Concrete - Issue 184

Issue 184

December 7th 2005

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THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

The students of UEA showed their solidarity towards the Union’s Nestlé boycott last week as they voted to continue the ban on Nestlé products in a policy ballot. At the final count, 824 students said ‘yes’ to the boycott and 476 op-posed it.

Communications Officer Andy Higson, who headed the ‘vote yes’ campaign, com-mented: “This shows the stu-dents of UEA care more about saving lives than having a chocolate bar.”

Union policy stands for three years, after which time it must be reviewed to ensure that the Union is fairly repre-sentative of student opinion. The Nestlé debate had become a rising controversial issue on campus.

The sale of Nestlé prod-ucts is prohibited in all Union outlets because the Union be-lieves that Nestlé has unethi-cal marketing policies relating to the sale of breast-milk sub-stitute formulas in developing world countries.

The World Health Organi-sation estimates that “1.5 mil-lion children die each year be-cause they are not adequately breastfed”;; a figure that has not been disputed. Infants fed with formula are more likely to

become ill and possibly die as a result of diarrhoea because the water it is mixed with is of-ten contaminated.

The problem with Nestlé arises when its marketing methods are analysed. The International Baby Food Ac-tion Network (IBFAN) found Nestlé to be the biggest sin-gle violator of the WHO and UNICEF’s International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes since its introduc-tion in 1981.

One example of this in-fringement is the donation of breast-milk substitutes to ma-ternity hospitals in developing world countries. Campaigners, supported by medical experts, say this means that newborns are regularly bottle-fed, result-ing in babies being less able to suckle and therefore depend-ent upon breast-milk substi-tutes. Once the mother and child leave the hospital they have to purchase the formula themselves. The financial bur-den that this places on fami-lies with very low incomes can be overwhelming and some-times leads to malnutrition because the baby is not being adequately fed.

One second year PSS stu-dent summed up the UEA boy-cott: “One person not buying a Kit Kat will not necessarily make a difference, but as a Un-ion we stand out and can really make our voices heard.”

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Drinking is a pastime close to the hearts of most students, so it is unsurprising that the new legislation on late night drinking has been well re-ceived across UEA.

The new law that came into force on Thursday 24th November will allow many of the pubs and bars around Norwich to stay open as late as two or three o’clock in the morning.

The Union Pub is now open until midnight across the weekend and private or sports club socials will go on until one-thirty.

Alex Caldwell, PSI3, ex-pressed unreserved support for the move, describing it as “the beginning of a golden age.

There is nothing more anti-so-cial than being kicked out of the pub at eleven o’clock.” The following morning he was less keen and conceded that “the new laws will have their ups and downs”.

Many Norwich residents are less supportive, express-ing concern about the social consequences that may arise if later opening times mean cus-tomers drinking more. There has been speculation about an increase in alcohol related violence.

The Garden House, situ-ated in the golden triangle area, was denied the right to open later then eleven-thirty on the basis that customers leaving the pub might wake up residents. Students John Cunningham, BIO3 and Rob Baines, HIS3, who live in the vicinity of The Garden House

are supportive of late licence They said: “The noise is not a problem and generally goes on for less than a minute.”

Landlords are also un-convinced. Mark and Maxine Riches of The Lillie Langtry on Unthank Road believe the new laws are “fantastic” and will produce a more relaxed drinking culture: “It’s brilliant! People are just taking their time and now they don’t have to down their drinks when it gets to eleven o’clock. People think landlords forget how to run a pub;; if someone comes in drunk at four o’clock in the afternoon they will be kicked out and if they come in drunk at eleven o’clock at night they will be kicked out. Drunk peo-ple will be asked to leave just the same as any other time of day.”

While most students do

not believe the laws will make anti-social behaviour worse, many are pessimistic about suggestions that they will have a positive impact on drinking culture.

Although he supports the late license, Chris Last, LAW3, said that “fights take place round the city centre, not round local pubs, and there have always been places open until 3am on Prince of Wales Road so it won’t change a thing.”

Whether or not the new late licensing laws will reduce anti-social behaviour and pro-mote a more relaxed drinking culture is a question that can only be answered in time. Stu-dents will still be taking advan-tage and spending their soon to be hard-earned loans on alcohol in pubs from campus to the golden triangle.

2 Wednesday December 7 2005

A motion went to Union Coun-cil on Thursday 24th Novem-ber calling for the Editor of Concrete to become an elect-ed position.

Under the current system, the Editor is chosen by a proc-ess of application and inter-view. The proposed change would allow the entire student body of UEA to vote for the person who would take on the role.

The motion, proposed by Martin Jopp, states that: “Stu-dent media would improve by having an elected editor of Concrete and a truly demo-cratic Union should have a

media which is accountable to its members.”

Jopp argued that a student newspaper should represent the views of all students and claimed the only way to ensure this is to give students a say in who runs the paper.

Speaking in opposition, Academic Officer Dan Pear-son countered that while the Union Executive are elected to act on behalf of the students of UEA, the Concrete Editor does not have a representative role within the Union.

He also expressed concern that a process which bypasses the rigorous interview process

may not select an editor with the technical skills or dedica-tion required for the job.

Concrete’s Deputy Edi-tor, James Conway, drew the Council’s attention to a clause in the resolution which stated that:

“The Concrete Editor shall be responsible for ensuring that Union Meetings and Un-ion elections are publicised and reported in the Union newspaper.”

He asked the Union Coun-cil to consider whether this was the function of Concrete or Rabbit, the Union’s own newsletter. The effect the pro-

posal may have on the paper’s editorial independence was also questioned.

Despite a lengthy debate a resolution was not reached through a vote as insuffi-cient Council members were present for the decision to count.

Concrete understands that the proposal will now go to a referendum at the begin-ning of the Spring term, when students will be asked to vote on whether they would like the Concrete Editor to be elected to the post. The debate will be covered in detail in the January issue of Concrete.

Three UEA students have been selected to be part of an in-tercultural writers group with Bangladesh. The collaboration is run in partnership with the British Council and Connect-ing Futures.

The writers will take part in a series of international workshops in partnership with a writing group from Bangla-desh, using issues of culture and identity to develop their writing through an exchange of ideas.

The project was open to applicants from five counties across the East of England. Four applicants were chosen, three of whom are from UEA. Joe Dunthorne and Susan Vit-

tery have just graduated from the prestigious Creative Writ-ing Prose MA and Anna Stew-ard is currently completing the Creative Writing Poetry MA.

Anna said: “I am very ex-cited by the whole project. I hope it will produce a life long partnership of writers and take my work in new directions. We are flying out to Dhaka on the December 9th for a week of workshops led by UK poet Di-nesh Alirajah.

This will culminate in a performance at the end of the week. In the spring, four of the Bangladeshi writers will be coming to Norwich to do a performance here as well.”

This is the first time a

project like this has been run and funded by the Arts Council in the East. The project man-

ager Laura Fellows hopes that its success will produce future projects of a similar nature.


2005 was selected as the year to make poverty history due to the co-incidence of many influential and vital aspects in global politics;; the G8 sum-mit which was hosted by the UK, the UK presidency of the EU and the occurrence of the UN General Assembly Special Summit on the Millennium Development Goals.

As a result, at the start of the year the Make Poverty His-tory campaign (a conglomer-ate of hundreds of different charities) announced what they believed to be the neces-sary steps in order to eradicate poverty. These were to cancel the debt owed by developing countries, to provide more and better aid and to improve trade agreements to promote the economies of these coun-tries.

The reaction of the general public proved to be unbeliev-able. By summer 2005 it was impossible to walk down any high street without seeing

a flash of white wrist-band demonstrating the wearer’s support or to watch television without seeing the infamous “click” advert.

We were all asked to con-tribute in any way possible, from e-mailing MPs and the Prime Minister, to travel-ling up to Edinburgh for the Make Poverty History Rally, to which more than 225,000 people turned up. No gesture was considered too small. Paul Wolfowitz summarised the flood of support when he said:

“The call to end poverty reaches across generations, continents and nationalities. It spans religions, gender and politics. From concert stadi-ums to street demonstrations to high profile summits, citi-zens and leaders - from rich and poor countries alike - have been moved by the suffering. They demand action.”

Although the G8 summit did agree to cancel the debts of eighteen countries, many have criticised the economically crippling conditions which will be attached to this cancella-tion. Others have asked what

will happen to the countries who owe huge amounts of money to the West but are not included in the drop.

Another criticism is that the G8 debt deal will provide less than one billion dollars this year - the equivalent of no more than one dollar per per-son in the countries that are due to benefit. Ten billion dol-lars a year of debt cancellation is needed to eradicate extreme poverty.

While these steps towards debt cancellation are no doubt a move in the right direction, they are far from what was hoped for and expected.

In terms of aid the G8 have pledged to provide a further fifty billion dollars over the next five years. Make Poverty History claims that only twen-ty billion dollars of this budget is new money;; the other thirty billion is simply a re-statement of money already promised.

Many academics in this area believe that even if all the aid were new money it would not do all the good that it is capable of due to the way in which aid is distributed by the West. They suggest that the

time frames enforced through the conditions of the donation are rarely realistic or suitably long-term.

The economically dam-aging conditions placed on these countries by the World Bank and the IMF are far from conducive to the effective use of the donated money. Often these impoverished countries simply borrow money from one source to repay the debts they owe to another.

It is believed that the most vital aspect of making poverty history is to free up trade so that developing countries can build their own economies through growth in farming and industry. For this to hap-pen the G8 and the EU must remove the subsidies they provide their farmers and in-dustries and make the playing field more even.

The Make Poverty History campaign worked on the the-ory that the louder the voting public shouts the harder their leaders will find it to ignore. We can make poverty history but only if we continue to pres-sure our leaders and get more people to shout with us.

Applications are now invited from highly motivated, enthusiastic and suitably experienced full-time students and members of staff for ap-pointment as Resident Tutor for the academic year 2006-07. Students spending next year abroad should also apply now for appointment in September 2007.

Resident Tutors welcome students when they first move into residences,

provide information and support to help them manage the transition to uni-

versity life and, throughout the year, are available to deal with issues of wel-

fare and good order. By using their mediation and problem-solving skills,

Resident Tutors help maintain a balance between the interests of individu-

als and the community in residences.

Successful applicants will have excellent all-round people skills, be non-

judgmental, able to empathise with the academic problems commonly ex-

perienced by students, have good written and spoken English, good time

management skills, the ability to follow clearly defined procedures, flexibility

and a willingness to work unsocial hours.

This appointment will be subject to a criminal record check from the Crimi-

nal Records Bureau.

Further particulars are available from the Dean of Students’ Office Recep-

tion or from www.uea.ac.uk/dos/intranet/welcome.html (click on to Resi-

dences).

There are 2 closing dates for applications: Friday 16th December 2005 (ap-

plicants will be invited for interview or informed that their application is un-

successful by 10 February 2006) and Friday 27th January 2006 (applicants

will be invited for interview or informed that their application is unsuccessful

by 17 March 2006).

There is also a vacancy in the Village for immediate appointment. Please indicate in your application whether you also wish to be con-sidered for this vacancy.

Resident Tutors

A team of UEA students from the School of Management has won the regional final of Yomping the Nations 2005, a competition that aims to teach students business strat-egies through a series of chal-lenges.

The UEA team collected a shared prize of £500 in the contest, which involved teams from over one hundred uni-versities.

Dr Jackie Granleese of the School of Management organ-ised a team of six undergradu-ate students to participate in the event. Jayne Cardnell,

Ali Chisolm, Sharon Davies, Mark Smalls, Ashley Smith and Mike Smythe competed head-to-head against teams from Cambridge, Essex, Hert-fordshire and Anglia Ruskin Universities.

The teams were asked to develop and plan a business strategy using Yomp, a plan-ning tool that simulates busi-ness growth. Their progress in the areas of Marketing, Finance, Strategy, People and Operations/Action was as-sessed by a group of business experts, who included former permanent secretary of the Department of Trade and In-dustry, Sir Robin Young.

UEA and two teams from Cambridge were selected for the playoff in which they had

to present a sales pitch to Sir Robin. The MGT team’s pro-posal was chosen as the win-ner by a landslide vote.

Dr Granleese comment-ed that their victory “was no mean feat, as Cambridge fielded mixed teams including postgraduate team members. Indeed, one of their all-stu-dent teams was led by Dr Dav-id Hampton who had been a medical research director in Seattle and college lecturer before coming to complete further study at Cambridge.”

This week the MGT team will participate in the Yomping Final, representing the East of England against teams from across the country. Concrete wishes them the best of luck in the competition.


A designated driver scheme in Norwich was launched on De-cember 2nd at The Plough, St Benedicts Street with special guests attending throughout the day and entertainment throughout the evening.

The program, which works in conjunction with a number of pubs in Norwich, aims to prevent and reduce drink driving by offering free or dis-counted non-alcoholic drinks to designated drivers. It seeks to encourage and reward des-ignated driving.

Over the Christmas period each pub taking part will be doing different variations of this scheme for the designat-ed drivers of the group nights out. Although the scheme has been running for six years,

this is the first time it will take place on such a large scale in Norwich.

The scheme is run by the Portman group, who are re-sponsible for the creation of the Prove It cards. The group strives to raise awareness about the dangers of drink driving.

Last year in the UK, there were close to 600 drink-driv-ing related deaths – the high-est figure for twelve years. In Norfolk alone ten people are caught drink driving per day.

The “I’ll be DES” program works on an honour system due to the difficultly in deter-mining whether a person is genuinely a designated driver. Pub owners in Norwich have worked hard to develop and implement the plan.

Pub owner Bob Gerrard has been a central figure throughout the campaign. Al-though Gerrard admits there

are some things that need re-fining, he believes the program will show positive results and stresses the importance that both the pubs and the driv-ers contribute to the scheme: “It takes two to tango. Pubs are willing to be responsible, but nothing will happen un-less drivers are willing to be responsible as well.”

The scheme is fronted by The Plough, with other pubs involved including The Fat Cat, The Trafford Arms, Spen-cers, The Murderers/Garden-ers Arms, Kings, The Unthank Arms, The York Tavern, The Adam and Eve, The Lawyer, The Black Horse, The Plaster-ers Arms, The Catherine Wheel and James I.

The scheme is supported by many organisations and individuals including Charles Clarke MP, Dr Ian Gibson MP, Norfolk County Council and Operation Enterprise.

A recent report conducted by Universities UK and the High-er Education Funding Council has revealed that students are continuing to struggle to pay off education debts.

Individual student debt is expected to spiral in Septem-ber 2006 with the introduction of tuition fees, which will start at £3000 per year.

The report was completed earlier this year but was pre-vented from being published around the time of the general election.

The National Union of Stu-dents (NUS) have labelled this a “cover up” and explained that it is hard not to view the results in light of the govern-ment’s tuition fee policy.

The results proved that

students are struggling to pay off debts even before the added £3000 tuition fees are introduced.

The report concluded that 70% of students were struggling to pay back debts. Students from poorer back-grounds, minority groups and mature students featured heavily in this figure. Of these students, three quarters were forced into term-time work, risking their chances of getting a first or upper class degree.

President of the NUS Kat Fletcher said: “The statistics in this report are hard to spin. Three quarters of students working during term time are putting their degree in jeop-ardy.”

The government have ar-gued that their tuition fees will help students from poorer backgrounds but research conducted by the NUS shows that 75% of year ten students

applying to UCAS (Universi-ties and Colleges Admissions Service) in 2003 would change their minds about university at the prospect of getting into £10,000 debt.

With the introduction of tuition fees only nine months away, one cannot help ques-tioning whether the govern-ment have got it right.

Kat Fletcher added: “The government will no doubt de-fend student loans as “good debt” and stress that higher education is an investment.

A loan however is still money owed and with the population currently borrow-ing more and saving less this is extremely worrying.

Research like this proves what NUS and our supporters have been saying all along. We hope that those in power will start to listen and base their policies on evidence rather than ideology.”

The British Santa Association has laid down a new code of conduct that states badly be-haved and scruffy-looking San-tas will be outlawed.

The BSA is concerned by falling standards amongst per-formers and aims to “formal-ise the role of Santa”. Among the issues discussed in a re-cent meeting at Alton Towers were the ideal beard length and stomach size.

James Lovell, from The Ministry of Fun, an entertain-ment production company that is behind the association, said he is concerned that the number of Father Christmas grottos is falling. He sees this new code of conduct as a way of “fighting back”.

Lovell said: “Bookings for grottos are down by about 30% compared to last year and we believe the best way to enjoy seeing Santa in his grot-to is to set standards.”

In Somerset, would-be Santas returned to school to

be trained up for Christmas shows. 20 prospective Santa Clauses studied the history of Father Christmas and reindeer names, attended a costume and make-up workshop and studied trends in Christmas gifts.

The day ended with a graduation ceremony after which the merry Santas were sent out to take on duties at grottos, shopping malls and supermarkets.

In Oxford, the search is on

for the DNA of Father Christ-mas, as a team of scientists is trying to prove whether fami-lies with the rare surname of “Christmas” all descend from a single male ancestor.

DNA analysis company Oxford Ancestors is currently appealing for volunteers to participate in the study and is being assisted in the effort by Henry Christmas, who has spent fifty years researching the origins and history of his own family name.

A ban on hooded tops and baseball caps at the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent was recently supported by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.

The MP stated that hood-ies were part of an “intimidat-ing uniform” and cited the move as part of a nationwide campaign to curb anti-social behaviour and to encour-age respect in communities. Copying this highly disputed action, shops and bars all over the country have similarly banned hoodies and baseball caps worn in what is seen to be a deliberate attempt to cover the face and intimidate others.

Imperial College London have imposed a ban on all clothing that obscures the

face as part of a movement to improve security after the London Bombings of July 7th. The campus-wide ban takes on a more serious political scope as it also bans the wear-ing of the Muslim hijab by all staff and students.

In the wake of heightened security following the terrorist attacks in London, the poli-cies of both government and private bodies are seen as ac-tively reducing risks. However, the question of whether these scape-goated items of cloth-ing are the reason for crime and security problems in the country remains unanswered. The threat of terror and anti-social behaviour must surely run deeper than a hood, cap or religious attire.

The banning of hoodies and scarves could prove to be a dangerous move as prohibi-tion can easily lead to feelings of alienation and anger.

The past month of rioting

across France by its Muslim communities is testament to the dangers of blanket policies that lead to vicious cycles of crime and violence. The French ban on headscarves can be seen as one of a number of government policies which have led to the feelings of animosity from French ethnic minorities.

Not all organisations sup-port the ban in Britain’s shops and bars;; the most notable of which is The Children’s So-ciety. The society has urged children and young people to boycott Bluewater Shopping centre, calling the ban a “bla-tant discrimination based on stereotypes and prejudices.”

In a spirited campaign against recent measures, the first lady of grime Lady Sover-eign has launched a campaign to “Save the Hoodie”;; a web based petition that she will present to 10 Downing Street.

Voicing the opinions of

young people the country over, she said: “If someone commits a crime it’s not about what they are wearing, it’s about the person wearing it. A criminal is a criminal no matter what they wear. Don’t blame the hoodie, a person should be able to wear what they want!”

She added: “How can they sell them in shopping centres and then not let them in wear-ing them?”

Although the hoodie may have become a symbol of “chav culture”, it is easy to see that any self respecting stu-dent on campus is currently wearing drainpipe jeans and a grey zip-up hoodie. Most societies at UEA also uniform their members in respective hoodies.

The hoodie-sporting char-acter is just as likely to be found sipping coffee in the Hive and discussing the Beats as robbing someone.


The phrase “climate change is the greatest challenge we cur-rently face” seems to have be-come the fashionable saying of the moment. Prince Charles has even contributed to the debate by making an impas-sioned plea to US business leaders to take action on the “environmental crisis” threat-ening the world. During his re-cent visit to America, Charles told an audience of 300 peo-ple that “we simply cannot go on as we are” and explained that the US had the chance to use its power and influence for the “greater good of the global community”.

However, America is not the only nation adding to problems of climate change and the Worldwide Fund for Nature has recently criticised Tony Blair for his lack of action on the subject. The WWF claim that the UK has wasted oppor-tunities available through its presidency of the EU and the G8 group of wealthy nations.

Greenpeace recently dumped coal at Downing Street as a protest against the government’s environmental record. Instead of investing in renewable sources of energy, the Prime Minister wants a re-turn to nuclear energy, a move that has sparked protests from several environmental groups.

In Norfolk, however, the environmental front appears optimistic as £20 million has been invested in the building of a bio-fuels plant. British Sugar has been given permis-sion by King’s Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council to build the plant on the site of its Wissington factory.

The bio-fuels plant will process sugar beet and possi-bly grain to produce 55 million tonnes of bio-ethanol a year;; a fuel that can be used in ve-hicles and by industry to help generate electricity.

At UEA a highly successful environment week has been followed by the news that wind power could be in the pipeline for the university. This motion will no doubt cause much con-troversy, especially amongst local residents who see wind

turbines as a blot on the land-scape, as well as organisations such as the National Trust and English Heritage.

Work began on the plans 18 months ago after an original idea to build two turbines on campus near the Colney Lane playing fields was abandoned due to overwhelming opposi-tion from local residents who felt that the turbines would be too near the river.

CRED are now working with a local landowner to as-sess the technical feasibility for two, or possibly three, tur-bines to be built on land about a mile from the UEA build-ings, at an unnamed location that local residents would find more acceptable.

Pro-vice Chancellor for research, Professor Trevor Davies, said: “We have still to complete the consultation process but, if built, the tur-bines will be economically vi-able. Whether or not they are a blot on the landscape is a matter of personal judgement. Personally, I think they look fine in many locations.”

Davies’ response was ech-oed by Environment Officer

Jenny Gellatly: “We have to start using this kind of tech-nology if we are to minimise the effects of climate change, which will have a much more devastating effect on our land-scapes in the long term than wind turbines ever could. I think UEA should definitely switch to wind power. We have to start making these changes now before it is too late.”

The costs, which would amount to two million pounds per turbine, would pay for themselves within a two-year period. Dr Keith Tovey, head of CRED, is also in favour of the turbines being built, especially in light of a recent govern-ment survey which has found that the UK’s wind is better for generating electricity than that of its rivals in Europe.

Dr Tovey said: “The first in-dications are that if we get the turbines and also the biomass CHP, combined with the 33% saving in CO

2 achieved when

we install CHP, and a further 700 tonnes saving following the installation of the adsorp-tion chiller, we will be well on our way towards carbon neu-trality in terms of on-site use.”

The UEA literary festival is re-nowned as an important part of the University’s events cal-endar. On November 25th the award-winning novelist Rose Tremain opened the UEA festi-val with an impressive start at the London Savile Club.

The literary festival goes on tour each year and the Savile club, whose members have included Thomas Hardy and Henry James, was an ideal place to host the event.

Festival organiser Jon Cook said: “Our literary events at UEA are so popular now that we decided to branch out into London too. The Savile Club has been a popular historical venue in the world of litera-ture, and provides the perfect, intimate atmosphere to listen to some of the best writers working today.”

The line up this year in-cludes Sarah Churchwell, a UEA lecturer in American liter-ature, who also writes reviews for The Times Literary Supple-ment and is a regular guest on Newsnight Review.

Professor of Creative Writ-ing at UEA, Patricia Duncker,

will be concluding the series on May 26th by reading from her novels Hallucinating Foucault, The Deadly Space Between and James Miranda Barry. Ex-student Jane Harris, who graduated from UEA, will also be gracing the line up at the Savile Club, reading from her debut novel The Observa-tions.

On March 10th Andrew Motion, an ex Professor of Creative Writing at UEA, will also be joining the festival at the Savile Club. Others who will be taking part include the Booker Prize winner Alan Hollinghurst and Creative Writing tutor Ali Smith.


I’m sure all of you have noticed the ice-rink that has appeared outside the forum, its lovely array of lights (30,000 of them to be precise) making it an improvement on last year. What better way to get into the Christmas spirit than ice-skating in the open-air, Central Park-style. It is open from 10.00am - 9.00pm every day (ex-cept Christmas and Boxing Day) weather per-mitting. It costs £7 for over 18s, but students can skate for £4.75.

For more excitement you can instead take the Everest Challenge, and climb a glacier. Also located at the Forum is a 25ft climbing wall in the shape of a glacier, with four routes to the top. For one session (2 climbs) it costs students only £3.50 and it is open from 4-9pm weekdays and 10am to 9pm at the weekend (and week-days once the school holidays begin). You have until the 30th December to test your nerve and ability - those in the UEA Climbing Society have no excuse!

For something unique, take part in the Magical Ice Trail on the 18th December. It in-volves navigating through the festive streets of Norwich and experiencing larger than life ice

sculptures. These stunning sculptures, carved by artists, will create a magical Christmas nativ-ity trail through the city centre. A map of the route will be available from 1 December.

The St. Benedict Christmas Street Fair on Sunday 4th December is a good way to start getting into the Christmas spirit. Scattered along the street will be stalls, food and drink, activities, and various forms of entertainment, such as St Thomas’s Church Choir. In the Nor-wich Arts Centre there will be live music in the café bar and a craft fair in the auditorium. Wrap up warm and go check it out.

For those of you lucky enough to own cars, or who can travel out of Norwich, try and visit the largest Christmas show in England, the Christmas Spectacular at Thursford. It has a cast of over one hundred professional singers, musicians and dancers and is showing now un-til December 23rd. Shows are at 2.00pm and 7.00pm each day, seven days a week, but pre-booking is essential (call 01328 878477).

You will be pleased to hear that Norwich has its own classic family panto coming to town. Peter Pan, starring Derek Griffiths, Rikki Jay, Richard Gauntlett and Rebecca Sarker, is going to be showing at the Theatre Royal from the 16th December to 15th January. Also, the Maddermarket Theatre is showing The Adven-tures of Alice, an Adaptation of Alice in Won-derland, from the 17th December to the 1st January. Alternatively, why not try something different and see Pinocchio On Ice at the Nor-folk Showground Exhibition & Events Centre. It is running from the 20th Dec to the 3rd Jan.

No Christmas would be complete without a carol concert, and you could not pick a bet-ter venue than the Norwich Cathedral. On the 22nd December the Cathedral’s own choir will be performing a traditional carol concert, start-ing at 7pm. On the 24th December, the Cathe-dral is also holding a Crib Service at 12 noon and Midnight Mass at 11.15pm.

The University has organised some good festive events for its students this year. On the 11th December in the LCR is the Merry Xmas Everybody Tour 2005 featuring, you guessed it, Slade, as well as Mud and T-Rexstasy. Tickets are £18.50 and are on sale now from the UEA

box-office. On the last Tuesday of term, the 13th to be

precise, is the Christmas Party LCR. Even those who generally avoid the LCR should definitely try and make it to this, but be quick because tickets will sell fast!

For those of you still around after the end of term the Waterfront is having a Meltdown Live 23 Xmas special on Tuesday 20th December. It costs £5 to get in and will feature some local tal-ent including the Wonderful Allstars, My Visor, The Asleep and The Marksmen.

If you are tired of all the Christmas festivi-ties already (and who can blame you since it all began in September), there are some great non-Christmassy events happening this month too. The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s show, Completely Hollywood (abridged) will be in town. Having already comically condensed The Bible and Shakespeare’s Complete Works, the company is now exploring the wonderful world of film, and, to quote the advert, man-ages to condense Casablanca, race through Rocky, speed through Star Wars and fast for-ward through Four Weddings. Prices range from £4 to £15 and there are some student offers available. However, this fantastic show is only showing for two days (the 6th and 7th December) so book your tickets now. It is defi-nitely not to be missed!

It is all too easy at Christmas to get wrapped up in our own lives, so it’s nice to see that Norwich is also looking out for the homeless or lonely this holiday season. Businesses in Norfolk are not only worrying about Christmas turnovers and profit-margins, but are joining together to work with Open Christmas, a local organisation which provides a free roof, hot meal, warm welcome and entertainment on Christmas Day for those who need it.

Open Christmas attracts many different people to its two venues in Norwich and Yarmouth, including those who are homeless or on the streets, the elderly living alone, and young people away from home, who often give their time to help. It has become a well established event at St Andrew’s Hall in Norwich, celebrating its 15th anniversary this year. Last year it attracted over 300 people on Christmas Day.

Businesses will help Open Christmas by giving guests a food hamper and presents of new socks, scarves and gloves to those who need them. Norfolk County Services, Archant Norfolk, Virgin Money, Jarrold the Store, Anglia TV, NPS Property Consultants, Kettle Foods, Marsh and the SPP Group are asking their employees to bring in items which will be distributed between the Norwich and Yarmouth venues in the week before Christmas. If you would like to know more about the work please contact Frances Holmes on 01603 455654.

Wednesday December 7 2005

Political correctness is even threatening to attack Christmas carols, as the Christian stories they tell are deemed religiously divisive by certain elements of the powers that be. Indeed, a survey in the Times last year revealed that one in four teachers said their school would not be hold-ing a carol service, as non-religious end of term celebrations were preferred. But what possible amendments will be made? Will the lyrics to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer be altered to al-low children of all faiths to include Rudolph in the celebrations of their religion? Will the school hall ring with: “Then one foggy Ramadan, Allah came to say...”? Or worse yet, with all aspects of religion being gradually removed from carols, will we all be forced to hurl a bucket of water over a group of middle-aged people singing Oh Little Town of Battersea on our doorsteps? (Concrete does not condone throwing water over carol singers. Or Jehovah’s Witnesses.) It could happen. The PC machine seems to know no limits, and will soon turn its evil eye to the singing of carols. Brace yourselves: you may have heard Away in a Manger for the last time.

We have all been there;; the makeshift costume consisting of a few old bed sheets tied together, the tea towel on the head, Tiny Tears aka baby Jesus, We Three Kings banged out on the piano by your ancient music teacher, all captured by your Dad who is standing at the back with the cam-corder. Yes, of course, I am referring to the age-old tradition of the school Nativity play. However, this trusty Christmas production is under threat by the ultimate predator, political correctness. A recent survey found that one in seven primary staff claim there will be no Nativity play staged this year so as not to offend pupils of non-Christian faiths. The alternative is a non-religious end-of-term celebration which quite frankly does not sound nearly as much fun. It seems bizarre that we are now so keen to stress how we live in a multi-faith and cultural society yet then turn round and ignore one of the most important dates in the Christian calendar. Surely it would be more sensible to acknowledge all major religious festivals such as Hanukkah and Diwali so that pupils can broaden their knowledge of the different cultures that surround them.

The future of Christmas lights as we know them is in jeopardy as some councils in England have become possessed by the monster that is political correctness. Several have decided to cut their funding for Christmas light displays because they do not fit with their core values of equality and diversity. Such moves will leave towns looking dull, bare and quite frankly boring. Gone will be the romanticism of walking along a high street illuminated by a twinkling display of snowmen and Christmas trees. Additionally, many Z-list celebrities and stars of panto will be feeling the pinch as there will be no Christmas lights for them to turn on in a town that no one has heard of. Already Luton’s Christmas lights have be re-named ‘Luminos’ so as not to offend the town’s Muslim population, which has provoked condemnation that the council is showing a ‘total lack of respect’ for Christians. It seems hard to imagine that any members of a minority faith would take real offence from the wording used to describe a bunch of wires and light bulbs that combine to light up a collection of delightfully tacky festive symbols. Instead, this pandering to perceived sensitivities of the minority could merely enhance feelings of intolerance.

This one really takes the assorted shortbread biscuit selection. The traditional Christmas tree is even being attacked in the name of political correctness, probably by the same tree-hugging hair-ies who oppose eating turkey. Apparently, killing a tree for decorative purposes is a crime against nature. Hang on lads, maybe there’d be a bit more nature about if you lot weren’t eating all the plants. Fake Christmas trees, whether green and scented or simply made from tinsel, are becom-ing more and more common, as, once again, fashionable political correctness looms large over the traditional festivities we’ve all come to know and love. Would the image of presents beneath a tinsel Christmas tree carry the same poignancy on the front of a Christmas, oops, that should be “season’s greetings” card? Doubtful. And yet, it gets worse: what if they try to ban mistletoe as well? No longer will drunken Christmas parties be graced with the figure of the lonely weirdo with half a rainforest’s worth of mistletoe suspended above his or her head by a plastic tiara. That would be a tragedy worse than losing Santa to sexism. Especially as the Concrete Christmas social is coming soon.

Just when you thought they must have run out of strength and retired to sitting in the dark listen-ing to Jeff Buckley, the under-nourished, cardigan-wearing, moralising weaklings have come up with one last way of making everyone else feel bad. The flipping vegetarians are trying to make us all feel guilty for eating turkey for Christmas dinner. We’ve all heard them. “How can you justify killing a defenceless animal, man,” they whine from behind an apparently ethically produced Marlboro Light. “Yeah man, animals have feelings too,” they mumble, choking down a “really tasty protein substitute”. Fair enough, we could all wait until after 7 o’clock when they’ve gone to bed, but that’s not fair;; Christmas dinner should be eaten whenever one feels so inclined. This new wave of fashionable political correctness is arguably the most worrying, as any of us with a vegetarian in the family are forced to suffer the image of a Quorn loaf or something equally hideous on the Christmas dinner table. In fact, if bird flu gets here before Christmas, we may well be forced to eat some of it. Most worrying of all, think of all the turkey innuendo we’ll lose. Christmas without stuffing a big-breasted bird? Multi-religious-heaven forbid.

With so much controversy surrounding the naming and participation in Christmas traditions surely it will not be long before other festive customs are put under the PC spotlight. Maybe certain organisations will begin to raise objections concerning the man who brings in the Christ-mas goods… Santa. After all, why should it be a man who is responsible for providing the world with gifts while his wife (Mrs Claus) waits at home in the North Pole, her only responsibility being to have a cup of tea waiting for him when he returns from his global time travelling? In a world in which firemen are now fire fighters, air hostesses are now air stewards and chairmen are now chair persons it could be suggested that the term ‘Father Christmas’ should be replaced by ‘Parent Christmas’ or the equally catchy ‘Christmas Person’. Good ole’ Saint Nick would be known as a hermaphrodite figure who fulfils the same role, however he would have to have an alternative catch phrase to ‘ho ho ho’ so as not to anger the feminist lobby. He also may need to assign a designated driver for his sleigh, as he will be indulging in more than a few festive tipples on his travels.

9

Wednesday December 7 200510 11

The beginning of July witnessed some of the biggest and most impressive music con-certs ever staged. Live 8 took place on the 2nd of July and around the world hundreds of thousands of people gathered at pop concerts under the banner of Make Poverty History. Hyde Park played host to some of the biggest names in the entertainment business such as Madonna, Paul McCartney, Coldplay and the reformation of some old favourites like Pink Floyd and Velvet Revolver. The event organiser Sir Bob Geldof wanted to raise aware-ness of the G8 summit, where world leaders gathered to discuss global challenges such as fair trade and the world economy. Additionally Live 8 received criticism recently from record producer Damon Albarn and Jonathan Ross, who both condemned the lack of black artists in the concerts, stating that the concert failed to produce a true representa-tion of a world that was supposed to be united in its cause for justice.

Although it occurred in 2004, The Asian Tsunami - which killed up to an estimated 300,000 people - has dominated much of the headlines throughout 2005. As the first anniversary of the tragedy approaches, major reconstruction work is still underway in coastal areas of South Asia and it is believed that this work could take another five years, cost-ing a further nine billion dollars. At this time over 15 billion dollars has been raised worldwide and many trust funds have been set up in hon-our of victims with all proceeds going towards those affected by the disaster. For more information, or to pledge money towards the relief effort, visit www.google.com/tsunami_relief.

People across the globe watched on 24 hour news as the city of New Orleans was descimated by Hurricane Katrina. Although the American Gulf Coast is con-tinually subject to hurricane activity, the brutal nature of this category five storm caught many, including a significant black population in New Orleans, by sur-prise. In the days following the hurricane, many people were stranded in New Orleans as the flood waters made it difficult for emergency services to perform their jobs effectively. This was compounded by the sluggish response by the American political establishment to the crisis. In the wake of the disaster, many both inside and outside the United States blamed the severity of the storm on global warming, as warmer seas add fuel to hurricanes. It must be hoped that this natural disaster is a wake up call for the world.

The conflict in Iraq continues to rage, despite the fact it was supposed to have ended in 2003. Now over 2000 American soldiers have been killed in the fighting, but this pales into insig-nificance when compared to the death toll of Iraqis, currently put at between 35,000 and 100,000. This huge range is due to the fact that coalition forces have not counted the number of enemy combatants and civilians that have died in the fighting. Currently, both George W. Bush and Tony Blair are predicting some troop withdrawals, but both acknowledge that it will be some time before the troops can be with-drawn fully.

Bird flu is another possible threat to the coming year. This time next year we might all be clucking, flapping and squawking our ways into early graves thanks to those pesky winged rodents of the sky. Or at least we might not be able to have turkey for Christmas dinner. Our festive, feathered friends might well prove potentially fatal before the year is out, and if they do, you can bet we’ll all be sick as parrots. Especially because it appears that vaccines for bird flu are in short supply across the country. Good luck to all you chicken eaters out there, as this Christmas turkey could be your last.

The day after the capital celebrated its winning Olympic bid it was plunged into fear and grief, as terrorist suicide bombs exploded across the city’s transport system. Over 50 people were killed and around 700 were injured by the attacks, carried out by British-born Islamic extremists, which were me-ticulously planned and coordinated. Subsequent threats and hoaxes brought panic to all who travelled in city centres, across the country, and brought home the fact that the policy of War in Iraq has lead to a widening of ter-rorism. In the wake of the bombings, the Labour government have made anti-terrorism a cornerstone of their politics, despite breaching individual freedom on many occasions.

In Singapore, a host of British sportsmen and women gathered to support the bid for London to host the games in 2012. A sense of “it’s a bit early to be getting excited yet” swept across the nation as the announcement was made that London had won the Olympics in 2012, beating our old rivals the French who were favourites prior to the voting. Becks hugged Seb Coe, Kelly Holmes leapt about, lots of people interviewed Sir Steve Red-grave, and everyone said they’d definitely get tickets. A truly magnificent achievement for all those who organized the bid, and something to look forward to for everyone else. It’s not the World Cup, but it’s something.

Although this conflict began last year, it continues to rage. At present, estimates of the number of people who have died peak at 200,000 casualties, and these are non-combatants. While many of those killed were murdered by pro-government militias, 10,000 a month now die from preventable causes, such as disease, famine or thirst. The international community has been slow to respond, which is in part the fault of the Iraq War. It seems that some ethnic conflicts are more important than others in the mind of world leaders, as the United Nations has done very little to abate the suffering in Sudan.

The tragic shooting of an innocent Brazilian man suspected of being a suicide bomber by the Metropolitan Police made the headlines across the world. He was shot at Stockwell tube sta-tion in London as the police believed he was an Islamic militant about to blow himself up. In fact, he was an electrician trying to earn a living in the United Kingdom to save up enough to buy a farm in Brazil. Instead, he was shot at point blank range seven times. The incident could yet claim the job of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair.

Contributors to the Centre Spread: Rebecca Hunt, Sian Rees, Priya Shah, Simon Sheridan and Matt Shoesmith


Andy Judson’s cover story ‘Charles Clarke joins the debate with UEA students’ (Issue 183) failed to mention the main reason why the event was such a success: the debate stayed almost com-pletely free of party political ‘point-scoring’ and instead focused on the pressing theo-retical problems facing our democracy in the UK.

These problems com-prised our main (debate-winning) argument against Clarke: that the combined effect of globalisation and global economics, the role of the party whip in parliament, and the mass media’s distort-ing coverage of political news has driven real ideology from politics and created wide-spread voter disillusionment and apathy.

Granted, our argument that the main political parties now clamor over the same ‘center ground’ drew Clarke to defend Labour’s ideology vis-a-vis the other parties, but that was as party-political as it got and in keeping with our determination to have a debate about the broad issues which really matter, rather than a squabble over specific policy.

Still, given the party slant of Andy’s article he could at least have mentioned that Jack was arguing as a mem-ber of the Green Party.

If any readers want to learn more about these issues we strongly recommend researching ‘Democratic Theory’, or better still doing the unit of the same name in PSI.

I feel quite embarrassed for writing an article about an important UEA event, and then giving it far too much political party bias (I swear it was subconsciously done!), especially considering the letter written by Jack Guest in that same issue about why we should stay away from partisan politics. I am of course referring to my article in the last edition of Concrete on the Charles Clarke debate, in which even the most quickest of reads would see a certain amount of bias given towards the Liberal Demo-crats’ involvement in the event. I would like to take this

opportunity to apologise for this, and to make a number of important corrections concerning it.

First of all, I unfairly failed to note that the event was expertly chaired by DebateSoc member Siobhan Moran, whose lack of mention fails to give justice to her important role in proceedings, especially considering the nature of this particular debate.

Secondly, I apologise for the over-emphasis placed on the Lib Dems, as it was unfair, incorrect and took attention away from the Debate Society – who were of course the people who arranged this debate and made everything possible. I also personally apologise to Jack, as consider-ing his earlier letter calling for a halt to party political fight-

ing (as well as his personal involvement with the whole event as President of the De-bate Society) it was unfair to try to take over the issue.

Finally, I’ve also been asked to distance the Lib-eral Democrats and NO2ID groups. The two operate independently and are not connected to each other. That’s not to say they don’t agree with each other, but the two groups are independent.

Anyway, I hope this apol-ogy suffices. I promise I won’t do anything like it again, and I do stand by my article as a whole, as I felt proud to report on such an important event at UEA on behalf of Concrete.

On Thursday 24th November, Union Council met for another of its infrequent meetings, to debate the issues affecting UEA students and the Union. During this meeting, we were to talk about what motions to take to the National Union of Students (NUS). Put forward were three different motions to discuss, which would help to decide what important views we took forward to the NUS, to represent ourselves on the national stage. But the meeting never finished.

Council meetings must end when we are not quorate. What this means is that there are not enough representa-tives present to have a vote, or

in other words less than half, and so there is not a working majority. As a result, two of our motions were missed out, and we were not able to finish an important decision con-cerning the position of Con-crete Editor (more of which you will no doubt hear about in the future). So now we have a paltry single motion to take to the NUS out of a possible four, as the next meeting falls after the deadline for submit-ting motions. Yes, we really will look good in front of the other Unions. So why weren’t there enough people there? Why couldn’t we have these important votes? Had a bout of plague gripped the Council members?

No. There were quite a few

Council members to be found in the bar that night. It was just sheer laziness that meant our Union was stopped from work-ing. It should be noted that thanks to the efforts of Jenni Carter, a petition was created and signed in the space of 12 hours to call a special meeting to discuss these important is-sues, so she has managed to make up for the idleness of others. Jenni was able to find enough Council members who actually care about their Un-ion and constituents, which, based on the evidence, seems to be very few.

It is disgraceful that some-one can put themselves for-ward for Union Council and then not be bothered to go to one single meeting every three

weeks. They don’t even have to talk if they don’t want to, just vote. I’m sure it’s possible just to read a book for a couple of hours while you’re in there. But frankly, to put yourself for-ward as someone who cares about the Union and then not bother means you let down those who you are supposed to represent. Especially as there are a lot of people who would willingly have those positions and actually be involved and care about the Union. Instead, it seems the Council is filled with people more interested in having something good on their CVs than representation. The worst thing is there were a lot of non-Council members present who wished to join in debates about important

issues. They were showing more passion and dedication than any of these so-called representatives, and they are the ones being let down as a result.

I urge you all to check up on who your reps are, and make sure that they are doing their job. Everyone in the Un-ion has a right to be represent-ed, and if your rep isn’t doing their job then it’s quite easy to replace them, as shown in the constitution. I’m hoping that Council members will get the kick they need by having this special meeting, as it’s actually very important these matters are discussed. If they aren’t interested then they shouldn’t be on the Council, because frankly you all deserve better.


Tis the season to be jolly, and we all know what that means. Eating so much that we think we’re going to burst, having a sherry or two with Grandma and then, strangely enough, finding space to eat just a little bit more. There’s

Christmas Eve finger buffets, Boxing Day plat-ters, and of course, lest we forget, the vast expanse of food that is Christmas dinner. In the back of our minds we realise that all these mince pies mean we aren’t going to fit into our summer wardrobes until at least Easter, but it’s hard to care when the festive spirit surrounds us.

The problem is, eating this much is just not good for you. Your heart, your lungs, your skeleton, none of them can cope with the strain that all this fat and sugar puts on them. It might not be so bad if this winter indulgence was a one-off thing, preparing ourselves for hiberna-tion as it were, but face it;; most of us are hardly starving for the rest of the year are we? We all tend to give in, some more than others, to the odd hamburger and fries, chocolate bar or ice-cream sundae, even though we know that it isn’t good for us.

But if this type of food is so bad for our bod-ies, why do we want it? Why do we crave fat so much? The answer seems to be rooted deep in our evolutionary past. Six million years ago, ear-ly man dropped down from the trees and started to live on the savannah. Food was not easy to find here, meat was especially hard to obtain as it often meant tracking your prey for days before engaging in a hunt with an animal more than capable of killing you itself. If you did manage to make a kill then you had to share it with any other carnivore on the plain and if a lion wanted some of your dinner it didn’t do well to argue! Therefore the savannah diet was mainly that old favourite nuts and berries and on the rare occasions meat did arrive it was a treat. Since meat was so hard to get, we had to evolve to be desperate for it, otherwise we wouldn’t have bothered and the human race would have died off long ago from malnutrition.

Meat is one of the few natural sources of glutamate in our diet, a chemical which stimu-lates that craving for more. Monosodium gluta-mate is in, amongst other things, Pringles, meaning that “once you pop, you can’t stop”. The early humans who developed these crav-ings for glutamate hunted more often, ate more meat, survived longer and had more children, becoming our ancestors, passing onto all their descendants an insatiable craving for meat and the saturated fats that come with it. However much you try to kid yourself, even you vegans have to admit it, a chunky rare steak, or a big pile of sizzling bacon is always going to be more tempting than a bowl of nuts and berries.

OK, so it’s natural to crave fat. What’s the problem then? Well, as I mentioned above, it used to be very difficult to get hold of, the hunt often using up more energy for the hunter than he would get back from the meat. Nowadays the only thing you need to wrestle is the super-market trolley to get your daily rations of fat, so we eat more of it and we burn less of it off;; this trend is pushing the scales of the nation over

the limit.But why should we care about being over-

weight? Sure, the image of the “perfect 10” is what you see on the catwalks, but this is the age of the individual;; if you are happy with your

weight does it matter if you are more Dawn French than Kate Moss? Aren’t they both beau-tiful, sexy women in their own right? Well, yes, I agree that they are, and to be honest I know a lot of men who would rather bury themselves in Ms French’s ample bosom than get prodded and poked by the ribs of a supermodel. But the fact of the matter is that being overweight can seriously damage your health.

Obesity is associated with all sorts of health problems. First-ly, your skeleton cannot cope with the extra weight it has to carry around. You get back pain

as your spine compresses, squashing nerves;; the joints of your knees and hips start to dete-riorate from the excessive strain, and the bones painfully grate against each other. This is oste-

oarthritis, the only treatment for which is joint replacement surgery.

Too much fat in the body also means that it builds up in your blood, and gets laid down inside the blood vessels, causing them to fur up. This makes the hole through the middle of them smaller, and so the blood in your body has less space to fit in to. This leads to high blood pressure or hypertension. The arteries can even get blocked completely, which means that blood cannot flow through them at all. If this happens in the blood supply to the arms or legs it can cause gangrene which might lead to amputation, but if it happens in the vessels that supply the heart with blood then the actual muscle of the heart can die, and it can no long-er pump blood around your body. If this hap-pens you will get a heart attack, a major cause of death related to obesity. A similar thing may also happen in the brain causing a stroke, the effects of which may be total paralysis, loss of speech or death.

When you eat carbohydrates, a hormone called insulin is released which tells your body to store sugar for later. Then, in between meals, you can release sugar slowly as you need it. But when you eat too much, insulin is always present in the blood. The receptors that nor-mally pick up the signal from insulin basically get bored of seeing it all the time and start to ignore it. This is type 2 diabetes, an extremely serious condition which can lead to nerve dam-age, impotence, heart disease, kidney disease and blindness.

And then of course there’s cancer. Being overweight causes your body to produce more sex hormones such as testosterone or proges-terone. These make you more susceptible to breast cancer and prostate cancer, and if you are overweight when you are diagnosed, you

are less likely to respond to treatment. Add to that the fact that fatty foods are associated with stomach and colon cancers and the outlook is not good.

Lastly and by no means least come the psy-chological problems that may be due to having a poor body image, or not feeling like you fit in to society’s norms.

Add all those together and you can see that too much fat is bad for your health. Apparently, being seriously overweight can shorten your life by around nine years. At the moment the health problems caused by obesity are costing the NHS 500 million pounds a year, whilst about 30,000 people are dying each year as a direct result of being overweight. The number of peo-ple in this country classified as clinically obese has doubled in the last 20 years, and if current trends continue, predictions are that by 2020 a third of all adults will be obese. The money to pay for all these medical problems we are going to have has to come from somewhere and so you can sort of see why overweight people are being refused certain operations on the NHS.

Obesity is likely to be the scourge of our generation, having been brought up on conven-ience foods and on-line shopping. We need to do something about it now, on a government, but also on a personal level. After all, if we don’t take responsibility for our own health then who else is going to?

Sorry to scare you, by all means enjoy the festive season, and indulge to your heart’s content. After all, it is meant to be a very cold winter and you need to keep warm somehow. But come New Year, it might not be a bad idea to think about starting a healthy eating plan, or sign up for gym membership and actually go occasionally this time! Santa Claus may be coming to town, but he’s no role model.


Rome remains glorious.

Still the swaggering old-

er brother of gentle Flor-

ence and rowdy cousin

of delicate Venice, the

balls of Rome do not

stop clanging against

the thighs of Italy. The

grandeur of my rheto-

ric here is itself, I believe, a symptom of Ro-

man fever. The dust of the forum has choked

my timid English spirit and I have awoken the

Caesar within myself. This is no travel guide,

nor a quaint story about ‘this time when I was

Rome’. No, to dish out such tedious tips and

trivial tales would be an offence. This shall be a

bellowing roar to sing the poetry of the world’s

most epic city.

The coppers and dimes are thrown a thou-

sand times into the tourist-stained waters of

the Trevi Fountain. The Spanish Steps spill

over with empty bottles and ‘last nights on the

town’. The tired trawling of heart-felt art critics

and easyjet weekenders makes the muddled

maze leading up to the Vatican seem a dizzy-

ing convoy of culture soldiers. But this is not

Rome. This has become the ‘Rome experience’,

the pub-quiz pop version, the brochure specta-

cle sold to those who would laugh and poke at

an old bear, stronger than stone but weighed

down by time, trapped in a tourist’s cage. Rome

was the capital of the world and is now the capi-

tal of Berlusconi’s shambled face-lift. Mussolini

too forgot Rome’s history, ploughing through

the ancient forum where Mark Antony once

stood and rallied an angry crowd. Now, the Via

Dei Fori Imperiali cuts crudely through the site

of Roman ancestry, all for a megalomaniac’s

view of the Colosseum. Such pomp has been

the driving force of so much of Rome’s vast ar-

chitecture. Pope-power conjured into existence

the magnificent Basilica of St. Peter. Emperors

built their temples and statues and flooded the

piazzas just for the glorious game of history, in

celebration of their gods.

Now though, the surviving mon-

uments to all these moments

of glory have grown wiser than

their makers. They have be-

come the gods for whom they

were made and frown on the frills that threaten

to diminish them. They will stand, reminding

us of a city founded by the son of Mars, a city

for which enough blood has been shed to flood

the banks of the Tiber, a city that became an

empire, an empire that became the shaper of

the world.

But this Rome, this epic warrior, is becom-

ing a tired whisper that is harder to hear. It is

in the silence of an empty Sistine chapel, but I

can only imagine that it is so. It is impossible

to know, when the frustrated cries of those who

wish its beauty to remain are forced to cry, ‘No

pictures!’ again and again and again. Like the

throb of a headache, minutes with Michelange-

lo are taken away by the pounding of shuffled

feet, reminding each dreamer that they are only

a ticket stub, no pope, no profound player in

the sacred sands of time. The whisper of Rome

is in the heavy breathing of the Pantheon at

night. The old and sighing stone soldier of

the ancient city defies the eroding influence of

man’s foolishness. Open to the elements, it

has stood for thousands of years and will stand

perhaps until all our years have been used up.

The whisper of Rome is in St. Peter’s square,

but it does not echo in time with the banners

waving at mass. It is in the surprise precision of

Bernini’s mathematics, his architecture making

the impossible delightful. It drifts too through

the walkways of St. Peter’s Basilica, in the un-

worldly space beneath the great dome that is

the taunting whisper of the Papacy – who dares

argue with such a God?

Wandering through the grasses of Villa

Borghese, the ‘central park’ of Rome, you can

feel the city’s handsome power. Like the sin-

ewy form of a renaissance sculpture, there

is beauty in the beast that used to rule. It is

found nowadays in the bulging muscles of

the moped-prowlers, the testosterone junkies

that excitably throw their own balls around the

sexy city, high on its formidable charisma. But

the Rome to look for is in the legends that are

etched into the oldest buildings, when all the

noise and chaos of the day has evaporated. It

is a dusty and magnificent soldier, its tired eye

gazing with a calm but fiery wisdom on the rest

of the world.

Italy was one of the six countries which signed the 1951 Paris Treaty setting Europe off on the

path to integration. It has been staunchly at the heart of Europe ever since, but in recent years

there have been watchful eyes on the influence of right-wing Eurosceptics in the Berlusconi

government.

Population: 57.2 million (UN, 2005)

Capital: Rome

Area: 301,338 sq km (116,346 sq miles)

Major religion: Christianity

Life expectancy: 77 years (men), 83 years (women) (UN)

Monetary unit: 1 Euro = 100 cents

Main exports: Machinery and transport equipment, chemicals, clothes, wine

GNI per capita: US $26,120 (World Bank, 2005)

International dialling code: +39

President: Carlo Azeglio Ciampi

Prime minister: Silvio Berlusconi


Christmas is traditional-ly a time of indulgence, particularly when it comes to food. This ex-travagance is a way of celebrating Christmas as well as supposedly being an attempt to bring opulence to win-

ter when all around you is dreary and lifeless. The food eaten during the festive season has become just as traditional as a nativity scene, decorating a tree and gathering together with family.

We all know the traditional English Christ-mas meal: turkey and stuffing, potatoes, pigs in a blanket and Brussels sprouts (or some vari-ation on that, seeing as no-one actually likes sprouts).

After this comes the Christmas pudding and mince pies, if you have room! According to historians, these two dishes have similar origins. Both were originally meat dishes in me-dieval times. Christmas pudding, or plum pud-ding, was originally made from chopped beef or mutton and onions, whilst mince pies involved minced meat such as liver: both were enriched with dried fruits. Christmas pudding was origi-nally served before the meal, and neither had a particular link with Christmas. As more dried fruits entered the country they were added and gradually the meat was replaced. It wasn’t un-til around the sixteenth or seventeenth century that they became associated with Christmas and even up until the eighteenth century Christ-mas pudding was still being served as a fore-runner to the main meal. Christmas pudding and mince pies, as we know them, only date back to around the nineteenth century.

The pudding itself seems to be more of an accidental Christmas tradition than a symbolic one;; however the preparation of the pudding has acquired some festive significance. Accord-ing to English folklore, Christmas puddings must be made by the last Sunday before the beginning of Advent, “stir up Sunday”, when families gather together to take turns stirring the pudding with a wooden spoon, a reminder of Jesus’ crib, whilst making a wish. Some say the spoon should be stirred from east to west, to honour the journey made by the Three Kings.

Some traditions suggest the pudding should be made using thirteen ingredients to represent Jesus and his twelve disciples, whilst the light-ing of brandy to create a flame on the pudding is said to be symbolic of Christ’s passion.

Different countries have different traditions when it comes to food. In Germany, like many European countries, the main feast is eaten on Christmas Eve, and usually involves goose rather than turkey. Their traditional Christmas

cake is Stollen. Stollen is a rich fruit cake from medieval times containing dried fruits and warming Christmas spices like cinnamon, nut-meg and cloves. This was traditionally eaten at Christmas because the rich ingredients made it an expensive luxury. Cooks would save their best ingredients and use them to celebrate dur-ing the holidays. The cradle shape of the stol-len is thought to be symbolic of the baby Jesus, swathed in his manger. Stollen can be found all over German Christmas markets during the festive season, from Cologne to Munich, along with other festive foods like zimtsterne (cinna-mon stars) and lebkuchen (gingerbread).

In the seventeenth century, gingerbread making was restricted by law to professional bakers in France and Germany. However, these rules were relaxed during the holiday season when anyone could bake it - perhaps explaining why there is such an abundance of gingerbread men and houses (a tradition apparently began by the Grimm Brothers) at this time of year.

No Christmas market is complete without Gluhwein, the German equivalent of mulled

wine, a rich, warm, spiced wine, ideal in the bit-terly cold winters of Germany.

The French Christmas cake is the Buche de Noel, or Yule Log. The origins of this treat are supposed to lie with the Pagan tradition of burning a log on the winter solstice to repre-sent the sun returning amidst the barren win-ter. The French adapted this into a sponge cake which was rolled into a log shape and covered with chocolate buttercream to resemble bark. As with mince pies and Christmas pudding, this version of the yule log did not come into common usage until the nineteenth century… does anyone else get the impression that the people of the nineteenth century had a really sweet tooth?

The main Christmas feast, as well as traditional Christmas cakes, also varies around the world. Ours is eaten on Christmas Day itself, as it is in Australia and South Africa.

But whilst we sit in the freezing cold gorging ourselves on anything that gives us a warm and cosy feeling, the Australians and South Africans are entering into a scorching summer. Because of this the Australians are the envy of many as they eat a barbeque on the beach or they switch our hot meal for a cold version with turkey, ham and salad, perhaps with plum pudding and ice-cream to finish. In some cases a traditional English Christmas dinner is still eaten, as it is in South Africa, quickly followed by a surf to re-lieve that ‘I’m going to explode’ feeling. We just wallow in it.

In many European countries, the Christmas feast takes place on Christmas Eve to mark the evening on which Jesus was born. As a mainly Catholic country, many Italian families fast on Christmas Eve - choosing not to eat meat - so their meal features fish instead. Whilst fast-ing is less common now, it was originally seen as a way of getting closer to God, and since Christmas is such an important religious event, it was particularly important at this time. The Christmas fast has also been seen as a way of showing that Catholics know what is important at Christmas since over indulgence has tended to replace any religious significance. The French see their Christmas feast as a family orientated

event. Only the closest family members join together after midnight mass on Christmas Eve (once the fast has ended) to eat the tradi-tional turkey. In Sweden, families sit down to a Julbord, a lavish smorgasbord of fish, ham, potatoes, cabbage and meatballs.

Since Christmas has become as much about the arrival of Father Christmas, or Sinter Klaus, or Santa Claus, or even the Hus Tomte (House Gnome) as it is about celebrating the birth of Jesus, the food and drink left out for your favourite Christmas apparition has be-come a great tradition.

I’m sure we’ve all left a couple of mince pies and a glass of sherry out for Father Christmas at some point (my Father Christmas always man-aged to find the dishwasher to put the glass away. Magic!) and some may even admit to still doing it after a few drinks at the Christmas LCR. A couple of mince pies and a warming drink are thought to send the big man off to the next house with a skip in his step (although by the end of the night it’s probably more of a stag-ger).

In Ireland, they vary the offering slightly by leaving a pint of Guinness for Father Christmas - it does give you strength after all - whilst in New Zealand a cooling pint of beer is offered to help counteract the hot summer tempera-tures. Scandinavian countries choose to leave one of their traditional treats for the Christmas gnome: rice pudding.

Christmas foods are a highly valued part of Christmas, whether they’re eaten as important religious symbols, an excuse to bring the fam-ily together or simply as a celebration of the fun festive season. Maybe this year you won’t roll your eyes quite so exaggeratedly when your mum breaks down because the mince pies have burnt to a crisp – and for goodness sake, help her!

This recipe was donated by my wonderful housemate Adam Burton, who suprised us all when we got home one afternoon to be greeted by warm mince pies and a cup of tea. I suppose it’s cheaper than buying presents for your housemates. Or a good way of sweetening up the neigh-bours before your Christmas party.Ingredients for 20 - 24 pies:Mincemeat (I’ve heard some stories so I will mention it: it’s not the butcher’s kind of minced-meat, remember.)Shortcrust pastry: 350g Plain Flour 75g Butter/Margarine 75g Lard Water Optional: Milk/beaten egg to glaze Icing Sugar to topFirst, make the pastry. Sift the flour into a bowl and rub the butter and lard into it. Add cold water and knead until the mixture has a doughy consistency. Put it in the fridge for 30 minutes.Roll out and use a large cutter for the pie basins and a smaller one for the lids.Grease the baking tray (we bought a 12 pie tray for £1 from a popular budget retailer!) and lay the larger circles into the tin. Fill each with a generous scoop of mincemeat. Put the pastry lids on, using water to stick the pastry together. Pierce each pie and glaze with milk or beaten egg.Bake in the oven (180 - 220oC) until golden. Allow to cool and dust with icing sugar.

- The largest ever Christmas Pudding was made in Lancashire in 1992 and weighed a whopping 7,231 pounds (the weight of about three small cars!)- The biggest mince pie weighed 2,260 pounds, measuring 6.1 metres x 1.5 metres (that’s wider than the height of a double-decker bus!). It was made in Leicestershire in 1932.

Wrapping paper is an essential part of Christmas day. It adds to the excitement of receiving a present and provides extra festive decoration under the

Christmas tree. Friends of the Earth estimate that 8,000 tonnes of wrapping paper will be used this year, which is equivalent to 50,000 trees. Unfortunately, the majority of paper we use to wrap presents isn’t recyclable. This is due to the plastic which is used to coat the pa-per and give it a glossy look.

Few high street shops sell a huge selection of recycled paper, and the more environmental-ly friendly paper available is often more pricey. With time and money being tight around the festive season, hunting down environmentally friendly Christmas wrap just won’t be a priority for a lot of us.

That’s why many people save wrapping pa-per to re-use the following year. Consider trying it yourself;; it will not only clear your environ-mental conscience but save you pennies next year. This will be made easier by avoiding the

use of the all too familiar Sellotape and using removable tape instead, which is like the sticky part of a Post-it note.

There are lots of ideas for alternative wrap-ping paper, which are very ecologically friendly. Re-using paper that you already have is an ex-cellent idea and much of it can be recycled. So, why not entertain yourself this Christmas by making your own wrap? If you’re feeling crea-tive and responsible, get together with a few friends, a bottle of mulled wine and you can all customize your wrap together. Here are a few

ideas to get you started: Newspaper pages, add glitter to give it an unusual edge;; Collages of celebrity faces or other magazine pictures, ide-al for those Heat fans ;; Old pieces of material, from all those fancy dress costumes acquired over the year;; Brown paper bags or parcel pa-per, with coloured stamps on it for some messy fun.

Break away from the corporate mould and have a merry Christmas, knowing that you per-sonally helped the environment, by making your own Christmas wrap.


The place to start making a dif-

ference is at home, so take on

board some of these handy tips

that will save your money and our planet!

The season of giving is here so make sure

you remember the three Rs:

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle!

FOOD:

* Plan your Christmas food shopping:

much surplus food is thrown away. Do

you really need everything you buy?

* Avoid buying products which are over-

packaged.

* Take your own re-usable bag with you to

the supermarket.

* As much as 20% of what is thrown

away could be compostable - have you

got a composter or can someone help

you compost ?

* Try to use returnable or reusable con-

tainers.

* Buy goods in refillable containers e.g.

washing powders etc.

* Avoid disposable goods where they

aren’t necessary e.g. disposable razors.

PAPER:

* Reduce unwanted junk mail - join the

Mailing Preference Service.

Check it out online at http://www.mpson-

line.org.uk

GENERAL:

* Can it be repaired? Think before you

bin!

* Donate rather than dump e.g. through

jumble sales or charity shops.

Few can doubt the seriousness of global warming;; the last three years have been the hottest on record and 10% of Swiss glaciers melted in the summer of 2003. These are just two

of the factors worrying scientists and politi-cians alike. With the impact of climate change becoming increasingly tangible, the UK’s com-

mitment to cut CO2 by 20% by 2010 and pre-

dictions of power outages over the winter, it is hardly surprising that the nuclear debate has resurfaced.

In recent years nuclear energy has supplied up to a quarter of Britain’s energy demand. The problem arises as present stations are coming to the end of their serviceable life and North Sea oil and gas reserves are running short. Un-less nuclear power is renewed and expanded, the energy deficit left by the end of nuclear power will have to be met by other means. Other means could include the presently insuf-ficient renewable energy sources such as wind

and solar, or importing conventional fuels from abroad – probably Russia and Nigeria.

Nuclear power is created by nuclear fission whereby an element such as Uranium-235 is split which releases energy. A key argument in the nuclear debate is the role that it can play in reducing CO

2 emissions. The process of creat-

ing energy by nuclear fission is carbon free but strong and robust opposition to this argument is that the mining of Uranium to fuel the proc-ess produces huge amounts of CO

2. Carbon

dioxide is not the only pollutant resulting from nuclear power;; disposal of radioactive waste that remains dangerous for 250 000 years is a crucial and expensive problem.

Financially a nuclear future is unclear. A leaked memo from the government’s chief scientific adviser suggests a levy on consum-ers utility bills may be required to finance new nuclear plants. Sir Bernard Ingham points out that ministers have already poured billions into renewable sources that are still unreliable and intermittent. Reliable figures for the total elec-tricity that renewable power could supply do not yet exist, so anyone can claim anything and they do. Arguments concerning social, financial and environmental impacts of nuclear swing to and fro with politicians clutching at what the most recent research suggests.

Energy efficiency in the home could be re-alistically improved by installing mini wind tur-bines and small “combined heat and power” boilers, reducing our demand from big fossil fuel power plants by 40% by 2050. It may be too much to hope that the government’s latest energy review is going to be impartial and bal-anced, and include such domestic reductions rather than the feared smokescreen for the pre-empted pro-nuclear decision.


Amount of wrapping paper used in the

UK each year =

Amount of chilled mackerel products

bought by the UK every year =

Amount of spent nuclear fuel shipped

from Japan to Europe for reprocessing

since the 1960s =

Number of UEA students who voted

against the Nestle Boycott (824 voted to

keep it) =

Number of people who sustained injuries

on the lavatory in 1994 =

Number of people per medical consultant

in Sweden (2350 in the UK) =

Number of world cities that have a popu-

lation larger than 1 million =

Number of pubs and clubs in the UK that

have been granted a 24 hour drinking

license =

Number UK MPs that put their name to

a motion to put more pressure on the US

to ratify the nuclear Comprehensive Test

Ban Treaty =

Production Stage

• Normally takes place in countries such as China, Taiwan and South Korea. Such countries generally have less stringent environmental regulations, so emissions standards, where they apply, are much lower than deemed acceptable in the UK.• Most manufactured trees will have travelled thou-sands of kilometres to the UK, leading to further emissions of CO

2.

• Oil is the main ingredient in plastic trees. Use of a finite resource for a non-essential good is condem-mend by many.• Energy from fossil fuels is required to manufacture and transport the manufactured tree• Local economy will not benifit from the production or sale of the fake tree.

• The majority of Christmas trees are grown for 7-10 years and need maintenence over that period• Fertilisers are often used to increase growth rate and to enhance a ‘rich green’ colour. While a portion of the nutrients are taken up by the trees and into the soil, some can be washed via overland flow into watercourses, potentially leading to nutrient loading. • Chemical herbicides are used to keep shrubs down around trees to allow farmers easy access to them for maintenance• Improper use of pesticides can have potential health risks and implications for water quality, aquatic fauna, and wildlife• Christmas trees are grown relatively locally, so theo-retically, transport emissions are lower.• Due to their hardiness, Christmas trees can be grown in regions where few other plants can.

Consumer Use

• The materials used in artificial trees can provide health risks:• PVC is a major constituent of artificial trees and contains Phthalates, which accumulate in body tis-sues and can damage the liver and lungs.• Lead, a cumulative poison, is sometimes used as a stabilizer in PVC.• Artificial trees are reuseable for an average of 10 years.

• Under certain circumstances, real Christmas trees can present problems for consumers.• If allowed to dry out Christmas trees can pose a potential fire hazard - a dry Christmas tree can fully ignite in 15 seconds!• Real trees can be problematic for allergy sufferers.• The smell of a real tree is considered important to many people.

Disposal

• Plastic and metal used in most artificial trees can-not be separated, making the trees unfit for recycling.• This means that fake trees need to be put into land-fill or incinerated, releasing carbon.

• Real trees can be shredded and used as mulch.• If disposed of at a tip which takes garden waste they can biodegrade, but decomposition releases carbon.

Real or artificial? When it comes to choosing a Christmas tree, most people have a definite preference.Many people like the traditional cut trees. Scotch pine, Norway spruce,

Douglas fir and Balsam fir are some of the pop-ular species of Christmas trees.

There are pros and cons for both real and artificial Christmas trees. The argument for us-ing cut trees often points out that Christmas tree farms offer several benefits. They provide oxygen, remove carbon dioxide and other air-borne pollutants, stabilize soils, help to reduce flooding and provide shelter for animals.

If removed with the root ball they can then be planted after the season has finished. But this requires more effort than most are willing to put in.

Tree farming is a temporary land use as the trees are grown to be cut down and when they decompose they release carbon back into the environment.

Most Christmas tree farms use pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, all of which negatively impact the environment, but if you look hard enough it is now possible to get organically grown trees.

Artificial trees are not without their prob-lems either. Probably their major fault is that they are made from plastics and metals, thus using more of finite resources that aren’t read-ily biodegradable. Often it is not possible to separate the plastic from the metal so they are eventually disposed of in landfill, but they will not fully biodegrade and will release harmful gases as the plastics begin to break down.

On a more positive note, using an artificial tree means that you can re-use it each year. If your artificial tree lasts for 10 or so years it will be less expensive than purchasing a real tree every year and will not be reaping the environ-ment of anything for that period. This does not apply to the new phase of optical fibre trees, which not only look tacky but use electricity for a pointless cause!

However, this is not taking into account the process used to make artificial trees which pro-duces emissions of CO

2.

The choice often resides in what factors you deem most important: for example, the period of use, or the emissions in production/growth?

Read the table below to make your decision about what type of tree to buy!


The International Olympic Committee has gone soft on the use of illegal performance enhancing drugs because it does not want “problems” at the Winter Olympics to be held in Turin in February.

Part of the problem, from the IOC’s point of view, is that using performance enhanc-ing drugs is against Italian law, with any athletes who test positive risking police raids and prison sentences. Outside Italy athletes are only stripped of their medals and then punished by their nation-al federations (whatever the sport), which at worst means a two year ban from compet-ing and a fine.

Although no specific rea-son has been given, it is be-lieved that the IOC fears that athletes will either protest or boycott the games because of the threat of criminal ac-tion. This in itself is surpris-ing, as one would assume

that athletes are all clean. Unfortunately the days when only cycling was seen as the “cheaters’ sport” are long gone. Cyclists are still being caught, such as Heras, who within cycling is seen as an equal of Lance Amrstrong in terms of status, but now many other sports are proving to be infected by drug-cheats.

If you’re a Tottenham fan, look away now, as their raging pitbull in midfield, Edgar Dav-ids, has been banned for Nan-drolone use whilst playing for Juventus. Indeed, a few years back there was consterna-tion in Italy when all the urine samples from the Juventus football team went missing on the way to be checked at the lab. I don’t want to be sued for speculating why, so I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

English football has not been exempt, with Abel Xavier recently being caught for ster-oid use. Finally a phenomen until recently only found in cycling has appeared for the first time in football: young men in full health, with clubs having the best medical facili-

ties to boot, dying from heart attacks in their sleep. David Di Tommaso, a 26 year old Frenchman who played for FC Utrecht in Holland, died in his sleep early last week. The club were quick to point out that he “didn’t dope himself”.

Although there is no es-tablished link between doping (which is so hard to detect) and top level athletes dying from heart attacks in their sleep when under 30, its fre-quency is surprising;; in cy-cling at least once a year, often twice. It is alleged that some professional athletes sleep with their heart rate monitors on to wake them up (through an alarm system) if their heart rate gets too low.

It appears to me that the International Olympic Com-mittee seems to trust athletes as honest people, who should therefore be protected from over-keen (now that really is a first) Italian police. The truth is it’s a shame that the coun-try which first started to use steroids in large quantities is now being penalised for doing something about it.

“Football is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans. Rugby, a hooligan’s game played by gentlemen.”

So goes the old adage regarding Britain’s two most popular winter sports. How-ever, in recent weeks I have become less convinced of its credibility. Over the course of a hectic schedule of Autumn internationals, three events have brought into question just how “gentlemanly” rugby players are, and whilst I am by no means seeking to defend the pitiable actions of many footballers, I would like to of-fer a counter balancing argu-ment.

Firstly, on November 10th Welsh Captain Gareth Tho-mas, who also led the Lions in the last two tests against New Zealand, was, along with two previous club mates, found guilty of assault in a French bar. One team mate was also charged with sexual assault. Now compare the relatively sparse coverage of this trial with that received by Chris-tiano Ronaldo when he was surrounded with allegations

of rape. I appreciate that these were serious allegations, but many people immediately condemned the Manchester United winger simply on the basis that he is a footballer and therefore must have done it. The charges have subse-quently been dropped, though this hardly seems to matter to many who have already catalogued the incident in the ‘typical footballers’ file.

Little over a week later, a New Zealand centre executed a quite brutal tackle upon an Irish opponent, lifting him up and letting him drop to the floor on his head. Fortunately no severe injury was caused, though Brian O’Driscoll was not so lucky when he dislo-cated his shoulder as a result of a malicious tackle by New Zealand captain Tana Umaga in the first Lions test earlier this year. Neither All Black player has been punished which, in the case of Umaga, is quite deplorable as video evidence clearly shows him driving O’Driscoll into the ground. There is, I feel, some sort of acceptance that be-cause rugby is such a physical sport - which on the whole is played fairly between teams that respect one another - that events like this will occur. Yet

such disregard for the safety of an opposing player should be unpardonable in a sport supposedly played by gentle-men.

The succession of in-cidents was of course con-cluded with the violent scenes witnessed between England and Samoa, when a highly physical game erupted late on into a mass brawl. Whilst two players were sent off and the whole episode was generally denounced, at least one player (Samoa’s number 7) escaped punishment and it again ap-pears as though the affair is al-most being treated as simply a case of tough men doing what tough men should do.

I have an infinite amount of respect for rugby players, who must control their ag-gression in a highly charged sporting arena, and as a foot-baller, I may be deemed to be protective and empathetic to the plight of those who play with a round ball. Nonethe-less, I think it is necessary to realise that the men with the oval ball can also act in highly reprehensible ways and we should perhaps try to apply more even-handed judge-ments when criticising the lat-est misdemeanour by a pro-fessional sportsman.

If we cast our minds back to August 1999, we find England defeated in a home series by an average New Zealand team and officially (by the ICC’s ranking table) tagged the “worst team in the world”. What has caused such a dra-matic change over just six years?

Many things can be point-ed to;; the emergence of a few better class players (Flintoff, Trescothick, Harmison), Dun-can Fletcher’s arrival as coach and the reality that the only possible direction for the team so awful even Zimbabwe were ranked above them was on-wards and upwards. However, the turn of the millennium saw a fascinating and, in English cricket, unprecedented move: the introduction of central contracts.

A central contract is award-ed to a player, on top of his county contract, who will play, more or less, all of England’s test matches over the com-ing year. The advantages are numerous. It pays the players better than their county con-

tracts (thus, with just 12 avail-able, competition for them is fierce, leading to improved-performances and more mo-tivation for fringe players). It effectively makes the England team the “19th county team”. The team spirit and ‘bubble’ around an England team of familiar players playing con-stantly together has been es-sential to their success. Taking notes, Sven? The contracted players are also looked after by the England team’s excellent physios and other background staff all year round.

However, the most inter-esting aspect of central con-tracts is the power it gives the England management over the player and his participa-tion in his county team. On the spur of the moment, Dun-can Fletcher is entitled to ask, say, Middlesex to rest Andrew Strauss from their next game to keep him fully fit for his Eng-land appearances. Over the course of this Ashes summer Andrew Flintoff played all sev-en test matches for England but only four out of a possible 16 first class matches for his county team Lancashire. It’s a given fact that a fresh player is a better player.

Financial compensation

keeps the counties happy and provides them with extra mo-tivation, with money in cricket scarce, to produce future Eng-land players, aiding the wellbe-ing of the junior game in this country. Win-win, surely? When a contracted player plays for his county, the county will also benefit from having their best players improved still further by the England team’s coach-ing. County teams’ funding is also provided by and directly affected by the England team and their performances.

With the football World Cup fast approaching, imag-ine the benefit to Sven Goran Eriksson and the England team if he had the power to rest Frank Lampard or Wayne Rooney as he saw fit? A hollow Carling Cup final appearance or a chance to stick their weary legs up and prepare to take on the best players in the world? Realistically it will never hap-pen;; English football clubs are far too powerful and hold more influence over their play-ers than cricket counties do theirs. However, it would be an interesting and, arguably, positive experiment. For the benefit of the England football team, surely there’s no harm in Sven asking…

Wednesday December 7 2005 19

Norwich City’s poor form con-tinued in recent weeks as they gained only one point from their last three games.

The club have been strug-gling all season and their last three performances have only worsened their position to-wards the foot of the table. City now lie in 18th place in the Championship and they seem to be looking down rather then

up.After the morale-boosting

win at home to Luton, Wor-thington’s side had four away games ahead of them. First up they travelled down to London to play Millwall. The Canar-ies produced a hard working performance, but never really created any clear-cut oppor-tunities. Millwall are having a nightmare season themselves and are currently at the bot-tom of the table. However, they took the lead in the second half through a Marvin Elliot

strike. City piled forward in the last twenty minutes and were denied a stone cold penalty in the last minute. Huckerby was challenged from behind in the area, but the referee didn’t give it. As many clubs can vouch;; the luck never seems to go your way when you’re struggling.

The following match for City was against Coventry. The match produced a 2-2 thriller and was a contrast to the dull game in midweek against Mill-wall. Coventry surrendered

an early two goal lead. Goals from McSheffrey and Adebola put Coventry 2-0 up within ten minutes. The Canaries had left themselves a mountain to climb. However, just before the break Calum Davenport headed home at the far post to give Norwich a lifeline. With just seven minutes remaining, Peter Fleming completed the come back with a mis-kicked equaliser. City even thought they had the three points but a last minute winner was disallowed. The players had

showed tremendous endeav-our and heart to come back from a two goal deficit.

Norwich then continued their Jekyll and Hyde season with a poor performance away to an extremely competent Derby side. On-loan defender Andrew Davies scored either side of half time to condemn City to their eleventh away defeat of the season. The Ca-naries away form this year has been absolutely dreadful. Safri did hit the bar for Norwich but in all honesty Derby fully de-

served the three points. It seems that just when

the club have turned a corner they produce another terrible display. They certainly need to cut out this inconsistent form if they are to have any hope of climbing the table. I’m an avid fan of Worthington, but he must be running on borrowed time at the moment. City are now only four points off the relegation zone in the Cham-pionship. Let’s just hope that Santa brings a few presents over the Christmas period.

UEA Ladies have maintained their control of the East An-glian Cross Country League (EACCL) with a storming per-formance at RAF Honington in the fourth race of the series.

The course route was less

than ideal, with army training taking place around the run-ners. The sound of gunfire and sight of flares in the sky certainly led to fast times. The team also had to contend with bigger fields, especially in the men’s event.

In the Ladies A-team, club President Jess Trowbridge dodged the bullets to make it three wins in a row with

another superb run. Jemma Thake came home in second to make it another one-two for UEA. Nicola McIvor had a brilliant debut run to make it into the A team by finishing in seventh position.

In the Ladies B team, So-cial Secretary Sian Loveless continued her excellent form from the Great Yarmouth race to finish in tenth. She was

joined in the team by Emily Wildon who finished in 16th and Lisa Sammons who came home in 32nd.

Men’s cross country

Despite having a depleted men’s team there were some fine performances.

Cross Country Team Cap-tain Calum Nicol put the frus-

trations of the Great Yarmouth race behind him to finish in an excellent fourth position, his highest placing of the series. Rob Green once again put in a first-class performance to fin-ish in sixth place.

Johnny Lee, running de-spite a considerable lack of sleep, ran well to cross the line in 14th place. Club Treasurer and mini bus driver extraor-

dinaire Ali McGeoch-Williams put in a solid performance to finish in 28th.

The team are now looking forward to their home fixture which takes place just before the end of term on the 14th December. The races start at 2.30pm at Colney Lane playing fields.

All support for Team UEA will be much appreciated!

UEA men’s badmington 5Nottingham 3

The UEA men’s badminton team recorded yet another victory to extend their 100% winning streak to six games at the expense of close rivals, the University of Nottingham.

This latest win follows an amazing run of form that has seen UEA badminton catapulted into first place with promotion to the first division

looking all but sealed. UEA’s latest victory comes

after demolitions of Not-tingham Trent and Du Mont-fort, Bedford and a walkover against De Montfort Leicester 2nd.

The University of Notting-ham proved to be UEA’s ster-nest challenge to date and the match didn’t start well when UEA’s singles player, Matthew Reay, missed a host of easy shots and lost his first game. Dung Dang, playing his first BUSA match for UEA, restored parity with a scintillating dis-play to demolish their second

singles player. UEA’s doubles partnerships were equally clin-ical as they both won their first games in style and potentially set UEA up for an easy win.

After another win in the doubles for UEA’s strongest pair and, so far this year, un-beaten partnership, of Chris Armstrong and Joe Webb, UEA led 4-1 and a draw was at least ensured. But UEA were not to settle for a draw and they pushed hard for glory.

Ian Jameson and Iain Bayes fought off a barrage of superb attacking badminton from Nottingham but even-

tually met their match in the doubles, losing a frustratingly tense match.

Dung Dang ran his heart out against Nottingham’s first singles player but to no avail and lost his match to set up a nervous finale. Nottingham had reduced the gap to 4-3 and victory was beginning to slip away. It needed some-thing special to ensure that UEA’s hearts were not to break and Matthew Reay produced it with another sublime display to run the legs off his oppo-nent and set up a wonderful 5-3 win.

It was a day of epic propor-tions and UEA now only need a draw in their penultimate

game against Lincoln Univer-sity to take them to the top division.”

UEA men’s 2nds XI football 6De Montfort 0

Due to their late arrival, UEA turned up half changed at De Montfort (Leicester). After thrusting the final items of kit on and stumbling their way down the rather rickety pa-vilion steps they found their pitch which, by all accounts, had just been vacated by a herd of cattle.

Given such inadequate preparation and surface, the team found it difficult to find any coherence early on and it was De Montfort, through their rotund striker, who made

a few early queries of debutant goalkeeper Dan Littleholes.

James Havers was also called upon to make a Moore-esque tackle in his own pen-alty area to deny what would have been a free shot at goal from 8 yards. Then at the other end he was inches away from executing a diving header at the back post.

Equally close to an opener was Nick Gaskell who lashed a pinpoint cross from Paolo Cerroni over the bar, a chance which hinted that the second half could be good for the UEA team.

Nonetheless, UEA could not have predicted just how easy the second period would be. An early hoof forward from back was flicked on by a com-bination of UEA and De Mont-

fort heads and suddenly Jon Richardson found himself free as a bird. The rutted surface was not conducive to a placed finish so Jon seemed to decide simply to lash at the ball and hope for the best – fortunately it paid off and UEA led 1-0.

The second goal highlight-ed the abominable state of the pitch to an even greater extent. An horrific clearance by the opposition goalkeeper fell to Nick Gaskell who scuffed his return shot. The ball seemed to alter its course several times as it trundled through muddy grooves, then bounced off one post, trickled along and finally flopped over the line.

However, after a some-what barren spell anyone would have thought Captain Gaskell had scored a stunner

as he celebrated with unneces-sary vigour. The game was put beyond doubt with a standard Dave Yeomans strike – cutting in from the left he despatched a shot into the far corner of the goal.

Having assisted the pre-vious goal, Richardson made himself a sure fire certainty for Man of the Match by compos-ing himself in the penalty area and half volleying home with his left foot. Although the best goal was yet to come: Chris Gunn and Gaskell combined to shift the ball from left to right and substitute Tom Thornton tucked the ball home for a goal on his BUSA debut.

De Montfort provided some amusement, with cries of, “let’s go down together” and other similarly heartfelt

statements. UEA made certain that they were indeed going down together with Gaskell claiming his second of the game.

This completed a remark-able second half blitz by UEA which, in all honesty, has been on the cards for several weeks and will most likely continue if UEA’s clinical finishing re-mains in tact.

UEA men’s 2nd XI football 3APU 1

UEA followed up this win with a 3-1 home victory over APU. A scorching start brought goals for Thornton and Gaskell, but a second half recovery saw APU claw a goal back. How-ever the victory was sealed when Gaskell converted from a cross at six yards.

P W D L F A Diff Pts1 Northampton 4ths 6 3 2 1 11 8 3 17* 2 East Anglia 2nds 7 5 1 1 18 6 12 163 De Montfort, Bedford 3rds 7 5 1 1 15 5 10 164 De Montfort, Leicester 2nds 7 2 1 4 9 19 -10 75 Leicester 2nds 7 0 1 6 5 14 -9 16 Anglia Polytechnic (APU) 6 1 2 3 9 15 -6 -1* *=walkovers

P W D L F A Diff Pts1 East Anglia 5 4 1 0 21 11 10 16* 2 De Montfort. Leicester 6 4 1 1 35 13 22 133 Nottingham 2nds 6 4 0 2 38 10 28 124 Derby 5 3 1 1 26 14 12 105 Lincoln 4 2 1 1 19 13 6 76 Wolverhampton 6 2 1 3 12 28 -16 77Nottingham Trent 2nds 6 1 3 2 22 26 -4 68De Montfort, Leicester 2nds 5 1 0 4 8 32 -24 0* 9De Montfort, Bedford 7 0 0 7 11 45 -34 0*=walkovers/points deduct


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The Eastern Region Open Style Martial Arts competition kicked off on Sunday 20th No-vember at City College. UEA Tae Kwon Do club’s team of 13 fighters were all prepared to do battle for the honour of UEA and the chance to get their hands on a big shiny tro-phy.

Entering the women’s low-er-grades over 5ft 6 were the tall, blonde Maren Witt and the feisty Hollie Bainbridge who fought their way to the final.

The two were well matched and it was a close finish with Witt first and Bainbridge sec-ond. In the women’s lower-grades under 5ft 6, Gemma Wilks and previous champion Nicola Thomas did the club proud. Thomas’s trademark roundhouse-kick won her third place and fiery Wilks, after re-ducing one opponent to tears, won second, only losing first place over a disputed point.

Phillip Linter in the men’s lower-grades under 5ft 8 was one to watch. Having trained with the Tae Kwon Do club for a mere eight weeks, he faced a considerably more experi-

enced opponent;; and, without losing his cool, kept the scores nail-bitingly close and walked away with a well-deserved sec-ond-place.

The lower-grade 5ft 8 and over men were totally domi-nated by UEA’s Alex Dunn;; now three times champion of the category. Perfectly execut-ing his signature move, the Deadly Head Kick, (scored at three-points a time) Dunn racked up the points to a swift finish.

Jon Clemo, despite being the lowest grade in the catego-ry, fought spiritedly to an im-pressive second place. Mark

Tobin, always a skilful fighter, took his first opponent apart before being unlucky enough to face Dunn, who he vows to bring down in the in-club championship next year.

Kin Tang, renowned at the UEA club for his sparring, took away third place in the under 5ft 8 men’s higher-grades. Rob Cook, Sam Fagence and John Kontoghiorghes valiantly took on the men’s higher-grades 5ft 8 and above catego-ry, and despite walking away empty handed, demonstrated some of the most competitive fighting in the whole competi-tion. Kyle Cunningham, a new

member of the UEA club and black-belted in Kung Fu, bat-tled his way to the final of this category. Using his height and crisp style and despite suffer-ing a nosebleed, which should have led to his opponent’s disqualification, he scored a respectable but taxing second place.

Team “Love Pirate”, featur-ing Witt, Dunn and Cunning-ham, took part in the Team Competition. Blood-streaked Cunningham fought defiantly in the wake of his acclaim in the previous category. Witt, at a considerable disadvantage as the lowest graded member

in this category, fought like a Trojan, using a beautiful head-kick to keep the scores tanta-lisingly close throughout the nerve-racking combat. Dunn, also out-graded by his oppo-nent, won easily, though un-der more pressure than in his prior category.

In total, UEA walked away with ten trophies and Dunn is now in line for Eastern Region Champion. Fagence, Club President, remarked, “We have achieved a significant haul of trophies but aside from that, I feel everyone who fought at the competition really gave something. I am very proud.”

Concrete - Issue 184

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