Council Wales fiasco, there are other bodies where similar strange things have been afoot.

The Welsh film body Sgrin, despite an excellent record, was replaced with new set-up Ffilm. At the time of handover a month ago, no-one at The Hub - yet another body that was put in charge of the handover - could even say why Sgrin needed replacing.

Many rumours came out of Sgrin in its dying days at the end of March that people were not happy with the situation. But considering their staff were interested in getting into the new Ffilm, and out of fear that the same thing would happen to them that happened to Geraint Talfan Davies, nothing was ever confirmed.

So what are we to make of everything that’s gone on? There’s little to doubt that Alan Pugh’s decision was out of a concern to help the arts. But whilst he may be making decisions to help get the arts into working-class areas - as he has claimed - there is no guarantee that future culture ministers would be so restrained.

Whatever his perspective on what is going on, there’s no excuse for refusing to reappoint Mr Davies. That alone smacks of an abuse of power that raises serious questions over whether Mr Pugh should remain in his job.

Wales is still stuck with a complicated set up that wastes instead of invests money in the arts. This latest affair has done nothing to improve that.

Gummy mares

Our blessed letters page only has so much space to take in the writings of madmen, so I’d like to go into the GUM clinic comments of the ‘election candidates’ a little deeper.

Not wanting to rake over the elections too much, the letter claims that Student Council is addressing the need for an on-campus GUM clinic.

That in itself is completely true. In a completely coincidental piece of timing right before the election, the Kates Monaghan and Dobbs decided to put forward before Council a motion to campaign for a GUM clinic to be set up on the university site.

But perhaps they would like to do their research properly. The motion was hidden amongst several seperate points, meaning it couldn’t be properly discussed in Council. Just as they didn’t bother consulting many of the relevant bodies in the Union before drafting the motion, many of the potential problems with the project were not flagged up at an early stage.

The nearest GUM clinic already has a six and eight week waiting list for men and women respectively. Considering how underfunded the field is, there is not going to be any money from the government to finance a university project without taking it away from the community.

So what is the end result of this? As a result of not having bothered to do their research in a piece of pre-election motion-writing, the long-term prospects of the whole project are now completely undermined.

And in relation to the casual accusations slung throughout the letter: I can promise both Officers that I’ve done more for students in this university than the two of them put together. The expletive-filled lies and personal accusations that were written into the paper from people that don’t have the first idea who I am, are hardly the behaviour that suits elected officials.

There’ll be more on this topic in Quench Debate next week, when both sides will be duelling it out.

Polysics - Now is the time

The Polysics' high energy punk sound has a glossy Japanese pop edge that translates into a truly colourful album. It's at its best when the riot of noise on offer has a melody to hold it together: I My Me Mine and Toisu! are destined for bigger things because it's shiny indie-pop at its best. And although the album often meanders off down anonymous alleyways without a solid anchoring tine, even at its weakest it remains a frenetic riot of excited, innovative noisemaking. ****

A whole lotta history

Plans were unveiled by the Council last month to fund the development of a new Cardiff Museum, that could potentially open in the Old Library within four years. The building in the Hayes has, in the past two years, tapped into a huge interest among local people about the history of Cardiff. Having put its disastrous attempt as an art gallery behind it, the Old Library’s last three exhibitions have pulled in almost 50,000 people by focussing on the last 100 years of the capital. The funding is intended to help research what people would want, and to seek a further £4m to get the venture going. In the meantime, a new project from the Glamorgan Record Office is hoping to help communities record their own shared history. The Community Archives Day on the 25 March is intended to be a way for groups to record information about their shared history, by putting together pictures, documents and videos onto computer.

Info: 029 2035 3266 / communityarchives@cardiff.gov.uk

Art from Wales' heart

The Tregaron Open Art Exhibition has been successfully held ten times now, and to celebrate the landmark it will this year rebrand as the Mid Wales Open Art Fair. Thanks to the success of the event it is expanding this year to put on a hefty extra 100 pieces, bringing the show to over 300 artworks. For those who can’t make it to Ceredigion, the show’s expansion coincides with the group’s website overhaul, allowing some of the art to be purchased online. And over the summer, Cambria Arts will represent nine Welsh artists at the premier art retail show, London’s Affordable Art Fair.

Info: 15th to 29th April, www.cambriaarts.org.uk / 01974 298965

Growing places

The RHS bring their horticultural expertise to bear on Bute Park this April, with their Spring Flower Show during the Easter weekend. For everyone who wants to put the long winter behind them and get green-fingered, the show features two RHS floral marquees with 50 of the UK’s finest nurseries, as well as several show gardens. For the competitors there are awards up for grabs, with all eyes on Snowdonia’s Roualeyn Nursery, and their massive fuchsia displays. For the practically minded, meanwhile, there are displays dedicated to allotment gardening, so you can suss out how to get the most out of your own space. Visitors can also get a piece for themselves with a chance to buy any plants direct from the nurserymen, as well as advice from the RHS advisory team. And for those who want to really make the most of the garden’s relaxing properties, there’s entertainment to keep the kids busy too.

www.rhs.org.uk/flowershows / 02920 872087 , tickets £10 on the gate

Standing up

Amnesty International are holding a ground-breaking approach to examining domestic violence at the Millennium Stadium on 5 April, actively involving men in the fight against it. Despite extensive campaigns against violence against women, there is still an undeniable problem: as many as one third of all women will suffer from violence at some point of their lives. The ‘Involving Men’ event hopes to cover as many social sectors as possibly to try and inform people how they can make a difference. This worthwhile event is pulling in international speakers from Canada to Bangladesh to try and bridge the gap between the sexes on this most urgent of issues.

Info: wales@basw.co.uk, 029 2071 0784

Immortality awaits

Cardiff’s main circus act NoFit State Circus are putting on one last local show of their award-winning ImMortal show, before heading off to Europe on an international tour. Although they’ve now become internationally renowned after their roof-raising performances at the Edinburgh Fringe, with requests for their show from Japan to Venezuela, local supporters can see it from the 13 – 22 April first. For anyone who hasn’t seen them before, you can forget about any elephant-riding nonsense you may have from your childhood. From the aerial acrobatics to the dance and performance art, this is truly original stuff. The show has become known for its unique quality of allowing the audience to wander around the big top, and really get in amongst the circus artists, live music and video of the arena. And if the show doesn’t blow your mind, then the organic Westons cider will.

Info: www.nofitstate.com / 0870 126 1771

The new Alley Palley

An innovative new project is underway at The Maltsters in Whitchurch, Cardiff, where they are temporarily converting their skittle alley into a musical venue. To celebrate the first night on April 12, the Mick Abrahams band are bringing their versions of 60s British Blues to the alley, at £5 a head. But the venue is also available for other local bands to hire it out the convertible venue. It’s probably best to check your opening gig doesn’t coincide with the Whitchurch Skittles Championships; but it’s an original idea to give local talent a foothold on the live scene.

Info: 029 20691097

Join the congregation

With a Brit nomination, a Top 5 album and a string of hits under her belt, Charlotte Church is starting her first live dates since turning to pop. Her only Welsh gig of the three is at Cardiff’s St David’s Centre on the 21 April, and her first performance in Wales since turning to the dark side of music is something of a landmark in her career. At £22.50 you may well want to start saving now to see the original Crazy Chick, but as it’s the homecoming night it promises to be something rather special.

Info: 029 2087 4444 / www.stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk

Arts anniversaries

This year sees two of Wales’ leading arts institutions celebrating major milestones. Cardiff’s New Theatre is celebrating its centenary this year, having entertained the city on stage for virtually its entire life as a capital. It has various big name musical events on throughout April, from the Blood Brothers to the Witches of Eastwick. The Welsh National Opera, meanwhile, is hitting 60, and to celebrate is releasing a book that traces the history of the company. The WNO has modest roots, originally meeting in a car showroom to bring together the talents of coalminers, nurses and shopkeepers. It’s certainly a far cry from the magnificent new home at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay, but the same passion for opera is still there. The book is retailing at £19.99 from the end of May, and anyone who buys it directly from the WNO will be contributing to the fundraising for the Diamond celebrations.

Info: 029 2063 5039 / www.wno.org.uk

Spray another day

A new project has been set up in Cardiff to provide a space for aspiring graffiti artists. As part of an innovative City Centre Management Project, there will be massive panels set up on the North Road out of the city centre for people to use. At the end of every month, fresh boards will be put up and the whole thing will start again. Although there is a clear focus on graffiti, any aspiring artists are welcome to use them, whether you are professional or just starting out. Whilst the resurrection of the legendary ‘Where’s Cui Cui?’ might be a step too cutesy to make the cut, we can all keep out fingers crossed. The new project is being run in conjunction with Oner Signs, who will also be running a graffiti event at the city’s Compass Point festival at the end of July.

Info: 029 2039 6989

iCymru

With the digital music download market still dominated by the big names, Disaudio.com is hoping to take them on and set up a Welsh answer to iTunes. Retailing tracks at 89p each and with full albums at £7.99, as well as selling tracks by text message, the site’s certainly competitive. And just to give it that extra edge, it’s taking a leaf out of the Myspace book and is allowing record labels and artists space on the site for their own stuff. Look out at www.disaudio.com for the site to go live in the near future.

Rock On

Cardiff’s charitable side is on show with Bay Rock on April 7, a concert to raise funds for the Ecoshelter Appeal. Rock band Attica will be headlining the gig at Cardiff Bay’s Coal Exchange, with Berlin’s electronica-punk group Warren Suicide also playing. The event is being held to raise money for the EcoShelter Appeal, which aims to ship lightweight accommodation out to disaster-hit areas, such as the tsunami-ravaged South East Asia. With the concert in aid of such a worthy cause the roster of bands has grown to a massive seven, meaning the whole event will go on til 4am. Rock-rap crossover artists Weapons of Mass Belief comes partially from the unlikely source of Jem’s brother and sister, whilst They Walk Among Us are fresh back from a huge tour of the USA. All these bands for £10 towards charity? You most certainly can’t say fairer than that.

Info: 029 2049 4917

Come on, MySun

Rupert Murdoch has made a tidy little earner out of always being one step ahead of the game. By ‘tidy little earner’ I do, of course, mean ‘huge, terrifying piles of cash that could topple over and kill you at any moment’.

But like trying to explain mobile phones to your Grandma, the internet has swanned past News International, prompting a company review last year by Murdoch to get online. One buy-up blowout later and half the internet is now in the company’s hands, with MySpace now the jewel in the crown.

But it looks like Murdoch’s finger has fallen well and truly off the media pulse. Having paid a ridiculous £331 million for the site, he’s now taking the truly barking step of linking it to the Sun.

Our Antipodean chum has decided that as The Times readership is too stately to do MySpace then the only other option is turning tabloid. But it kind of overlooks the fact that the Sun is now largely the preserve of old men in pubs discussing the finer points of pigeon-racing, whilst MySpace is really there pouting in mirrors for ropey photos to the sound of My Chemical Romance. They’re about as close to polar opposites in cultural terms as you could get.

In the meantime we can expect the final slow death of MySpace in the hands of a media baron from another age. Whilst the idea that the mainstream media belongs to a bygone age is absurd, a company as massive as News International can’t evolve as quickly as new media needs it to.

So what does the death of MySpace mean? Hardly the end of a brave new world of social networking. I can count on one hand the number of people who don’t get bored of MySpace within the first three months, and also see daylight on an at least daily basis.

Instead it’s just the end of both media baron and a massively overhyped phenomenon. In 20 years time, it’s difficult to imagine anyone lamenting either of those.

Strike two

Following on from last week’s incisive analysis of the strike action (titled Strike One - DO YOU SEE?), I’ve heard a new, lovely theory about what AUT members could do to stop pissing people off.

The problem with lecturers choosing not to mark our coursework is that we aren’t the ones who pay the lecturers. Boycotting our work is a bit like train drivers going on strike by picketing the Education Department: it’ll piss a lot of people off, but it’s ultimately in about the same league of effectiveness as chocolate fireguards.
So, killing about 37 birds with one stone here, why don’t the lecturers keep marking our work and just stop filling in the pointless paperwork they’re sent by the university?

We get to graduate on time, lecturers get to ditch all their pointless work, and the university’s most pointless departments will be devoid of work for a while. Sounds like a winning combination to me.

Anyway, elsewhere in the barking world of striking, the news has been chockful of French students blockading themselves into their universities over changes to the employment laws.

In a way it sounds massively exciting. Can you imagine blocking yourself into the Humanities building for days on end? Sure, there are a lot of exits to cover, but there are plenty of vending machines to sustain strikey action.

Whilst it may be exciting and will almost certainly work (the French government cave in the face of this sort of thing faster than a Vegas hooker under her pimp), they’re ultimately still going to be stuck in what is one of Europe’s most stagnant economies.

So here’s a little academic trade: how about we take on some of the Gallic lecturers and send ours off to the revolting students? At least this way at least one side of the Channel can look forward to graduating this year.

Manifesto Massacre

This year’s elections have been home to the same myriad of half-truths, absurd campaigning and outright lies that we’re all pretty darned used to. Unfortnately between the fact we can’t write about the President or AU President candidates yet, we’re a little short of material. Still, tally ho:

Least Grasp Of How The Union Works Award
Several candidates pledged that they were going to put sections into the gair rhydd, with the most notable pledge aiming to get a Societies page at the expense of one of the television pages. If any society have any interesting news of something they’ve done, they can talk to our news team; if they want something advertised they can put it in our excellent listings section. Aside from these two possibilities, and having had to sit through two years’ of drivel at Societies Council, they do absolutely nothing else of any interest to warrant having a page.

Most importantly - and this is worth noting for anyone planning on running next year - no-one outside of the paper has the authority to decree what they want in it. If you want to make changes then you come up the office and put in the hours to earn respect first like everyone else here does, whether you’re a fresher or a Sabb officer.

Most Absurd Promise Award
Easily the tightest competition for any award. There’s the pledge to put into place universal application of Blackboard (which is quite self-evidently at the decision of lecturers, not a Sabb officer), various promises of ‘better funding’ (presumably funded with a bullshit tax), or everyone’s annual pledge to work more closely with RAG and SHAG, which will shortly be followed by the annual disappointment. Clear winner, however, is Kate Monaghan’s aim of setting up an on-campus GUM clinic, which is precisely 37,654 miles beyond the capabilities of the Education and Welfare Officer. Should this ever truly happen, I’ll personally attend to every diseased scrot that comes in.

Worst Campaign
Although Doctor Kate comes a close second with her declaration that the Union was sick, Clare Donovan takes an easy first place for having spent the last week and half screaming the Jim’ll Fix It theme tune at people on the crossroads. Who on Earth decided that was sound basis for choosing a candidate shouldn’t have a place at this university, let alone a vote in the elections?

Most Pointless Document Award
Me and the Union Constitution have history: people have twice threatened to use the nutjob document to try and suspend me, so this is something rather personal. The problem is that the damned thing is interpreted so literally by anyone who thinks they have something to gain. In the case of the elections, a delay in the start of counting could have potentially led to the entire election campaign having to be restarted, because of a technicality requiring the counting to start within 24 hours of the polls shutting. And, of course, it meant that we couldn’t (and in the case of the President and AU President elections, still can’t) point out the absolute lies in some of the manifestos. Anyone with pyromaniac tendencies: please get in contact and I’ll put you in the direction of every copy of the bleeding thing.

Most Obnoxious Candidate Award
Out of the stiff competition, the new Welsh Affairs Officer stands head and shoulders above everyone else. In case he didn’t notice, the vast majority of the Welsh population at the University (let alone the rest of the electorate) don’t speak Welsh, so his manifesto and speech at hustings was something of a waste of time. A candidate worthy of a good RONing.

Best Blow For Feminism Award
The new all-women editorship of gair rhydd and Quench have announced that the fortnightly magazine will be replaced by a different piece of make-up every week. A partwork for readers to build their own kitten is also on the cards, and editing night on Thursday will turn into a sleepover to talk about boys and pretty clothes and, like, stuff. Mickelodeon, meanwhile, will be replaced by The Best of Cosmo, Politics will be succeeded by Heat’s Torso of the Week, and the dragon logo will make way for a picture of an amputated penis.

I love you

People have been accusing Mickelodeon of being negative, rude and angry. Well balls to you, you fat sack of crap: like Julie Andrews on crack, here are a few wonderful things in the world to cheer your day.

Southend-on-Sea XFM limescale Czechs Krishnan Guru-Murphy toucans labradors ER santa costumes laundry baskets the look of grim determination on the faces of people looking at ambulances speeding to emergencies the East London line shipping forecasts making it safely across the bridge next to the Union £1 corner shop cake trays Hungry Horse pubs Annie Mac strikethrough fire escapes the woman who signs on Points West the word ‘tabernacle’ Lakeside the Shortwave Set One Hit Wonder Weekends on VH1 Susan Kennedy a book my Grandma knitted me garden centre coffee shops hearing about Moldova pea fields hats passports isle of man pound coins the Salisbury Road Post Office The Tavistock TOTP Reloaded Invader Zim pizza pie pizza pie Michael Gambon the fact that, like The Day Today, ABC News now uses square globes the post grad bar properly applied speech marks Cineworld the LWT theme tune Mint Royale the idents they play before films at Vue that lifts made by Schindler are ‘Schindler’s lifts’ free newspapers Nana Moon (RIP) the letter W

Drug trials and tribulations

The Victims of the drug trial that has gone horribly wrong in London this week should have a special resonance for students.

As a means of earning a few grand for taking a couple weeks off, kicking back in a drug trial centre and having everything done for you, I know plenty of people who’ve taken part in them and bankrolled a fair chunk of the year off the back of it.

Of course, last week shows how things can go awry, but it’s so notable because of the very fact that this sort of thing doesn’t happen every day.

I know that I wouldn’t do a drugs trial. Not that my body’s a temple; it’s more a synagogue in the West Bank.

But this one example shouldn’t suddenly put people off the idea of making money the easy way.

Electile dysfunction

One of the biggest events in the Union year is the election of a new Executive, but you won’t read anything about it in the gair rhydd. Thanks to the absurdities of the Union’s constitution we can’t write anything about individual candidates during the election.

This has obviously been set up with the thinking that we can’t promote one candidate more than another. Other papers don’t have this problem; the Oxford Student can even pick their favourites. For us it means that the candidates, as they have done this year, can construct them from solid gold guff and there’s nothing we can say about it. If a candidate proposed banning all chairs from the Union, then we could only dutifully report this fact, and that would be the end of that.

I’ll return to the topic once the polls are shut, but in the meantime, make sure you ask the candidates how on Earth they plan on doing many of their policies. If it’s an impressive-sounding claim, then in many cases it means that plans are already in motion by the Union and will be in place by the time the candidate is in office.
Alternatively, candidates may propose policies so meaningless that they don’t mean anything, such as promoting equality, or ever more sessions of the Union’s bloated Council rota. As I’m sure anyone who currently has to be involved in anything like Societies Council will attest, the last thing we need is more pointless meetings; we should just be respected enough to get on with our own thing.

And my own personal bugbear, those who couldn’t even be bothered to research their manifestos enough to get the facts right. For example, apart from anyone running for editorship of this auguste publication, absolutely no-one has the right to start promising new content in the paper. Obviously they all want to attach a headline policy to their campaign, but many of them are blatantly unworkable, not to mention many of their credentials rather dubious. Put them all through the ringer before casting your vote.

If you don’t, we might end up with a sports monkey on rollerskates in charge of the Union again.

Strike one

Lecturers have a pretty tough lot in life. Instead of joining the fun of the real world, they have to watch countless numbers of nubile new students come in every year, underlining how old and saggy life has become. Now to add insult to injury, no one can be bothered to give them a decent pay increase. Plus it peed down last week on the first day of strike action, which I’m reading as a sign that God isn’t on their side.

There’s little to dispute with the fact that lecturers do get something of a raw deal. They were promised that their wages would be increased when extra government cash came through for the university, and the pitiful amount that many are paid is a disgrace. I don’t know about you, but I feel slightly uncomfortable on making a shopping trip to Lidl with any of my lecturers.

It’s certainly exacerbated by the data released last week that showed our Vice-Chancellor, being the modest fellow he is, took a pay increase of 61% last year. So, in short, I for one don’t have a problem with them having a strike. Hell, it just means I don’t have to feel bad for missing lectures on that particular Tuesday.
But that doesn’t excuse certain aspects of the current actions taken by the AUT. If you look at the union’s website (www.aut.org.uk) the organisers seem more concerned in getting positively orgasmic over how much they’ve been able to disrupt things, rather than aiming for any actual positive outcome from the action.

Some individual members have also started to get a little too involved in the excitement. Whilst many lecturers who support the action in general are sickened by the idea of boycotting assessment that would actually affect any student’s graduation, others are less concerned about the very reason they are here in the first place.

One AUT member told me last week that I should put my own selfish interests aside. Yeah, that would be my own selfish interest in graduating, which I’ve spent four years here working towards. It’s the same problem with the AUT’s attitude as an organisation as a whole: if they do give a toss about the fact we’ve had to pay a lot of money to be here and deserve to graduate, they’re certainly keeping it pretty quiet.

The whole issue is seriously exacerbated by the lack of information given out. The university has provided next to no information, with AUT strike details hidden away on the website. My department only sent out one e-mail, the day before the strike.
AUT members, meanwhile, seem to be largely in disarray as to what is happening. Whilst one lecturer has happily given marked coursework back, another is holding on to it on the grounds of an assessment boycott. Given the marks I’m getting back this may not be a bad thing. But at the very least, the idea of a united front in terms of action is a complete fiction.

If most lecturers do decide to mark exam scripts and coursework by the end of the year, then the Uni just has to hold it’s nerve. Given how quickly the strikers threw in the towel two years ago then hopefully all we should have to do is wait. But considering the mixed messages that have been given out by the AUT so far then there’s no guarantee that it will turn out that way.

At the very least, the broad support from students that lecturers had for the first strike seems likely to vanish faster than a striking lecturer in a rainstorm when it becomes clear what the outcome of the boycott will be.

If the selfish elements amongst the AUT could be reined in, and a clear roadmap be made to reassure students what is going to happen, they could win back support for the actions. As it is, the union is just going to back itself into a corner with no support from anyone, and the underpaid will still be stuck with the raw deal they have now.

Mundi Mundi

Thomas Demand
Germany’s Thomas Demand creates scenes made from card and cardboard, before photographing them as real settings. It sounds like a somewhat glossy exercise, but it’s completely brought to life by the careful attention that creates unsettlingly glossy scenes. They create stunning, bright works that build upon the inspiration of media excess - TV news, the internet and other modern media - to make the most modern and accessible artist here.

Sue Williams
Representing local art in this international art prize, on paper before seeing the show Sue Williams seems like a good idea. The scrappy canvases of aggressive, fighting pretty women really do make great illustrations. But in person all of the ‘adult’ themes of sexuality and feminism completely leak out of the work, leaving a messy, disappointing mess. The whole room feels stale, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that it was only drafted in to put a parochial angle on the whole thing. Whatever the cause, it doesn’t belong in what is rightly establishing itself as a world class art event.

Subodh Gupta
One of the big draws of the exhibition, Indian Subodh Gupta’s work is closely focused on the changing life of his mother country. But whilst his work springs from a focus on the caste system, this isn’t a one-dimensional view of what India is, was or is becoming. The real showpieces here are the large scale installations of metalware and a car roof. There’s a powerful and realistic range of ways to look at a varied society and the idea of home without reducing iitself to cosmopolitan ideals.

Dias + Redwig
There’s something morbidly intriguing about this young Brazilian and old Swiss man duo. Their personal films profile people from the edge of society, and when their work is focused on individual subjects, it’s powerful social art. It could do with losing the ‘though-provoking’ messing around with people’s stories, which all speak for themselves. Still, along with Subodh Gupta, it provides the base for a real social conscience to the show.

Academic purgatory

Now that the autumn semester’s exam season is finally behind us, our thoughts aren’t turning to the summer exams. They’re two months away, for goodness sake, pull yourself together.

But there is hopefully one part of the university that is. Students do pretty much just three things with their holidays: travel, work or go on work experience. All three of them need you to know when you are free during the holidays. And that is where the problem lies.

Every year, the Academic Registry seem to leave it later and later until they actually bother telling us when our exams will be. I’m half expecting that this year they will just idly text me the location of all my exams half an hour before they start.

It’s more than just an annoyance, as it limits the options of where you can apply to go on work experience, or what dates you could apply for jobs for. Having lost out on work because of this problem before, it isn’t a hypothetical situation: it’s something that actually costs students money.

This year I was planning to move to Canada in June and now I’m going to be unable to move until July, just because I don’t know what will be happening with exams. Goddamnit, I want to escape, not sit exams.

So why is it left so late here? Other universities get their provisional exam timetables much sooner than we do. Hell, even if we lose to Oxbridge in terms of academic study, hypothetical boat races and virtually everything else, early exam timetables could become Cardiff’s strength.

So is there any chance that the Registry could give us a bit more notice as to what the heck is going on?

Compact con-artists

Sod the discount booze and the ‘learning’ opportunities; probably the best perk of being a student is the cheap newspapers. It’s always seemed like a bit of a nuts idea to me, although admittedly one we do quite well out of. Obviously the papers think they’re building up a dedicated future audience. In practice they’re breeding a generation of people who are used to being able one buy out of their pocket shrapnel, and will baulk at the idea of paying a pound for pulped tree.

But at least if you were to pick up the Guardian, The Times or the Telegraph then you’ll be getting value for your (huge pile of) money. But the most student hungry of the ‘quality’ press, the Independent, seems to have given up even pretending to be newspaper. Although it has given up using chocolate to bribe us to buy it, it’s still suffering from a remarkable absence of any of that ‘news’ stuff that everyone’s been talking about.

The screechy front covers have already been widely acknowledged as tired. Now it seems to be dragging down the whole paper into becoming a left wing Daily Mail.
It used to be an excellent niche newspaper that made enterprising use of its few available resources by using carefully principled journalism. It’s not long since the Sindy set about pushing for real mental health reform. These days the principles are based upon what will draw in the highest audience: health scares, statistical barking and, dare I say it, Fair Trade (head on over to Letters if you think I’ve been curiously quiet about the enviro-fascists this week).

In terms of how detached from reality and how merrily it will now jump on any bandwagon, it’s now no better than the Daily Express and its Inheritance Tax Crusade. Just look at this issue from last Wednesday. Sod the fact that the Government had just lost a crucial ID card vote in the Lords, and there was more violence in Iraq than you could shake a civil war at. Instead, it’s barking on about International Women’s Day - worthy, certainly, but not news.

It’s quite clearly now become a lifestyle paper. Students don’t buy it for actual news; they buy it because it makes you look good. That certainly isn’t what being a ‘quality compact’ should be about. Such aspirational values have ‘tabloid’ written through it like a stick of rock.

There’s nothing wrong with being a tabloid; hell, look at us, we’re perfectly happy down here in the gutter. But it says something of the sheer snobbery of students that so many people have fallen for the ‘quality compact’ schtick.

Bourne to be mild

I’ve always made it a point to not write about the Conservatives. Especially when you’re in the leftie-liberal world of university, there are two simple default positions to take about the party. They’ve truly crystallized now David Cameron is in charge: either the party is a spent political force that’s obsessed with pandering to the middle classes, or they’re now on the road back to Number 10, having been overhauled by a man with the Pilsbury Doughboy’s face.

But – and I’d imagine these are words that have never crossed your mind before – what about the Welsh Conservatives? Last week saw their party conference, and was hailed by some as a turning point. The party has decided it now likes the Welsh Assembly and wants to keep it. This is quite obviously a good idea when you think about the poor bastard Tory politicians who have so far had to pitch their stand in the Assembly with the ‘we want to dissolve our employer’ cloud hanging over their heads.

The Welsh Tory party is perhaps stronger than you would think. Unfathomably, they are the largest opposition party in the Assembly, and having shadowed their election candidate in the General Election last May, they were definitely more popular on doorsteps than you might suspect. No one threw a brick or anything.

But the Welsh party simply can’t become a party of it’s own and embrace what devolution should be about. Ol’ Doughface was the big attraction at Llandudno last weekend, and I expect few people in Wales will have any idea who the Welsh Tory leader is (it’s Nick Bourne, which I mention purely for headline writing purposes).
Still, this week I’ve come to gently love this photo of the Welsh Conservatives on the front page of their website. It nicely sums up what the party has become: a random collection of half-formed ideas, slung together to slag off the Government with no real alternative plan. All that’s left is a collection of visual soundbites that don’t make it even remotely clear what they are there for. ‘No Quango Bonfire’? What on Earth is that supposed to mean? Do they want a bonfire? Are they against Quango bonfires? And has anyone outside the Tory party actually used the word Quango since 1998?

It makes the Welsh Conservatives seem a bit like an unhinged friend who’ll say anything, as long as it makes you remember that they are there. Not that I know any of them personally (actually my sister’s a party member, but that’s a story for another day), but they seem like they’re on the constant verge of blurting out things like ‘he doesn’t want to see you anymore’, or ‘she’ll have the side salad’.

So where can the party go from here? Doughface’s assertion at the close of the conference that he didn’t want people to tell him he was making changes too quickly is somewhat unjustified when no-one knows what that is. Which is why the party is currently condemned to keep making nutso blurtings like the sign massacre above: to create any real policies of their own is just too hard.

Ultimately, the real opposition to Labour in the Assembly, if not Parliament, is done by the Lib Dems – especially given their experience in government, they are the only one of the three opposition parties who have a handle on what the heck is going on.
In the meantime, the Welsh Tories are going to suffer the same problems as their parent party. Although they’ve convinced themselves they are on the road to real change, it’s so superficial that nothing has really changed.

I am not a sound

Every week we here at gair rhydd towers receive masses of e-mails from all political parties, but no-one ever competes in terms of sheer volume with Plaid Cymru, which translates into English as ‘completely barking’.

The party seems to have a press release for every occasion. From backing Maggot in Celebrity Big Brother to their AM’s favourite colours, nothing has ever been left out. Apart from anything to do with, well, policy of any kind.

But that’s all in the past because now the party has rebranded as Plaid!. Actually, I added the exclamation mark myself but I think it represents the new, dynamic party all the better.

Plaid!’s relaunch is much more than just a new name. Hey, they even have a new logo (which looks like a half-witted version of the BP flower - I’m not printing it here for reasons of tedium. Look at Taf-od if you care).

More interestingly, if you drop the ‘Cymru’ from the name ‘Party of Wales’, then doesn’t that mean they are now just called Party?

They are also the first party to adopt a sonic logo, which is fancy talk for a jingle. It’s kind of hard to sum up so please try downloading it, it is guaranteed to be the ringtone hit of the summer. It’s part 1970s sitcom doorbell, part sound they play before making departure announcements at Stansted. Drawing inspiration from the Crazy Frog? They really are the party of the future.

I think we’re all sometimes guilty of overlooking Plaid!, but we really shouldn’t. Everyone has loved talking about Robert Kilroy-Silk in the past few years because he was a harmlessly barking part of the political landscape, but we seem to be overlooking the nutjobs on our doorstep.

Down at the Assembly whenever a Plaid! member stands up to speak, everyone knows they are going to be in for a good laugh. We should learn a lesson from our political elders.

So next time someone asks you to join the Party, I thoroughly recommend signing up. After all, Cardiff is worryingly devoid of great comedy.

In praise of Herod

I’m fully aware that this side column appears to be turning into Alienated Misanthrope Weekly (or AMW when the readership starts to fall) but this week I’m living in actual bodily fear. There’s a silent killer in society today, in our town centres, parks and playgrounds. Yup, that’s right. Children.

Children have always scared me. I’m terrified I’m going to start screaming ‘fuck’ in their tiny faces like that Tourette’s boy they make Channel 4 documentaries about; or they’ll cry, I’ll try and comfort them, and be labelled a nonce for the rest of my life. Last time someone gave me a baby to hold, it turned purple. And no, I don’t remember anything from my own childhood before the age of 12, so for all intensive purposes I was never one of ‘them’.

There’s a whole new generation of terror-kids who are slowly taking over. Just turn on an ad break and within seconds you’ll need new undercrackers. Once upon a time road safety was taught to us by Tufty the Squirrel and singing hedgehogs; now it’s an invinci-child who reconstitutes itself after being run over (presumably by a fleeing victim), before going on TO KILL AGAIN. Help! She’s trying to climb out the screen! Well, no, strictly speaking that was The Ring. But don’t tell me that you haven’t got ready to run out the room in case the ‘dead’ child ever makes it up to the telly screen.

The Velvet bog-roll factory, meanwhile, used to be a haven for tired arse wipe manufacturers to bounce off their products. Now it’s run by an autocratic three year old in a suit that clearly has designs on taking over the world. Plus it looks unnervingly like David Cameron. And have you seen that look in the eyes of Oscar Scully in Neighbours lately? At least we now know who planted the Lassiter’s plane bomb.

I fear that society simply isn’t ready to tackle the menace within and deal with ‘children’, purely on the basis that they are, well, children. Quite a neat little paradox that, isn’t it? Why, it’s political correctness gone mad. When you wake up and find the little bastards rubbing infected chicken breasts in your face, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Next week in AMW: the best cricket bats to go mad at bus stops with

People and Can It

So, People and Planet, you want a blood feud? It’s on, bitches:

‘The piece “Boycott People and Planet” is libellous, and constitutes a breach of the Union’s constitutional equal opportunities policy (ordinance 4)’
As every person in this university who doesn’t have a pinecone up their arse has realised, it is satire about a society that has once again tried to restrict choice for students in university. By libellous you appear to mean ‘someone doesn’t agree with us’, which isn’t quite the same thing. And as for the policy ‘breach’, I’m assuming that you are vaguely referring to the Constitution section about discriminating against individuals. The second that Funky Arse Disco Dancing start trying to ban products because of their own ideological bent, I’ll be at the front of the queue to write about them. Until then I’m sticking with you, kids.

‘In the Gair Rhydd office it reads on the board: “Any articles that you would not want to read should NOT be put into print” – A guideline worth following more closely?’
I couldn’t agree more. So try not to bring appallingly written, morally illiterate articles into our offices a few hours before the paper goes to print and start demanding it is included, at the expense of other people’s properly researched work. I know this is going to come as a surprise, but you do not have a divine right to be listened to at the expense of others.

‘We are still waiting for Mickelodeon to come out from behind the mask and talk to us about why he did this’
You can call off the Nancy Drew hire. My surname is in the column title and on page two of this newspaper every single week. For anyone in People and Planet (some of whom personally know me) who can’t quite put two and two together, my name is Andrew Mickel and I am the Politics Editor. What more do you want, my address? And unless my mother has stealthily joined the society, you have no authority to start demanding that I come throw myself down at your altar and have you collectively bleat at me some more about Coke, Nestle or whatever you are ‘caring’ about this week. You get enough time every year at the Union AGM for that.

‘The Coke Boycott was not forced upon the Students Union (sic) by People and Planet’
Whether the boycott has the veneer of democracy that is the Union AGM’s approval is totally irrelevant to my point. The two minute showcase rants that characterise the AGM debates are so short that it can hardly be called an informed decision. And seeing as the vote was so tight that it had to be recounted three times – especially when the interested societies had more members in attendance than they had to – it is, in my opinion, a decision that has been hoisted upon the students of this university. I’m sure that many people will disagree with me on this point. But if People & Planet would please note that this is my opinion and not libel, that would make a nice change.
I personally believe the topic is one that should always remain a matter of personal choice. There are products that I wouldn’t buy for ethical reasons, but it is my own choice, and not one I would try to impose on others. And no, it should not be the personal choice for students to have to go and shop elsewhere for any kind of product; that is the society’s choice. I’m sure you’d agree that I have no moral right to try and ban Fair Trade products from the Union, because I believe their sole purpose is to appease white liberal guilt. There is absolutely no difference between the two examples; the ethical dimension is for an individual buyer to decide, not for the ‘majority’ to take a vote on.

‘Since the boycott was called in 2003, coca-cola’s (sic) share prices (sic) have fallen from $51 to $41 dollars (sic)’
Some students who don't buy Coke decide that they are no longer going to buy Coke, whilst a baffled world goes on without giving a toss. It must have been THAT that forced the company’s share price down, and was absolutely nothing to do with the saturated market for soft drinks, the series of disastrous product launches the company has suffered, or the increasing awareness of diet and nutrition that have pushed people away from such products. Congratulations.

And the real doozy:
‘the divide in opinion seems in fact to be a split between those willing to take an interest in and devote time and effort to the welfare of others and of the environment, and those speaking only to protect their own interests’
Yeah, right, Coke is my ‘own interests’. This po-faced belief that the only way to be a good person is to support People and Planet and their agenda is truly repugnant. If you really want to start a who-can-piss-higher contest of who’s the more charitable person then I’ll be more than happy to play; you just better get prepared for an utter fucking soaking. Do you really think the way to make the world a better place is to sit in the TV Lounge once a week and whine about Wal-Mart? Or badgering people with your abrasive beliefs about Rolls Royce whilst people just try to go about their business? Stop pretending that you are the moral guardians of this university, and then perhaps people will take you seriously.

Boycott People and Planet

The lost motion from the Union AGM, February 15, Great Hall:

AGM NOTES:
1) People and Planet propose a boycott of themselves, having run out of other things to try and ban
2) The society in question stand accused of imprisoning and torturing over 400 students every year at the AGM, with prolonged, indignant and self-righteous bollocks
3) The organisation plays malicious mind games with poor Cardiff students. They advocate non-violent action, but their intoxicating combination of heady fragrances, frightening appearance and outright questionable existence lead many people to want to do just that
4) Have consistently undermined proper market channels, trying to flood First World markets with their inferior ‘Fair Trade’ products against the will of the natives. Do you really want to deny people their Kit Kat and Coke breaks, just for the sake of a few pence a day?
5) None of their mothers like them
6) In 1933, it was largely People and Planet members who voted for Hitler
7) No-one cares about human rights that much

AGM RESOLVES:
1) To remove People and Planet members as quickly and humanely as possible*
2) To ban all copies of the Socialist Worker and New Internationalist from University property, on oxymoronic grounds
3) That Kit Kats shall be resurrected immediately and all this Divine Bar nonsense shall be removed forthwith
4) That I’m really funking glad I graduate in a few months and will never have these stinking fools in my face ever again

*subject to the availability of Fox Hunting Soc

International Rescue

Having been at Cardiff Uni since what feels like the dawn of time, I’ve developed a theory about any new development that our fine institution makes. There are two building options available: they can either build toilets, or more computer rooms. Obviously the University management believes that we’re all nerds with kidney problems.

But increasingly there is a third possibility: squeezing ever-increasing volumes of bureaucracy out of the budget. Like any institution, Cardiff Uni is partial to producing reams of unnecessary paper (the first person to say ‘things in Welsh’ will be hauled up before the Equal Opportunities Committee).

But an initiative sent out to all teaching staff last week is one of its finest achievements in years. Every month for the next year, staff have to fill in forms explaining how they have spent every minute of every day.

So next time you need help with an essay and your lecturer doesn’t have time to help you, you’ll know why: because some administrative wonk is making sure he looks busy.
When exactly is anyone going to have time to sit down and go through the tens of thousands of pages that will be produced by this pointless exercise?

It’s certainly far from being a one-off problem. Anyone (supposedly everyone, but few departments seem to give a toss) who has been on the receiving end of PDP will know what
I’m talking about. Short for Personal Development Plans, they’re intended to make sure that we’re all well-rounded individuals who stand half a chance of getting a job when we leave. The plans are similar to the services offered at the Careers Service, but powered by a 10-Watt bulb.

It’s not surprising to find that the university is not doing particularly well under this paper burden. This year we have dropped in the Times’s university ratings to number 22. It’s hardly surprising; if everyone has to fill in forms all the time (quite literally now in the case of teaching staff) then no-one has any time left to get on with some actual learning.

And this is having an effect on the lucrative cash cows that are international students. Students from abroad provide a significant portion of any university’s cash flow, so every institution in the land is trying to pack out the lecture theatres with them. But whilst Cardiff University as a whole has experienced a rise of 9% in applications this year – purely because Wales doesn’t have top-up fees – the rise in the number of international applications is such a minor change that it registers as 0%.

To some extent this can be attributed to the government’s nutjob new rules and charges for visas, which have put off a lot of people from coming here. But there are more specific reasons why international students may well not want to come here.

First off, the Uni gets a sizeable portion of its money from the Assembly, which it cannot afford to keep up, and from international students, who are losing interest in coming here.

Two of the major monetary reasons for international students coming here are looking pretty insecure. If we’re stopped from having top-up fees for a whole year then it’s going to be hard to keep up with the other universities. Then there’s only one way we’re going to be going in the ratings.

As if the overall number of international students wasn’t enough of a problem, the countries from which they come from make it even more of a problem. Half of all applications come from China, India and Malaysia, but the prospects of getting more students from these three seem slim.

With the native universities in all three countries improving rapidly, as well as increasing competition over the ones that still want to come to the West to study, there’s little reason for them to choose to come here – the numbers for all three are already negligible or falling.

Still, as long as we are a university that seemingly has more bean counters than teaching staff, we’ll at least be able to look at the god-awful result in easy-to-read tables. That’ll get us educated.

Every little hell

All of the noncing about surrounding the new Tesco Express on Salisbury Road has bought the usual arguments about how the company is taking over our lives screaming back into our minds.

Which, of course, is fair enough; the half an hour brawl it takes just to buy a can of soup in the eighth level of hell that is Tesco Metro pays testament to that.

But there’s a pretty easy shorthand that is developing which people use when they feel like slagging off supermarkets. Bleat on a little bit about trampling on community spirit and everyone knows full well what you’re talking about.

But it’s worth remembering that, for an entire generation of people, supermarkets were truly revolutionary. They liberated women from spending half their time walking between shops, and meant access to affordable food for all.

Sod all this talk of community spirit (like you even know your neighbours’ names) and the rights of small shopkeepers; without supermarkets, women would still be stuck chained to the trolley, if not the kitchen sink.

This isn’t to say that Tesco Express should be welcomed with open arms; I for one won’t be shopping there. But we have a freedom to make that decision because, by and large, every student here is middle class enough to choose where they shop. (It’s also worth noting here that just because your Mum is a teacher and you lived in a council house until you were seven does NOT mean you’re working class).

We have a choice as to where we shop. But when people start getting up on their high moral horse about the fact they won’t go to Tesco, be sure to push them off again. For an entire generation of people before us, and still for many people today, supermarkets aren’t a big evil; they’re the only way to be able to afford to live.

Battle of the unimaginitive logos - Trinity Mirror vs the Welsh Assembly

The Welsh Assembly has been around for seven years. Somehow, that seems completely unfathomable; it’s certainly still finding it hard to establish itself with a clear purpose. A fair chunk of its time seems to be taken up by people complaining about their bins (which is the Council’s responsibility, if you live in post-apocalyptically rubbish strewn Cathays), rather than their actual competencies.

Two recent examples have shown that whilst the Assembly can work well (such as the case of Herceptin below), the Assembly’s dealings with the Western Mail’s management in January shows it at its absolute worst: incompetent, impotent and potentially irrelevant.
The Western Mail is, for want of a better word, crap. Anyone who’s ever made the mistake of buying it will find themselves in ownership of some mighty inky bog roll. But in many ways, it isn’t the fault of the paper itself.

The Mail is part of Trinity Mirror, the company that completely dominates the Welsh press. But it is also a company that has a habit of milking hardworking hacks, and then providing very little investment in return. It is pretty much solely responsible for the fact that there is no national paper for Wales, with the Mail covering the south, and the Daily Post dealing with the north. And they are also now responsible for the fact that 38 workers were recently axed from the Western Mail, without any consultation with the unions.

When hauled up before the Welsh Assembly Culture Committee about Trinity Mirror’s dominance over the Welsh media, the company’s management demonstrated what they’ve done for Wales with a Powerpoint presentation, the real sign of a professional.
This included such fantastic highlights as bringing Trade-It Monday, Wednesday and Friday to be printed in Wales (ooooh!), securing the print contracts for the Bracknell Midweek AND the Bracknell Homes Supplement (wow!), not to mention introducing a four page TV Guide to the Western Mail (someone get me a chair, it’s all just too much).

At which point you’d hope that the Culture Committee would jump in with well-prepared arguments for why the company should start putting some real investment into its underpowered Welsh titles.
Unfortunately, few people on the committee had any idea what they were talking about. Trinity management easily dismissed a report provided by Cardiff University that questioned their role in Wales, and no committee members knew enough to contest the move.

A North Wales AM made several offensive statements about the company management and London in general (showing the sort of maturity you’d hope for from a political institution), before getting into an argument with the Chair of the meeting. The Chair, meanwhile, was so inept that she didn’t even notice that she’d forgotten to let the Unions speak until way after time.

There was one sole voice on the committee who asked relevant questions beyond the general standard of ‘what’s your favourite printing ink?’ and ‘Poptarts- cooked or cold?’
Culture Minister Alan Pugh rightly targeted the fact that there is little real material in the paper any more, as it’s solely composed of lifestyle, Lowri Turner, and local filler material. This obviously didn’t go down so well with the editor of the Western Mail, given that two days later, Alan Pugh’s column was axed from the paper.

Ultimately, the committee’s ignorance has meant that Trinity Mirror will emerge with no real change. On the basis of the performance at the Culture Committee, Trinity don’t seem to consider the Mail a national paper; it barely even seems to register as a regional title. It’s instead fast becoming a glorified local paper.
Any ‘great advances’ in turning tabloid or launching a digital edition isn’t going to hide the fact that, when compared to a real national paper like the Scotsman, the Mail is largely trash.
All of the outlined plans are small thinking for a small paper, intended to boost the company’s already bulging bottom line instead of providing some real journalism for Wales.

In the end, it won’t be the Assembly that makes a jot of difference to the quality of the Western Mail. Metro, the freesheet that’s provided in about a dozen British cities, is finally coming to Cardiff. Trinity will finally have decent competition that might make them consider investing in their titles, instead of axing workers. But it illustrates how far the Assembly still has to go to prove itself as a real institution.

Making the breast of a bad situation

The Welsh Assembly’s relocation into its new chamber also marked the end of Jayne Sullivan’s vigil for the breast cancer drug Herceptin to be funded by the NHS
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The fight for Herceptin has been one of those long, drawn-out battles that has taken on so many dimensions that no-one really understands what’s going on any more. To try and understand it takes a bit of detail – stick with me, you can memorise it and wow your friends at dinner parties.

So, let’s start with the basics: Herceptin is one of a new range of cancer drugs that whilst being effective, are incredibly expensive. The debate over Herceptin focuses on the role of the fantastically named Nice, a relatively new body that assesses whether or not a drug is suitable for the NHS. It checks both whether it is effective in it’s potential use, and whether it is effective for the amount of money it costs. Nice has already licensed it for use for advanced breast cancer sufferers, but the current debate is over whether or not it is suitable for those in the early stage.

Herceptin’s current assessment has been surrounded by accusations that Nice is unnecessarily holding up the drug’s approval in order to save money. But whilst ‘institution withholds drugs from cancer victim’ has made a good story on the news, it misses out some key facts.

The much-vaunted effectiveness of Herceptin is based upon studies in America, some of which have been sponsored by drug companies. There is a possible link to heart disease that has yet to be disproven. And in relation to Nice, the accusations of penny-pinching are harsh on a body that’s just had one of its key decision making committees axed . In short, the drug has not yet been proven as safe or effective for the amount of money it would take away from elsewhere in the NHS.
Jayne Sullivan is protesting because she wants the Assembly to tell local health boards to provide the new drug on the NHS for early stage sufferers.

As it is, it is the local health boards that decide whether or not they provide funding for the drug, and her board currently does not.

No-one would begrudge her the right to protest; without the drug she’s likely to die, and she has consistently ensured that she has never made any grand, sweeping statements about Herceptin.

But that does not mean that the Government should push the local health boards to provide funding. The major problem is that Herceptin is going to be the first of 40 new cancer drugs that are coming up for review by Nice in the next seven years, and all of them are exceptionally expensive. They are effective against cancer in certain forms. But Herceptin alone could swallow up half of the NHS’s drug budget by itself. For the first time, we’ve reached a point where it’s going to be impossible to fund treatments that could save many lives.

And that is going to be the first real test for the Welsh Assembly. The Assembly have voted to look into making the process of drug approval faster. But if this means simply green lighting all of these new drugs, they will bankrupt the NHS.
That is why the economics are important. The Assembly has suggested moving closer to the Scottish model, which is faster than Nice. But I’ve spoken to someone from there, who tells me that they rely on the economic data of drug companies instead of doing their own research. That simply isn’t good enough.

Just screaming ‘reform’ to sort out Nice will lead to drugs being misused on the NHS. What is needed is for Nice to be given the resources and time it needs to do its job, and for people to realise that drug testing is more than just a bureaucratic hurdle.

Unless the Assembly learns to make this distinction, we can kiss the chances of a responsibly managed NHS in Wales goodbye.

The long slide from democracy

Latin American politics is currently undergoing a remarkable shift to the left. Thumbing a nose at the Bush administration, Bolivia’s new indigenous President has threatened US involvement in the area, whilst Haiti and Ecuador are both likely to shift left in this year’s elections.

But it is President Chavez of Venezuela who leads the anti-American pack. Having won power in 1998, he has quickly set about turning his country into a Castro-style society. In his short time as leader he’s already been subject to a failed coup, protests, strikes and a referendum on his leadership. His rule has been accompanied by opposition muzzling, election-rigging and destroying anyone who doesn’t agree with his plans for the country. Following Venezuelan news is to follow a country’s long, slow slide into autocracy.

Blogging allows us to see how the changes are really happening to people on the ground. The media has not just been systematically removed, but replaced instead by Chavez’s own pet channel, TeleSUR. So in the absence of real media, blogs like Miguel Octavio’s have become even more valuable. “Remarkably, we have at times covered issues that the local media has failed to cover out of fear for their future”, Miguel tells gair rhydd in a question and answer session, “since under the new media law, their licenses can be withdrawn for creating ‘panic’ in the population.”

Chavez recently attracted widespread international condemnation when he chose to imprison Carlos Ortega, the leader of the unions and the man that managed to beat Chavez’s candidate for the position. It was not an achievement that has gone unnoticed by the President. “In what other country can a union leader be jailed and charged with a crime like civil rebellion that is nowhere in the legal code of the country?”

But the crimes against Ortega are not the exception. The Electoral Commission (CNE) has become well known for acting as Chavez’s henchmen in eroding the country’s democracy. “Polls say that over 70% of all Venezuelans do not trust [head of the CNE] Jorge Rodriguez and the CNE and his partisan role played a very important role in the high level of abstention in the recent Parliamentary elections.

“His role is very well known and he is seen as being too pro-Chavez by even those that support Chavez.”

Ultimately, Chavez has proven himself to be a devastatingly self-interested leader who, despite many populist social policies, is recognized as being a risk, even by people on the ground. Television broadcasts have often been interrupted in evenings for the President to launch lengthy tirades against the US.

Chavez’s attempt to set up a news channel for South America was somewhat undermined as a serious project when TeleSUR launched with a picture of the American flag with a swastika imposed over it. It was always intended to be an anti-hegemonic project, but the US has since started trying to broadcast its own radio into the country to balance out the channel.

Still, Miguel tells us that the channel is regarded as a joke on the ground as much as it is outside the country. “I don't think Telesur is being watched by many Venezuelans. Even the Government's TV channel VTV has less than 3% audience nationally. It is too political and radical in its posture.”

So it is clear that Chavez cannot hoodwink the Venezuelan people out of their freedom. But that doesn’t mean that he won’t try to gain control by other means. And because of that, Miguel’s blogging is under threat.

Because it has become established (and is even now hosted on American site Salon.com), he can’t remove his identity from the project like others can. “I have received private threats and there was once a public call to investigate our funding (which we do not have), but that has been the extent of it.”

But that doesn’t mean that Miguel is giving up on his work. “I see it as a tool for wider awareness than action. The type of human rights violations, violations of the law and the Constitution and the like, that have taken place have not generated much action. I am a little skeptical that we may get ‘actions’ from abroad that would be useful.”

So for now, Chavez is going to have to put up with the Devil’s Excrement letting people know what he is doing. “We just need more awareness of these abuses so that Chavez does not get away with the world thinking he is a democrat.”

Thank You For The Days

With February having nowhere near enough days in it, March is host to a whole diary of them. First up on the 2nd is World Book Day, and to celebrate, Aberystwyth’s Ceredigion Museum is hosting retold Welsh myths and ghost stories, whilst Academi in Cardiff are revealing the 20 titles longlisted for Wales Book of the Year. The month is also topped and tailed with celebrations of the fairer sex. The month ends with Mothering Sunday on the 26th (my grandmother would castrate me if I called it ‘Mothers Day’), but first up is International Women’s Day on the 8th – turn to page 10 for further info. And for those who find a day just isn’t enough, National Science Week runs from the 11th to the 20th down at Cardiff Bay’s Techniquest.

Info: www.worldbookday.com / Academi 029 2047 2266 / Dylan Thomas Centre 01792 463980 / Techniquest 029 2047 5475

A Right Royal Do

St David’s Day on the 1 March is particularly special this year, as it marks the official opening of the new National Assembly Senedd building in Cardiff Bay. The Assembly started working in its new environs back in early February, escaping the old, crushed chamber and moving into the stunning new glass building. But to mark the official opening, the Queen will be coming to Cardiff to give it the quick once over. The ceremony itself also plays host to several other members of the Royal Family, international parliamentarians, Welsh kids and senior citizens. But for those who didn’t make this most exclusive of guest lists, there are afternoon performances laid on in the Senedd by the neighbouring Millennium Centre. The dance, poetry and performances are free to everyone, a great way to mark the end of the beginning for Welsh democracy.

Paul Robeson Tour

Wales has been talking about diversity and equality in a way it never has done before. Following on a high profile television series on immigration into Wales, the Commission on Racial Equality is taking a diversity tour around the capital in late March. In partnership with the Paul Robeson Trust Wales, this is a revamped version of a successful exhibition from four years ago about Paul Robeson’s life. As one of the greatest black actors of the last century, his courage to stand up to the political forces of both the Ku Klax Klan and the American government has proven a great access point for learning about diversity. There will be exhibition workshops, to learn about the singer’s beliefs and understand the different cultures and faiths that exist in their local community. Local artists have also been brought in to put their own interpretations onto the project and there will be a series of community forums open to the public.

Info: www.croesoproject.org

Fictions Abound

Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff is playing host to over a dozen world class photographers on the 3rd and 4th of March for the International Photography Conference. Examining the current state of documentary photography from the practical considerations of new technologies such as mobile phone cameras and the internet, right through to an examination of ‘mockumentary’, there are talks and discussion panels on every aspect of this fast changing field. Featured photographers include Cornelia Parker, who’s best known for her 1995 collaboration with actress Tilda Swinton at The Serpentine in London; a talk on her large scale installations will examine representation in photography. Several academics from all Sweden to Spain will also be giving talks. For those who can’t make the event, there’s an accompanying exhibition at Ffotogallery in Penarth until the 12th of March. Examining the flood of new media images, it features works by many of the artists from the conference.

Prices: £30 -£95 Info: 029 2030 4400 / www.chapter.org

It's a Hard Rock Life

Putting the rock back into Hard Rock the café in Cardiff’s Brewery Quarter will be putting on weekly live music throughout March. Every Wednesday throughout the month sees different artists and bands taking to the stage in these free events. First up on the 1st is a night of traditional music to celebrate St David’s Day. On the 8th, local outfit, Magic Dog, bring their contemporary blues/rock sound to the stage. The Storys play on the 15th, a six-piece band which comprises of an impressive four singer-songwriters. All that vocal talent means they all take to the mike, and work together to create harmonised melodies. The real rock kicks in on the 22nd, when Sheershock Revival say they will ‘combine the swagger of Led Zeppelin with the showmanship of The Rolling Stones’. Blimey. Things calm down a bit for Gethin and the Scenery on the 29th, bringing the series to a close. Rock on.
Info: www.hardrock.com / 029 2037 3403

I'll be ready

Whilst they’re not quite the domain of skimpy red swimsuits and the Hoff, the Gower and Aberafan are home to surfing in Wales. In association with Exeter Museum, the Surf’s Up exhibition traces how surfing caught the imagination of a generation, and became not just a powerful attraction, but a full-blown industry. From the 50s through to the Welsh surfers who compete at an international level today, there is a full photo history of surf action. But still no Hoff (it is free, after all). You can catch the exhibition at the Swansea Museum until the end of April. For those who then feel motivated to get board, then Swansea Leisure Centre is developing Europe’s first indoor surfing centre. The surf stream will be the centre of a new water park that will include indoor pools, slides and waves as part of a £25 million renovation, to be ready by 2008.
Info: 01792 653763