The Tepid Take

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...