The Tepid Take

     Most Brits recognise that Donald Trump is a dangerous figurehead of a dangerous movement, one that’s stoked the fires of bigotry in ways we never thought possible, since its inception last year. He is widely recognised as being an incompetent buffoon – he is no longer allowed access to his own Twitter, for example – and yet, his support continues to be large. His rise is unprecedented; if he won, he would be only the fourth President of the United States not to have previously held political office. Why does he garner so much support from the average American if he stands for hurt and bigotry? It seems obvious, but the fact of the matter is that the underlying motivations of making America great again are not rooted in hatred, but hope.      Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, is a bastion of the establishment. People support her for a variety of reasons, but one of the greatest is the sheer horror provoked by the idea of a Trump presidency. Hillary is knowable, partially owing to her po

     I went to Leeds Festival this year. This wasn’t because I felt like I ought to try the whole festival experience (though I did), nor because a lot of my favourite bands were going to be there (though they were). No, I went because, if I went with Oxfam, I got to go for the outstanding price of 0, in whichever currency you’d like. Zip. Nada. Free. More pressingly, I didn’t have to find anyone to go with me, as is oft the struggle when all your university friends are strewn across the kingdom and your girlfriend is somewhere up a pike near Windermere. Oxfam provided the entertainment, the food, the electricity, the lodging (assuming you’d brought a tent), and the company. All we had to do was work a six hour shift each day and assist with opening and closing; the rest of the day was free for us to do as we wished. The one thing they didn’t provide us with, unfortunately, was the weather.      It rained like a Leeds summer. Which is epistemologically what it was. It should hav

Corbyn has triumphed, endearingly so, over Establishment odds. MPs with the closest links to the Blairite status quo have had their chance and failed. Though the movement against Corbyn spanned from stalwarts such as Tristram Hunt to more sideways characters such as Ed Miliband, it was fundamentally an attempt to pull Labour somewhere a tad closer to the range of ideas that lost the leadership only last year . A campaign for Owen Smith, which held all the cards in the context of factual observation, but almost none in terms of emotional clout, lost against passion, and a desire for that consistently appealing brand of ‘change’, ‘honest politics’, and so on. Corbyn could have walked on stage at the last debate, argued for nothing but the nationalisation of the Great British Bake Off for almost an hour, and he would have still won doubtless. He would have won because his niche, nascent cult of personality already exists in Labour. It’s the kind that might indiscriminately boo Owen Smit

     This article is not supposed to be personal, but I am a firm believer in the Midlands. Having visited some parts of the UK at least some times, the evidence for me is near conclusive. Regardless of how carefully a line can be drawn across the ribcage of Great Britain, I will remain adamant that I have lived in the Midlands since my parents moved to Ipswich in 1998. As the butt of many a geographical joke, Ipswich cannot possibly be found in the South, but equally it is far too southerly on a map to be labelled Northern. While Danny Dorling, a professor from Sheffield and the definitive producer of an academic North-South Divide , acknowledges that “it would be possible to identify enclaves and exclaves”, many impoverished towns far south of a single Scouser make it clear that the Midlands exist, and this goes without even mentioning the golden goose that is the Black Country dialect. The Midlands does exist, and it is just as stalwart as the North and the South.      That t

Is the Labour Party doing okay? Is Len Mccluskey still sane? Is anyone actually worried about these things? The short answer: No. The upcoming leadership election in the Labour Party has gained so much interior traction that it’s forgotten that a world exists outside committees and secret ballots. Labour’s presence in the papers over the past months has had nought to do with a serious response to the newly minted May, aside from minor policy punts by the would-be usurper, Owen Smith. Truthfully, the man is unassuming, clever in the least offensive kind of way, and as in-demand as a Tony Blair lookalike post-Iraq. Similes aside, Smith is the man for the job, where the job is ‘head of making it obvious how farcical a state the Labour Party is in’. Bereft of any good option, the party is choosing between a man who stands for oblivion, and a man who stands for oblivion. I’ve based that last sentence on an average of the rhetoric of Smith & Corbyn supporters. But who’s telling the t

A belief in unilateral nuclear disarmament for moral reasons is an unfounded belief that puts the lives of every person living on this grey old island at risk. A belief in multilateral nuclear disarmament, however, is just as unfounded. The cold war between Russia and the United States that started more than half a century ago is ongoing, and the matchup between their nuclear arsenals (and that of upcoming superpowers such as China) does not falter . The sad truth is that the numbers alone tell a story of a bleak future. Our future will be one where mutually assured destruction is always a risk, no matter how petite that risk may be. Given that, why bother to oppose Trident? If the American stockpile is worth holding onto, why not the same for the United Kingdom? In complete honesty, it can be proven; all you need is A2 Economics, basic political theory, and the omnipresent Prisoner’s Dilemma (Cooperation Problem). To further explain why nuclear winter will never cease to be a r

It seems as though the experiment of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party is coming to an end. However, the left wing of party supporters are fighting to the end for his survival as leader, despite the fact that any prolonging of the infighting the party has become famed for in the past year will only make the struggle harder. What remains to be seen is what the next leader of the Labour Party needs to hold close when it comes to their values, policies and ideology in order to maintain what the labour movement stands for, whilst simultaneously appealing to the voters that are by and large turning to populist movements such as UKIP and away from the values Corbyn’s Labour stands for, as evidenced by recent elections in the North and the EU referendum: “ if you haven’t got money, you vote out ” . We must be prepared to admit that Corbyn has made multiple mistakes in his time in office. His heavy anti-Zionist bias, for example, has created division amongst Labour’s Jewis

You might not have known, but I’m a fervent supporter of internet food channel, Sorted . They make quality, Top Gear-esque video recipes that are engaging and, perhaps most importantly, tasty. However, running a business to support four individuals and goodness knows how many more behind the scenes doesn’t come without some kind of necessary cash injections, the most obvious of which is a sponsorship deal. Sorted has taken multiple sponsorship deals in the past, most notably from Tesco and, more oddly, a car . These are both large corporates that people have heard of, meaning the effect is a tangible gain for Sorted and a largely intangible gain for the companies themselves. However, Sorted have also taken sponsorship from otherwise unheard of entities such as Lambsoc and Lovepork. What do these organisations do? What do they stand for? Most importantly, is it something worth complaining about? I would say so. Hit the jump to find out why. The straightforward answer to the above q

Today heralds a darkened mood within the Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn is coming under scrutiny, his objectors are being hung out to dry, and Tom Watson is having a great time at Glastonbury. Many voices within the Labour Party are coming to the realisation that it might well be best for Jeremy Corbyn to stand down, in the aftermath of the local elections (which they didn't resoundingly win), the Scottish elections (which they definitely lost), and the EU referendum (which has led to the bitter revision of the class divide in our country, and also they lost). But why is this Labour’s, and hence Corbyn’s, responsibility? During the referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the United Kingdom, it cannot be denied that Labour’s voice was a quiet one in the midst of a sea of mostly Conservative voices. Britain Stronger in Europe utilised mostly neoliberal political arguments, and judging by the lack of action by ConservativesIN, Stronger In effectively became the right wi

The referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union, for me at least, seems to hinge on three main issues: the economy, immigration, and the notion of 'taking back control' - or rather, sovereignty. But control for whom? For me, that was the question that pushed me to choose Remain, after I'd made the exhaustive choice to read through this entire list of puns. If we choose to leave tomorrow, we give a mandate to Gove, Johnson, and Iain Duncan Smith, whether we intend to or not. We enable far-right politicians with a wide range of problematic views. That’s worse than the kind of politics peddled by Brussels. Furthermore, we encourage an unsustainable viewpoint on immigration: that it can be altered by leaving an organisation that will nevertheless have control over us. We will be subject to accepting a majority of the EU's rules if we wish to trade with it, and the degree to which immigration will actually change may well be negligible. I can agree th

In the aftermath of last night’s Top Gear , I thought it pertinent to travel back in time to the middle of May, to discuss the impact that the government has on our national broadcaster. This article is just long enough to help you forget about Chris Evans. The government, with the publication of its original White Paper for the British Broadcasting Corporation, made the claim that the BBC had intentions of imperialism and to monopolise the media industry in the United Kingdom. The committee responsible for the White Paper therefore posited that the BBC ought to scale itself back in order to perform more in line with the level of production expected by a publicly owned entity. The middle classes, myself included, were outraged at the prospect of losing eleven thousand recipes as the facade of this downscaling, but there’s actually much more to it than that. Is this all about how to braise a chicken, or is it really something more sinister? I want to start with some simple economi

Recently, there’s been a row in the news over the level of grammar expected of pupils taking their SATs in schools across England, with private academy owners, the Schools Minister, and even David Cameron coming under fire for not being able to answer the questions these children are faced with. On the day, multiple parents took their children out of school on the basis of learning through ‘fun, play and adventure’ rather than the expected method of differentiating a preposition from a conjunction. Of course, we have to start considering how far parents are prepared to go when it comes to taking their children out of the classroom in response to an examination they consider beyond the call of duty. Complaints have been coming for years about how we treat testing, not just from concerned parents, but from GCSE students and beyond. How much testing do we really need, and who does it help, really? Everyone knows that the methods by which we test children (and indeed young adults) in th

In less than a week, London is going to the polls over the selection of its new mayor. Many transport topics have received their fare share (haha transport joke) of the coverage, be it a new zone plan for the London Underground , cheaper fares before 7:30 in the morning , or just freezing fares before 2020 . One topic, however, remains unspoken: the straight-talking black cab. The outgoing mayor, Boris Johnson (neé Bojo), promised that all London taxis would have to be capable of running in “zero emission mode” by 2018 – something that certainly hasn’t appeared during his tenure. But why won’t the current mayoral candidates talk about taxis? Are they too boring? Too sacred? It’s not an absent issue from the London Assembly . Well, to save prospective mayors the trouble, I’m here to discuss taxis, Ubers, and so much more (actually not much more) in this article. The sheer quantity of taxis cruising on the streets of London, New York, or Los Angeles wouldn’t be a problem if not for the

Students in the UK pay £9000 yearly for their tuition. This policy was chosen over pursuing a graduate tax or reducing tuition fees in favour of alternative taxation methods. Some would argue that tertiary education is just like primary and secondary education, in that the onus isn’t on students to pay it, but rather that economically active members of society ought to pay the costs of educating the rest of us, given that educating people benefits everyone. The flipside of this is that university education is, to a certain degree, differentiated from the education that comes before it, in that it arguably isn’t a necessary step but rather a choice, for which students should be prepared to pay. Suffice to say, this article isn’t about arguing whether or not tuition fees are fair, but whether they make sense, and whether students are really devoid of some of the blame in this whole debacle. We start with a question: What about the continent? The European context here really deserve