QMessenger Issue 42

Monday October 10th 2011 Issue 42

Is racism still a problem in British society? Page 7

New Turn debate the use of child soldiers in African warfare. 4

As the medical school looks to save £3 million, it predicts 42 staff will lose their jobs. Page 3

Barts Restructuring

The Newspaper of Queen Mary Students’ Union

ChildrenAt War

In Black and White

It’s 7.45 am. The sun casts a shimmer of light over the colonnades of the Queens’ Building and lingering shadows stretch from its

columns, creeping like grasping fingers towards the early morn-ing traffic. Professor Simon Gaskell, Principal of Queen Mary (QM), walks, unnoticed, up the driveway of the institution, qui-etly surveying his kingdom.

Described by some staff as the “everyman monarch”, Professor Gaskell is a man who “hates com-mittees” and “the term ‘manage-ment’”. He commands definite respect, but in a subtle, almost self-effacing way. He is not what you think of as a university Prin-cipal and it’s believable that he doesn’t see himself that way ei-ther: “I’ve never planned further ahead than just the job above me,” he says, “there’s no right or wrong way of getting to this job, it’s just the way it happens.”

The day starts with emails, Pro-fessor Gaskell has two accounts, his public address: [email protected], managed by his per-sonal assistant, and a private ac-count which receives around 30 emails a day. His assistant filters the emails in theContinued on page 4...

The Rundown

Remembering Cable Street

Barts may lose 42 staff

Olympic fever sees rents soar

QMSU accused of bribery

New fee regime could exclude Muslims

Students protest at Tory conference

Hundreds of activists marched through Tower Hamlets to cel-ebrate the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street. p. 2

A consultation, commissioned after the HEFCE cuts, recom-mends that Barts loses 42 staff members. p. 3

Landlords looking to make money from Olympic tourists are raising rents and shorten-ing leases at the expense of lo-cal students. p. 3

QMSU uses the promise of cash prizes to attract more students to its General Meeting. Howev-er, some students are not im-pressed. p. 3

Increased debt and high in-terest rates could see Muslim students having to choose be-tween education and religion. p. 6

QM students travelled to Man-chester to join with thousands protesting against Govern-ment cuts. p. 6

QMUL Stop the Cuts and trade unions have com-plained that there has been a lack of consultation over proposals to make job cuts at the library.

The TUC Secretary Gen-eral met with members of the government during the Conservative Party Con-ference for talks to try and avoid the strikes planned for the 30th November.

The PLO have ques-tioned Tony Blair’s ef-fectiveness as the Mid-dle East peace envoy, accusing him of look-ing after the interests of Israel more than the Palestinians.

The world’s cheapest tablet computer has been released in In-dia for £23 in an at-tempt to improve the education system there.

30,000 protesters gath-ered outside Tory party conference in Manches-ter last week to pro-test against government cuts. (Page 6)

Marches continued throughout last week as protesters tried to take over Wall Street. Police used batons and tear gas to try and contain the protesters.

QMESSENGER MONDAY OCTOBER 10 2011

News

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2

Queen Mary has made it into the top 150 of the world’s universities in the Times Higher Ed-ucation ranking of the best research-led uni-versities in the world.

A QM professor has joined 400 others in signing a let-ter published in The Tele-graph condeming the gov-ernment’s Health and

Social Care Bill.

The Cloud How you fit into the news.

There are concerns that an armed move-ment could begin in Syr-ia as protesters give up on diplomacy after UN failed to pass a resolu-tion against the Assad regime.

QM scientists have carried out a study that suggest that specific facial characteristics can be applied to certain MPs that identify their party.

Images by:Syria Protest by Syrian Freedom (Flickr)Occupy Wall Street by Paul Stein (Flickr)Busking for War Child by LexnGer (Flickr)

By Kaamil Ahmed

Hundreds of activists marched through Tower Hamlets to cel-ebrate the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street last week.Members of numerous groups, including RMT union, Unison, the Altab Ali Foundation and numerous socialist and com-munist groups, as well as sea-soned anti-Fascism campaign-ers were at the demonstration.

“I think it’s really inspiring that hundreds of Londoners are com-ing together together to mark the 75th anniversary of when tens of thousands of London-ers came together, Socialist, the Jewish community and others to stop the Fascists, Oswald Mos-ley’s Blackshirts from march-ing on our communities,” said Owen Jones. “At a time when the far right are back on the march I think its more important than ever to mark this single good act as a warning from the past.”

“It’s a fantastic event with great unity between all differ-ent communities, all different faiths and none,” said Rania Khan, councillor for Bromley by Bow, “I think this is the real Tower Hamlets.”

“We need to be just as strong as we were 75 years ago, because the tide has slightly turned to Islamophobia and towards Muslims and there’s a lot to learn.”Protesters assembled on Le-man Street, near Aldgate East

East End activists remember Battle of Cable Streetstation, before marching to-wards Cable Street, following the historic route that protest-ers took when they halted Os-wald Mosley’s Blackshirts at-tempt to enter Tower Hamlets

- which had a large Jewish com-munity at the time.Events celebrating the Battle of Cable Street and other an-ti-fascist movements that were based in East London, are run-ning throughout the month at different venues in Tower Hamlets.

Editorial Team:• Executive Editor - Sam [email protected]• Managing Editor - Caz Parra [email protected]• Sub-Editors - Robert Pritchard, Maria Sowter and Lauren [email protected]•News Editors - Rosie Reynolds and Kaamil [email protected]• Comment Editors - Ross Speer and Kashmira [email protected]• Satire Editors - Ben Richardson and Aaron [email protected]• Sports and Societies Editors - Shafi Musaddique, Hollie Carter and Ashley [email protected]• Photography Editors - Keeren Flora and Bethia [email protected]

QMessenger is printed at Mortons of Horncastle Ltd, Media Centre, Morton Way, Horncastle, Lincolnshire, LN9 6JR. Tel: 01507 523 456. Each issue has a print run of 1,000 and costs £445 to print and deliver.

Established in 2008, QMessenger is the free week-ly newspaper of Queen Mary Students’ Union. We are proud of our editorial independence and endeavour to always hold the College, Union and external bodies to account and to provide the best news and analysis to the students of Queen Mary, University of London.

QMessenger is created entirely by students and the publication retains all copyright of design, text, pho-tographs and graphics, along with the individual con-tributor.

Any views expressed in QMessenger ‘Comment’ sec-tion are those of the individual writer and do not nec-essarily reflect those of the paper, the editorial board, Queen Mary Students’ Union or Queen Mary, Univer-sity of London.

@QMessenger

The stunning cartoons ap-pearing in @QMessenger this year make me wish I can draw! Everyone be prepared for a treat come Monday!

I wish everyday was a @QMessenger day!

Huge @QMessenger front-page redesign this week from @MariaSow-ter and I, hope you all like it :)

In this digital age of ours it would be remiss for us not to keep an eagle eye on our on-line presence. So, here are the best messag-es tweeted @QMessenger this week.

You should writing for us.Email any of the above email addresses to sign up to our award winning team and get your career in student me-dia off to a flying start.Alternatively find us on Facebook at /QMessenger.

Kaamil Ahmed

The CEO of War Child spoke at Queen Mary last week about the need to address the problem of child sol-diers being recruit-ed to fight in conflict zones. (Page 14)


News3

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Chris Smith Alex Badrick

Arine Osman

Barts consultation says 42 staff should go

Students pay as Olympic fever sees rents soar

A consultation carried out by Barts School of Medicine and Dentistry (SMD) earlier this year has suggested that 42 jobs should be cut.

The consultation was commissioned following the cuts to higher education, NHS and research funding. The recommendations are expected to save £3 million through infrastructure, admin and space cuts.

Prior to the cuts, SMD enjoyed a budget surplus. However, the consultation predicts that without these cuts, SMD would be in a £4.35 million deficit by 2013/14 and even with the cuts, would still run at a deficit.

Ross Spear, from Stop the Cuts, believes “the long term solution has to hinge around a political solution nationally,” and that “QM absolutely should be playing a bigger role in saving jobs.”

SMD has already run a cost reduction programme that has saved 5% in core institutes and

the Biological Services Unit is now fully funded by research, removing the burden from SMD.

Any further “suggestions made by staff will be considered by the School’s management team at the conclusion of the consultation process.” Students can direct comments and questions to Professor Anthony Warrens.

“The loss of so many staff will naturally be a concern

for students.” commented George Ryan, President of Barts and The London Student Association.

However, the College insists that: “Whatever changes result from the consultation, it is the School’s firm intention that educational standards will not only be maintained, indeed we continue to strive to look for improvements.”

Speer said: “What were these 42 people doing before?

Presumably they weren’t being paid to stand around.”

Remaining staff will be assessed on three tier selection criteria. Failure to satisfy any of the three can lead to staff being deemed redundant.

A previous consultation in the summer said that QMUL should make 26 redundancies from the library.

Conducted from April to June 2011, the review is open for consultation until 26th October.

Landlords looking to make easy money from the influx of Olympic tourists are raising rent prices as well as shorten-ing leases at the expense of lo-cal students.

According to Foxtons es-tate agents in Shoreditch, East London, landlords are now in-creasingly short letting rather than long letting their proper-ties at 5 to 6 times their origi-nal rate.

Agents are warning against this sort of behavior due to the volatility of the housing mar-ket. They instead advise land-lords to secure a tenant for at least 2 years so that they do not suffer the drop in demand for housing in the post-Olympic period.

This deal would initiate fair-er renting prices for students but is not proving popular with landlords and homeowners. Foxtons reports that in the past 30 days their company has re-ceived 73 properties, which will all be rented on the short term.

A Foxtons agent said: “You

can’t give [a student] much ad-vice, it’s going to be expensive prices and the market isn’t go-ing to change any time soon, students are going to have to bite the bullet.”

University of London Hous-ing Services (ULHS) do not be-lieve that the Olympics are the sole reason for the increase in rent, as prices have been grow-ing steadily for the past year.

A spokesperson said: “There is anxiety with some landlords expecting they can cash in [on the Olympics] but it is unlikely that will be the case.”

Many London councils in-cluding Tower Hamlets are looking to crack down on irre-sponsible landlords and home-owners who will be renting their properties at high prices during the Olympics.

People renting out their properties privately for a max-imum of 90 days may have to apply for planning permission or face being charged with a £20,000 fine.

It is debatable whether this proposal will be successful due to the time it will take councils to inform all property owners

of this new law as well as ex-amining each case individu-ally. Rejected planning per-missions can also be appealed which would delay a case for a minimum of 6 months.

None of this is good news for Queen Mary students, who this year faced their toughest challenge yet trying to find fair priced accommodation close to campus. This includes a re-cord number of first years who have not been offered campus accommodation due to an in-crease in demand which the Residential Services have been unable to cope with.

“The Olympics has been the overriding factor in pushing house prices in an area where housing is already is beyond limited capacity,” said third year English and Linguistics student Shafi Musaddique. “With new properties being created in Stratford, I think landlords are looking for young city types to be the next wave into the East End. That means that students will have extra competition.”

Barbara Ashcroft, Housing Services Manager here at QM,

said “Since London was an-nounced as the Olympic host city property prices have in-creased. The knock on effect is that fewer landlords are con-sidering purchasing ‘buy to let’ properties and fewer young professionals will be getting on the property ladder as first time buyers. They will choose to remain in the rental mar-ket, meaning there will be few-er rental properties in circula-tion. Also, we cannot under-estimate the impact of the in-migration of the Olympic con-struction workers, peaking at over 12,000 in January, com-peting with students for af-fordable rentals in the private housing market.”

University of London Hous-ing Services do not provide emergency accommodation as “universities have to balance the books and make money,” which would not be the case if rooms were kept empty.

Students will have to find comfort in the ULHS’s com-ments that “London is big enough to find housing,” even if that means having to com-mute to campus.

QMSU has been accused of bribery for offering students attending the Union Gener-al Meeting on October 10 the chance to win prizes.

Students attending the meet-ing will receive a raffle ticket-upon entry. At the end of the meeting, a prize-draw will take place. QMSU is offering a first prize of £25 cash, with smaller cash prizes and QM merchan-dise for runners up.

“While I’m all for increas-ing engagement,” said Mile End Campaigns Officer Ozzy Amir, “cash prizes sound a little des-perate when other options haven’t yet been exhausted. The union needs to address the en-demic problem of disinterest in a more proactive way rather than simply bribing students to show up to events.”

In a poll of students con-ducted Library Square, 35% said they would like to attend the meeting and 60% said they would attend when told about the chance to win cash priz-es. 65% of respondents did not know that a union meeting was planned.

Concerning the claim the union is bribing students, QMSU President Sophie Rich-ardson said: “I think it’s a shame if people do see it like that, because what we’re try-ing to do is engage with as many different students as possible and encourage as many people as possible to come to the meet-ing and have a say, and active-ly participate in the democratic functions of the union.”

“We’ve got a plan of action,” said Richardson, “we’ll be fly-ering at social events at halls of residence in Mile End, Whi-techapel and Charterhouse Square. We’ve been out on cam-pus flyering, talking to students about the kind of motions on the agenda. Hopefully that will provoke a reaction from them and they’ll come to the meeting and voice that.”

A UGM requires 120 mem-bers to be present to meet quo-rum (the minimum number of people required to conduct business).

Though last year’s UGM was attended by 157 students, previ-ous meetings have often failed to reach quorum. The UGM runs from 7-10pm on October 10 in Arts Two Lecture Theatre.

Union offers students cash prizes for attending meetings

A consultation commissioned by Barts recommends cutting 42 staff in a bid to plug the funding get created by HEFCE cuts. Image courtesy of QMUL Press Office.

...continued from page 1.former, replying or forward-ing the messages not relevant to the Principal. “That cuts out 80 to 90 percent of emails” he explains, “it works well as it doesn’t rely on my modest file-keeping skills. I try and set aside a few hours a week for emails but there isn’t always time. Be-fore I went on vacation I got my inbox down to five messages, now it’s five pages.”

HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS

Dean Curtis, Chief Administra-tive Officer, strides in for the first meeting of the day. They discuss whether QM should join UCLPartners, one of the UK’s five accredited academic health science systems. A part-nership between universities and NHS Trusts, it seeks to convert cutting-edge medi-cal research into treatments. Professor Gaskell says that it makes sense for QM to join, but that there are questions to be asked: “Do we really want to join big, bad UCL next door, will they overwhelm us with their size?” The choice we have, Gaskell explains, is, “be in the partnership and run the risk of people disagreeing with us and being outvoted, or not being in the partnership and definitely not getting what we want.”

College Council, the govern-ing body of QM, will make the decision of whether to join on Tuesday. Professor Gaskell muses, “It’s a major alliance. Does Council really have the authority to say yes or no to this? I’m not certain but I wouldn’t want to challenge it, it would be foolish not to carry them with us.” Gaskell is at-tending the annual dinner for those Councillors not working within Higher Education this evening, a function aimed at bringing them up to speed with developments within HE and QM’s plans for the coming year. Professor Gaskell knows not to waste this opportunity, “I’ll be lobbying them hard,” he ex-plains.

Professor Gaskell sees the re-lationship between himself and Council as a very important one: “If you look at those uni-versities that have gotten into trouble over the last five years, it has always been because there has been a breakdown

of trust between the executive and council, sometimes it’s an outcome rather than a cause, but it’s always intertwined.”

INSTABILITY

The meeting is punctuated at 8.40 am by the first coffee of the day. Gaskell and Curtis con-sider how the changes in Higher Education are impacting QM’s ability to plan ahead. “The gov-ernment, in its infinite wisdom, has introduced huge instability into the sector,” the Principal explains. Previously, QM has been able to predict the number of new students, and the associ-ated income, to within a margin of two percent each year. How-ever, as QM recruits between 30 and 35 percent AAB students, and under the new system insti-tutions can recruit an unlimited number of students with these grades, QM could theoretically see a drop in recruitment up to this number. “We’re model-ling for a number of scenarios,” Gaskell explains, “the worst of which is for a decrease in stu-dents of 20 percent - it’s not go-ing to happen, but the finance committee were taken aback to say the least at the fact we were even modelling for it.”

Different departments in Queen Mary perform at differ-ent standards says Gaskell: “For Law, we demand AAA from ap-plicants, so if we started accept-ing AAB students we could have them queuing out the door. On the other hand, take bio-medi-cal science, the course currently has a lot of AAB students, but they tend to come to us through clearing because they didn’t manage to get into an institu-tion that requires AAA. Under the new system this university could just decide to accept the AAB students and then they would never get to us. Equally, if we take AAB students into law, we’re screwing someone else.”

PUBLIC FACES

Curtis quickly bustles out, him-self a busy man, and Gaskell ushers in Kevin Kumar, his executive officer. Kumar is the Principal’s way of overcoming the “inertia” caused by a blank sheet of paper. “Kevin and I will sit down and I’ll say we need a Principal’s update on dot dot dot and we’ll talk about that, and then Kevin will go and write it in my style and I’ll then edit it

and change it.”“I see my job as making Simon

more productive,” Kumar ex-plains, “I help with these jobs so he can focus on the really key things.” Gaskell concurs, say-ing: “The real danger of this job is that important things can get crowded out.”

Kumar exits the office, his to-do list considerably longer. The time is 9.31 am.

An appointment at Charter-house Square means travel-ling to Barbican. “I find travel-ling provides valuable time for thinking,” Gaskell says. Delayed by the tube, he is running be-hind schedule and jogs from the tube to the campus. He is booked in to give a short speech at the induction for the universi-ty’s new intake of PhD students. He says he is proud of the “rath-er long shelf” of theses in his office representing his former students, and seeks to empha-sise the place of a PhD student at QM. “Your work will con-

tribute hugely to the research status of this university. The job of myself and your adviser is to ensure that your appropri-ately egocentric aim, to get your PhD, is aligned with the broader aims of the research group, the school and the university.”

With the speech over the Prin-cipal rushes back to Mile End. The time is 11.07 am.

FILLING TIME

The Principal is informed that the staff open meeting he had been preparing for in the morn-ing with Kumar is not going to take place today. The date that has been confirmed with staff is November 1. “It’s frustrat-ing,” he says, “there must have been two candidate dates and one was confirmed to me and a different one to staff.” Imme-diately, Kumar is in the office to fill the gaps with other busi-ness. “If a meeting is ever can-celled, I tend to leave it in the

diary,” says Gaskell, “it provides time to sort out other things that there wouldn’t otherwise be time for.”

A respite in the pace of the day allows for smaller tasks like emails. At 11.52 am Wendy Ap-pleby, head of the Academic Secretariat, and George Foden, Corporate Events Manager, ar-rive for a post-mortem of the year’s graduation ceremonies over a lunch of sandwiches.

“It went very well,” Gaskell smiled, “the only things that need thought from the guests’ points of view, I think, are the queuing and the officiousness of the blue coats.” This was con-firmed by a survey sent to all 2,000 students who graduated this summer, with a response rate of 25%, that returned only these two areas as points for concern.

Foden suggests having a QM security presence at the venue during the winter graduations, so that there are people “with

"Because you're on show you can't even be grumpy if you want to"

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News4

Professor Simon Gaskell, Principal of Queen Mary, took up the position in 2009. Prior to this he was Vice-President for Research at the University of Man-chester and has lectured in chemisty at universities in the UK and US. Image by Sam Creighton.

Words by Sam Creighton

QM heads on” to deal with situ-ations on the day. He is also pushing for the venue, Central Hall in Westminster, to give QM the power to send home ush-ers who act in an inappropriate manner. The group discussed the need for better communi-cation in the preparation of fu-ture ceremonies and also how to make sure people stop on stage when receiving their award to allow both for photography and also to respect the ceremony of the event. The meeting wraps up at 12.47 pm.

BIG PLANS

Sally Webster, Deputy Director of Communications, is the first of the two meetings organised to fill the gap left by the aborted staff meeting. She talks the Prin-cipal through the developments in the stakeholder relations pro-ject which aims to increase the levels with which the College disseminates information to in-

terested parties. There is also a lengthy discussion surrounding the preferred use of the comma in the name of the university. There are clear rules around this regarding the publishing of academic work, as the auto-matic citation technology that measures the number of times research by QM academics is referenced, producing the data used to rank institutions on this criteria, picks up a comma as an end to the name of the institu-tion. This means that Queen Mary, Barts and The London, University of London, as well as individual research institutes are all represented separately on the tables, thus bringing the institutions ranking down con-siderably. However, the deci-sion was made that in College marketing, for now at least, the comma is here to stay. The time is 1.34 pm.

Sally Webster is immediately replaced at the desk by Susan Nettle, Head of Alumni Rela-

tions, the second and final en-gagement replacing the staff meeting. Gaskell is being filmed for The One Show later that day on the subject of honorary degrees and Nettle refreshes his memory on the process by which candidates are chosen and the differences between honorary degrees and fellow-ships. “We don’t believe in just picking some celebrity,” Gaskell says, “we’ve never given an hon-orary degree to someone who hasn’t a great intellect.”

They also discuss their “big project”, a new push to increase the amount donated by alumni to the university’s annual fund. This new campaign will involve both a direct mail letter sent to over 70,000 QMUL graduates worldwide as well as a more tar-geted phone bank. Letters ask-ing permission to telephone will be sent to 5,000 individuals who are either regular donors who haven’t given this year, former donors who have not given for an extended period of time, peo-ple who have contacted the Col-lege after graduation to update their contact details, a selection of people who have signed up to receive the alumni newsletter and a small sample of randomly selected alumni who had not in-teracted at all with the College since graduation.

The main target group is those over 50 and Nettle predicts that out of the 5,000 letters, 4,000 will give permission to be con-tacted, 2,000 will actually be contactable and then 300 will actually donate. The drive will take place between November 11 and December 13 and will be carried out by 35 student staff.

ON SHOW

The discussion turns to the three alumni trips planned for the coming year, one to North America, one to the Far East and one to India. These trips are “exhausting” says Gaskell,

“the problem is that I’m away for a couple of weeks and you can’t be uncontactable for a couple of weeks, so you end up doing emails at weird and unusual times and because you’re on show you can’t even be grumpy if you want to. It’s important though, not just for financial reasons, you get important feedback and alumni can be ter-rific assets.”

Gaskell is informed that the camera crew from The One

Show has arrived and he quick-ly exits to get ready. “He’s so nice,” Susan Nettle whispers in his absence, “when you’re shaking hands with 150 differ-ent alumni a day it’s very easy to get frustrated, my job could be so much more difficult if some-one other than Simon was in the post.” Nettle is almost run over by cameras and floodlights as she leaves the room and within minutes the Principal’s office has been transformed into a makeshift television studio. The time is 2.06 pm.

Arthur Smith, of Grumpy Old Men fame, is the interviewer, light-heartedly quizzing Gaskell on the merit of honorary de-grees. The Principal’s shirt is deemed too flamboyant and he quickly changes it to a more tra-ditional white, this is followed by a frantic search for a pair of QM cufflinks.

GLOBAL DEBATES

Take after take sees both Gaskell and Smith regurgitating ques-tions and answers almost verba-tim. They strike an easy rapport, cracking jokes between takes, with Gaskell riposting Smith’s comical jibes and several times leaving the comedian stumped. After over an hour, Smith leaves, with enough footage for a 90 second interview segment. The time is 3.10 pm.

A 20 minute break sees Gaskell back on the computer until representatives from San-tander Universities are ushered into the room. The Principal is joined by Senior Vice-Princi-pal, Phillip Ogden, for what he describes as “a long overdue meeting.” Luis Juste, Direc-tor UK and Portugal for San-tander Universities, explained the rationale behind Santander setting up this philanthropic branch 15 years ago: “We were growing so much, it was about time to give back to society. We looked at defence, health, many things, but we realised that the best thing we could do is invest in the future and to do that we need to invest in education. I don’t know who is going to be the next Prime Minister of the UK, but I do know that he is somewhere sitting in a univer-sity classroom.”

Santander has built a global network of universities, includ-ing 50 UK institutions, help-ing pair them for joint projects and to bankroll innovative

ideas. Last year, the organi-sation poured over £100 mil-lion into the higher education sector around the world. “I’m fascinated by your comments about internationalisation,” says Gaskell, “it’s a particular hobby-horse of mine. I think internationalisation is vital for a successful university. We are currently developing new rela-tionships in China, and Brazil is also high up on our priority list.”

“This sounds like a club we should be in,” says Ogden. Gaskell agrees: “I think this is terrifically exciting and I’m very anxious to take it forward.” With a preliminary agreement struck and another meeting rearranged for next week, San-tander leave. The time is 4.45 pm.

WRAPPING THINGS UP

Only one task now keeps Gaskell in the office, a phone conversa-tion with his last remaining stu-dent. A professor of chemistry, Gaskell has supervised numer-ous PhD students but he gave up teaching when he became a Principal: “It’s not realistic to give a course, it wouldn’t be fair to students. When I became Vice-Principal in Manchester I was initially determined to carry on teaching a few under-grad courses, which I did, but because my schedule was so busy and constantly chang-ing, it wasn’t fair on students to have their lessons changed so far into the year.” However, this last student, doing her PhD part-time while working for GlaxoSmithKline, has Gaskell seeing her through to her theses’ completion. He spends half an hour on the phone before leav-ing to meet the College Council for dinner. The time is 5.15 pm.

“I have evening commitments pretty much every night Mon-day to Thursday, so I get home about half ten to eleven. I usu-ally get Friday and weekend nights off though, although re-cently they have been full too.” Tomorrow he starts at 7.30 am with a breakfast meeting in Borough Market with Richard Trembarth, the new Vice-Prin-cipal for Health, the only mu-tually free time they can find in their busy schedules.

“No two days are ever the same,” says Gaskell, “it’s what I love most about the job.”

"Because you're on show you can't even be grumpy if you want to"

Make sure you attend the student open meetings on 24th and 27th October.

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Professor Simon Gaskell, Principal of Queen Mary, took up the position in 2009. Prior to this he was Vice-President for Research at the University of Man-chester and has lectured in chemisty at universities in the UK and US. Image by Sam Creighton.


News6

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Kaamil Ahmed

Higher tuition fees could stop Muslims going to uni

The new higher tuition fees that will be introduced by universi-ties across the country next year could create a barrier for young Muslims wanting to go into high-er education.

The issue of how to pay for uni-versity fees without building up large debts, and having to pay in-terest, already concerns many in the Muslim community, but the worries have increased since the government announced its new plans for univeristy funding.

Under the new system which will be introduced for students beginning university in the 2012/2013 academic year, fees will be tripled and a new student loans system will be introduced that will mean that students have to pay an interest rate above in-flation.

This has led to some students looking for alternatives to tak-ing out a student loan, which they have to pay interest on, some-thing that is not allowed in Islam.

1st Ethical, a charity that helps Muslims in the United Kingdom deal with the financial and legal

aspects of their religion, has re-cently highlighted the problem and has advised Muslims on what their alternatives are.

“With the devastating decision to introduce such expensive tui-tion fees coupled with rising living costs across the board, the inabil-ity to access thousands of pounds a year will clearly impact the Mus-lim community in a major way,” said Abu Eesa, a Strategic Direc-tor at the charity. “No doubt some will turn to part time courses in-stead and work part time, or in-deed take a few years out and earn enough before they apply again for full time study. The more for-tunate will have to ask family and friends to bear some of the burden with personal loans, but there is no doubt that all students, not just Muslims, will suffer under these new changes in higher education.”

Taufiq Ali, a final year histo-ry student, works part time to pay off his fees instead of taking the student loan, but said that he thinks he would struggle to pay off £9,000 a year.

“At the moment paying for my fees myself means having to be able to raise a little over £400 a month through work. On the

national minimum wage, that means working at least 22 hours per week, leaving around £100 spare for travel and other costs,” said Ali. “I couldn’t begin to im-agine how many hours I would have to work to pay off £9,000, this would mean triple the work and three times less focus on my studies.”

The Federation of Student Is-lamic Societies (FOSIS), which gives support to Muslim students, claimed in a statement in August that the new loan scheme, which includes paying a rate of interest above inflation, will increase edu-cational inequalities.

In the statement FOSIS said: “It is clear this issue mostly affects Muslim students, who as a Brit-ish faith group already have the lowest level of university gradu-ates and the highest levels of un-employment.”

“The government’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills have been in discussions with var-ious parties including The Feder-ation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS), National Union of Stu-dents, 1st Ethical Charitable Trust and Al Qalam Shariah Scholar Panel to explore whether it is pos-

sible to devise an alternative to the new interest bearing loan based scheme.”

“I would probably look into learning a skill or craft through an apprenticeship as it would be too high a price to pay both financially and morally for a £9,000 degree,” said Taufiq Ali. “I would be put off by a £9,000 a year fee regardless of my faith or views on usury, as it may not even be worth it in the end.”

“Unless the Muslim community comes together to set up some in-frastructure or system to help their youth pay for university in a halal manner, I think the issue of stu-dent loans will increasingly just be swept under the carpet and accept-ed as an inconvenient fact of life, more so than it is now.”

According to the National Un-ion of Students (NUS) it is likely to take at least two years for an alter-native system to be set up to cater for Muslim students though there is opposition to the idea from right-wing political organisations.

In 2004 FOSIS made a similar attempt to pressure the govern-ment into introducing an alterna-tive system but the move was una-ble to gather enough moment.

Queen Mary students join protests against coalition cuts

Queen Mary students joined 30,000 anti-cuts activists who travelled to Manchester last week-end to protest at the Conservative Party conference.

The demonstration was organ-ised by the TUC as a rally for “the alternative – jobs, growth, jus-tice” in opposition to the coali-tion’s public sector cuts. Though the mood was generally described as good-natured, campaigners maintained the seriousness of their action.

“A trip to Manchester is the least I can do to fight back against the austerity measures that are hitting our class worldwide,” said Ross Speer, of QMUL Stop the Cuts. “The mood amongst the student block was very much that they were back and just as angry at what is happening as they were last year. People know they can win when they fight together.”

Speer stressed that government cuts were having a direct impact on the Queen Mary community.

“Spending cuts are directly af-fecting us at Queen Mary. One hundred job losses have already been announced, split between Barts and the London and the Queen Mary Library.

“The library is already not fit for requirements, cutting staff from it will reduce the quality of work of the remaining staff (as they will have to do more work for the same amount of pay) so will directly and quite drastically harm library provision for students; which is a service absolutely instrumental to the quality of education.

“Every student at Queen Mary and Barts should be incredibly worried about the future quality of their education, especially at a time when next year students will be asked to pay 3 times more than they do currently.”

Activists at Queen Mary have said that they will bring up the is-sue at the Student Union’s Un-ion General Meeting which will be taking place on Monday 10th October in the Arts Two Lecture Theatre.

Britain’s largest three Trades Unions are planning a co-ordi-nated strike action for November 30th, though it remains to be seen what impact the action will have in the battle to reverse the govern-ment’s cuts.

Max Burman


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Is racism still a problem in British society?

7

Kamilla Baiden Vanessa Meade

Not So Bad Afterall

You (Should) Get What You Pay For

Whenever racism is declared as no longer a problem, I lit-erally laugh my arse off, and then get extremely worried. Racism is not something that can be erased within a few generations. It is not some-thing that can be killed, bur-ied and forgotten about- even though we would all like it to.

Thankfully, we have moved away from the norm of the British Empire. A norm of ex-trovertly racist mindsets, ex-acerbated through the slave trade. Stereotypes were cre-ated, and founded on the one fundamental difference – skin colour. There is nothing bio-logically inherent to say that one race should have domin-ion over another – it was merely created and exercised to allow one race to dominate.

Law in Britain abolished slavery in 1833 – less than 200 years ago. Imagine, in good old, tolerant, multicul-tural Britain had people walk-ing around in chains- based on the colour of their skin.

But, we have moved away from the days of chains. We have become compassionate, tolerant and most important-ly, multicultural. It is now so-cially unacceptable, to be rac-ist, but that does not mean that ignorant people do not exist in Britain. It is unaccept-able to make racial slurs pub-licly, but what about in the pri-vate space of one’s home – or more importantly their mind?

The rise in immigration, the failing economy, the Europe-an Union, has made racism become increasingly linked to a fear. A fear of terrorism, a fear of losing your job to an Eastern European work-er, contributing to a sense xe-nophobia across the country, even more so in certain areas.

Does that make all people who feel this way racist?

The English dictionary de-fines ‘racism’ as “prejudice, discrimination, or antago-nism directed against some-one of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.” People al-ways generate ideas about a person before they even know them – that’s what humans do. You judge a person as soon as you see them – and because a person’s race or gender is the most immediate feature – it is inevitable that you will judge and make assumptions about them based on preconceived ideas.

The event, which sealed the fact that racism still existed in the UK, was the summer riots. Why was it assumed by a large number of people that the ma-jority of the rioters were black or youths? Just because hoods are mainly associated with an ‘urban’ culture does not mean it is necessarily a black only culture. Many people blamed the Afro-Caribbean culture for the causes of the riots. Does that mean you assume the whole of that race and cul-ture to behave like the minor-ity who were looting? I could then apply the same flawed logic to any white male I see with a shaved head – does that mean all white males with shaved heads are racist thugs? Applying the same prejudice logic, based on a flawed set of ignorant beliefs isn’t exact-ly promoting a harmonious, multicultural, tolerant society.

Racism still applies in Brit-ain today, you just have to watch David Starkey’s take on the riots, there was noth-ing different about his views than the views in the British Empire and he was not alone in his views either. Racism is still more alive than ever – just hidden well.

There’s no doubt that racism still exists in British society – only a few weeks ago a Brit-ish man allegedly yelled racist slurs towards the singer Kelis at a Spanish airport. However, if you are to look at the char-acteristics of racism today in comparison to those 40 years ago, it is possible to see how blatant racism has become far less acceptable.

David Starkey’s recent out-burst on the London riots is a perfect embodiment of rac-ism from decades past. The response to Starkey’s News-night appearance, however, was a far more modern one. British society was horrified by his xenophobia.

For the majority of British citizens, racism is not some-thing to be endorsed or asso-ciated with. In 2001 only 2% of the population in the British Isles held self reported preju-dices, 23% claimed to hold a few prejudices and 73% had no self reported prejudices.

In the recent Runnymede Trust Race Debate Prospect’s Editor David Goodheart used these figures to argue a sig-nificant closure of the racial divide in the past years. Al-though self-reported figures are not completely reliable there can be no doubt that Britain is progressing towards a liberal and equal society.

We are by no means cured of racism, but racial prejudice seems to be becoming a char-acteristic of communities de-void of diversity rather than the social norm. In cosmopol-itan London we are immersed in a multitude of races, result-ing in less ignorance and few-er instances of racism.

For John Cleese, however, a rise in multiculturalism has done little to dislodge the pub-

lic of its prejudices. In his con-troversial statement he an-nounced that although Brit-ain may have become less rac-ist our overall cultural values have seen little improvement. And in many ways he is right

– British society has swapped racism for culturalism. In the twenty first century people are more likely to be negative-ly stereotyped for their culture rather than their race.

Although many did not agree with Starkey’s bigotry, his lat-er comments on the dangers of the hip-hop culture struck a chord among the British pub-lic. It is no longer an intoler-ance of skin colour which per-

With fees set to rise to up to £9000 a year, its not just Muslim students who are worried about financing their university career. Taufiq Ali summed it up perfectly – fees that high will put off students regardless of their faith, because in the current economic climate a job isn’t guaranteed at the end of their degree. Debt isn’t an attractive prospect for anyone, but for Muslims it actively contradicts the doctrines of their faith.

Muslim students are often having to take on hours of low level paid work just to afford a degree that will only hopefully get them some high level paid work. Why should they have to work three times harder come September? Studies shouldn’t suffer because of the need to pay for them. If we have to work harder, then so should universities.

A hike in fees should also come with a hike in student services, contact time, library provisions and the quality of academic staff. Whether this will happen remains to be seen, and in the meantime students should be wringing every last drop of employability from their Students’ Union, be that from their student media, clubs or societies. Cuts to HE budgets mean that we will all be getting less for our money, and students for whom that money is hard earned, that will be a bitter pill to swallow.

Racial prejudice is becoming a characteristic of communities de-void of diversity rather than the social norm.

vades the British psyche, more a narrowmindedness to dif-fering cultures. We are judged on the music we listen to, the things we read and even the clothes we wear.

Who can forget the infa-mous “hoodie” debate which branded any shoppers wear-ing hooded tops as criminals or even worse – chavs. This ‘Bluewater debacle’ instantly demonised the young work-ing class, branding their ex-pression of identity as inferi-or. What’s worse, this bias was and still is, actively encour-aged by the mass media.

Racism is no longer the ma-jor problem plaguing British society; there is a new intoler-ance penetrating Britain and all too often it is accepted and supported by the masses.

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Being involved in the student movement tends to skew one’s views. You can end up feeling that university management consists of ghoulish relics of the bourgeoisie, intent on sacking lecturers and then probably kill-ing some kittens. However, af-ter prolonged exposure we can now attest that at Queen Mary at least, we can be sure that even if we don’t always agree with the decisions of the senior executive, they are the kind of people who are willing to listen, to engage and to debate.

The article on the day with the Principal reveals that there are exciting, if maybe uncertain, days ahead for Queen Mary and we should be happy with who we have steering the ship.

The Labour Party Conference in Liverpool last week marked Ed Miliband’s first year as Labour leader.

Many saw the conference as a test for Ed, an opportunity to silence his critics by laying out substantial policy plans, a chance to prove to the party that he deserved the victory over his brother David, and above all, a way of showing the electorate he is a Prime Minister-in-wait-ing and can take Labour forward.

To people, both in and out of the conference, he performed better than anticipated. Cer-tainly, the frank apologies for the mistakes of the Labour gov-ernment and a genuine desire to usher in a new era of responsi-bility went down well.

I spoke to a number of Liv-erpudlians outside the confer-ence: cab drivers, builders and waiters, who all spoke of their disenfranchisement with politi-cians, in particular with the Con-servative-led coalition. Yet they were largely impressed by Ed’s honesty, his strength in dealing with the Murdochs, and his de-

sire to get the economy growing again. They felt that sticking to an economic plan which is very flawed is worse than suggesting a change. Of course, now the ex-act state of the economy is be-coming more apparent.

The Guardian called Ed’s speech “the most radical […] de-livered by a Labour leader for a generation”. Ed attacked the ir-responsibility of bankers and vested interests of the corpo-rate world, rigged markets, en-ergy conglomerates and compa-nies “powerful enough they can get away with anything.” In do-ing so, he hopes to bring about

had come over as shy, and had never really seemed a strong contender for Prime Minister. Now it seems he is beginning to step up to the challenge, despite lacking Blair’s charisma.

Yet for all its strengths, Ed’s speech did not spell out the party’s policies in the way crit-ics, and indeed, many Labour members, would have liked it to. From the whole conference, only a couple of main policies were outlined.

One is a cap on tuition fees at £6,000 per annum to “ease the debt burden on students.” Ed stated that Labour would fund the reduced cap by scrapping the government’s planned cut in corporation tax for financial ser-vices and increasing the interest rate on the loans of the highest-earning graduates. He said La-bour’s intention was to ease the pressure on the squeezed mid-dle, and also generate the idea of the British promise, the con-cept that the next generation should do better than their par-ents. He said the policy was part of his plan to “change the way our country works” and end the

“short-term, fast-buck economy.”Also captivating the confer-

ence and grabbing headlines with their speeches were two students, Rory Weal and Hele-na Dollimore.

Sixteen year old Rory gave a passionate speech attacking the cuts targeting young people, for which he received a standing ovation. He told the conference he first became involved in pol-

Student speakers captivate the annual Labour Party conference

does better than the last”.A-level student Helena Dolli-

more told the conference how she had to teach herself chem-istry because of the cuts to ed-ucation. She said the coalition’s cuts were appalling and were having a devastating impact on children across the country. She went on to accuse the govern-ment of “stealing the future of the next generation”.

Speaking at her first confer-ence, Helena informed dele-gates her college is set to lose £1,000 per student by 2014. Schools, she stated, are making teachers redundant, leading to bigger classes, with around 25 students in an A-level lesson be-ing common.

She said: “Subject choice is being restricted, with less popu-lar but nonetheless crucial sub-jects being cut. Students are be-ing abandoned halfway through their A-level courses. I am 17 and I have to self-teach the sec-ond year of my chemistry A-lev-el because of these cuts”.

Both Rory and Helena’s speeches stood out because they echo the concerns of so many disaffected students around the country at this time.

a “new economy”, ditching the old rules: backing producers against predators, wealth cre-ators against assets strippers, real engineering instead of fi-nancial engineering.

The enthusiasm and passion with which Ed spoke took some by surprise. Before, they said, he

itics after his family home was repossessed when his mother struggled to find work. He said he owed his “entire well-being to the welfare state”, which is be-ing “ruthlessly ripped apart by a vicious right-wing government”.

“I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for that system, that safe-ty net,” Rory said. “So I take this opportunity to plead with the government to reconsider their measures. Their measures for young people, which will di-vide a generation and serious-ly threaten the British promise that Ed Miliband has spoken about, where one generation

Mann Virdee

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CommentQMESSENGER MONDAY OCOTBER 10 20118

Ed Milliband addresses the Labour conference. He performed much more adeptly than his critics thought he would. Image by courtesy of The Labour Party (via Flickr cc)

“The enthusiasm and passion of Ed’s speech took some by surprise.”

Students are be-ing abandoned halfway through their courses.

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A rise in fares for disgusting tubes will eat further into student loansothers had risen up to 74%.

This hit London as a shock in January. Why should we have to pay these high prices when

the services are even worse? Has the Jubilee line ever not had a delay or signal failure? From April 2010 to April 2011, there was only one day in May

Abi Ravindraa

Patrick Ford Mike Brown

where all underground lines ran a good service. And for that we had to pay more of our student loans or wages. Please, Boris Johnson, can you not at least make underground trains a 24 hour service?

Forgetting about the irregular service, delays and signal failures, the underground (more so than the overground) is always packed to the extent that people are in horrible conditions; sweating or on the verge of fainting during peak times. And they have to pay higher off-peak fares. This is alongside the appalling hygiene.

Developed countries like

England and the USA should be capable of maintaining cheap fares for commuters.

Mr. Johnson still has a lot to learn – Japan have an efficient method of public transport, providing clean and regular

UK universities need to foster a culture of giving

The frenzied imperialism of the Daily Mail kicks off as the BBC goes metric

A.C. Grayling’s announcement of the opening of the New College of the Humanities earlier this year caused widespread anger, main-ly from the Left.

But Grayling has the right idea. The American model is what the British system needs. The Ivy League can charge fees of up to $36,000 for tuition alone, with a fully inclusive year at Har-vard costing around $60,000 (£38,000). This compares with around £12,000 for a decent stan-dard of living at a London univer-sity. However, Harvard offers fi-nancial aid to 70%. Every year, stu-dents from families with a com-bined income of around £35,000 are not expected to pay a cent for their education. Queen Mary only offers up to £1,500 a year bursa-ries, and even then only for stu-dents with a maximum combined household income of £42,600. For bright students from across the globe, the US system is a gen-erous offer, considering the pres-tigious reputation, impeccable job prospects and unbeatable fa-cilities.

How is the American system able to support this? It has roots in civic pride: the idea that alum-ni, grateful for what the universi-ty has done for them, will express that appreciation in the form of a financial gift. This system en-courages the university to provide a better experience, and ensures that the money comes rolling in. Endowment funds are big busi-ness – former Wall Street execu-tives are routinely put in charge

and approximately 63 universi-ties stateside had endowments totalling more than $1bn in 2010; Harvard alone had $27.5bn. In contrast, Britain hosts just one billion dollar endowment, Cam-bridge, and only after a gigantic fundraising appeal. Queen Mary had just £36 million in 2006.

One thing to be garnered from these statistics is that Americans are more generous. British stu-dents, mainly, regard university as three drunken years of frantic revision and apologetic talks with the bank’s overdraft manager, with the expectation that a degree will lead to a better job and earn-ings with little effort from either the student or the university. As a result, students look back at their university days with fondness,

the fact that the system uses different words for the same measurement is illogical. There is nothing about the words

“inch” and “foot” to suggest that one is bigger than the other.

Call me a militant metric system user. My blood boils when road signs list speed limits in miles per hour. Why do I have to have a pint at a pub? I’ll take a half litre, please, and you can forget about your yard of ale.

I stand behind the BBC’s

decision to move to the metric system. It’s a sign of progression. It’s not Europhilia or political correctness or whatever you want to call it, it’s removing the shackles of a bygone era. It’s time to move on and switch to a superior system. Can you imagine if we’d never switched from shillings? It might be a big change to come to terms with, but if we don’t start propagating changes like these through our media, what hope do our children have?

Why should we have to pay these high prices when the services are worse?

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“Stacked: it’s the attitude newspapers represent that draws their fame Image by .Michael Scott

9

The American model is just what the bloated British system needs

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The Daily Mail has managed to find its new rage of the month. The paper has started a new crusade against the BBC’s adoption of the far more sensible BCE/CE dating system, whipping up the middle classes into a frenzy just before they dash off to pick their kids up in their gas-guzzling 4x4s. But there’s something scarier going on here.

In their initial article on it, one telling line reveals the Daily Mail’s real reluctance to accept the new dating system:

“Its increasing reliance on metric measurements rather than the imperial system and its occasional reference to expenditure in terms of euros rather than pounds has infuriated many viewers.” What’s disturbing is that the Mail has listed the logical and technically superior metric system as a downside of the BBC’s coverage.

I’d like to make my stance on this clear: nobody should ever be using the imperial system in this day and age. Ever. SI-approved units of measurement are based on unquestionable scientific fact, precise to an unfathomable level of accuracy. They all work in powers of 10, and if anybody said that the length of a road was 1 megametre it wouldn’t be too hard to find out how many metres that is. Imperial, on the other hand, is a relic. 12 inches to a foot makes no sense, and

Students in London often face money issues due to living in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

While many run their loans dry paying for nights out, gym membership, food and accommodation – it is frequently forgotten that a major factor for money shortages is actually the incredible amount of money spent on transport.

Of course we all know there were tremendous rises for the cost of travel, some travel cards increasing by about 18%, while

but laugh at the appalling accom-modation, minimal contact time and long holidays. There’s no in-centive to give back to their uni-versity.

With some fairly ordinary British universities choosing to charge £9,000 this September, and a new age of private universi-ties on the horizon, perhaps grad-uates will put their money where their mouths are and give back to their university, so the next gener-ation of students, whatever their background, will be able to suc-ceed like never before.

services for commuters. Not only that, but if trains are late,

Developed countires should be capable of maintaining cheap fares

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the commuters get their money back, and a receipt to show their work, school or university that they had a valid reason for their lateness. Imagine that in London...

Fares are set to rise again before next year, by over 7%. It seems London is currently in an awkward position of allowing tube drivers to strike, raising their pay and in turn raising our fares, while commuters will have to continue using these services as it is the only feasible mode of transport in the city. It is ridiculous, not only for us students, but for any commuter. We do not deserve this.


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If you’re reading this and it’s before 7pm on Monday the 10th October then this is my last chance to urge you to come to the General Meeting taking place tonight in the ArtsTwo lecture theatre. It’s going to be a fantastic opportunity to have your say on some of things planned for QMSU and some of the proposed changes, including

I’ve been researching the history of QMSU and it’s fascinating how it explains relations between QMSU and BLSA. BLSA became a part of QMSU in 1994; before then, it had its own infrastructure, made up mainly of the BL President and their Student Presidents’ Council, whose responsibility it was to represent students and oversee the running of

QMSU has recently registered as a charity, and the Charity Commission and Companies House require us to adopt Articles of Association to replace our Constitution. The passage of this document through our democratic structures – Student Council, the Broad of Trustees, and Monday’s Union General Meeting (which you should all

People have told me that I write the angriest columns. I think that’s probably right. As I’ve said before, I love my job, but it can also be immensely frustrating. Spending a day with the Principal last week has actually increased my bubbling vat of lingering resentment.

It amazed me how much he was able to get done in a

revamping Student Council and Sabbatical Officer positions, so make sure you come down and cast your vote.Last week saw myself and your Vice Presidents start our ‘talking sessions’ which means we spend an hour a week out on campus asking you questions about a certain topic or on a particular issue. I thoroughly enjoyed the

the Students’ Union. QMSU didn’t have such luxuries, from 1999-2004; it made 5 years loss amounting to £670,000 and was on the brink of bankruptcy. BLSA had gone from being a fully functional student body, supported by the hospital and other sources of income, to being under the threat of closure because of QMSU. QMSU had no money to provide staff support

some misinterpretations have been made. First, no rules have been changed. It came out that the rules had been changed be-cause the event above didn’t go through the normal procedure. The event had to be cancelled, not because of the guests invited, but because there was confusion over who the booking was com-ing from. As soon as it was heard there were external guests the

attend) is being slowed by some surprising clauses. One pair has proved particularly baffling.

The first clause mandates the Trustee Board – five Sabbs, five elected student Trustees, five externals – to override any Student Council decision if it “may not be in the best interests of the Union.” This is tempered by another clause that

day. Decisions were actually taken, he didn’t even have to fill in any forms or anything! It was quite astounding. Sarcastic tone aside, I felt a bit disappointed to see that the College is more dynamic and responsive than the Union. Surely, as students, we should be the innovators, the trendsetters and the mould breakers on this campus?

session last week and talking to some of you brought up further issues that I didn’t previously know about it so I’m really glad that we did it. Thanks to those of you that took the time to talk to me and any of you see me in future weeks please don’t walk away! We want to hear from as many of you as possible of the year.

for students, in fact 50% of staff were made redundant in 2004. In the eyes of BL students, the new structure was a hindrance to the development of our Students’ Union; so you can see why relations may have been tense. At this point, a new QMSU CEO was hired, money was invested from the university and things began to turn around. Since 2004 QMSU has made a surplus

booking was moved to a corpo-rate booking and charged, which obviously our students couldn’t afford. Students aren’t the only ones trying to sneak what should be a corporate or external book-ing in for free. Secondly, external guests and the public can’t be in-vited to student events. They can, as long as the event can be re-garded as safe. A lack of informa-tion can make bookings unsafe,

allows Council to ‘no confidence’ individual Trustees and replace them. If this were to happen, we don’t really know how it would affect our charitable status, or indeed, the liability currently borne by the Trustees. This arrangement may be suitable for a private company but for unions it looks like a constitutional crisis waiting to happen.

Representation has been reaffirmed recently as the buzzword of QMSU. This is right, representation should be at the heart of the Union. However, you need to represent your members for something, towards some sort of goal. Otherwise you find youself stopping people who are actually doing things in order to ask them if they feel

Finally for this week, it was really great to meet some of our Postgraduate Research students at your induction day, check out www.qmsu.org for future QMSU Postgrad events.

T’rah for now,

Sophie

every year, with this money going into the construction of 2 gyms and, more recently, the investment of £1 million into the much needed refurbishment of the Griffin. Four new staff members have been hired over the summer whose job it is to support students in their activities. QMSU and BLSA have come on leaps and bounds and we are all benefitting from it.

if the person making the book-ing isn’t authorised by the SU, if other students or external organ-isations register a complaint, or if there is bad press about any-thing to do with the event or guest.Things are done on a case by case basis and to avoid cancel-lations there needs to be the right assurances that the college won’t be brought into disrepute or the campus made unsafe.’

It has been suggested that the exposure is purely theoretical; that we will be fine because the source document for the Articles was co-produced by the NUS, their solicitors, and Companies House; that it is being adopted by all unions. I’m less convinced. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that widespread practices have led to widespread crises.

represented whule doing it. If you try to over-analyse every single good idea, just to make sure every aspect of it is the right kind of representation, you’re never going to get anything done.

This is kind of a continuation of my last column I suppose, but flogging dead horses seems to be what I’m good at at the moment.

It's going to be a fantastic opportunity to have your say on some of the things planned for QMSU

The new structure was a hindrance, so you can see why relations may have been tense

Students aren't the only ones trying to sneak what should be a corporate booking in for free

It's fine for private companies but for unions it looks like a constitutional crisis waiting to happen

Spending a day with the principal has taught me how our the student body should be run

A couple of weeks ago you may have read that a student booking on campus had to be cancelled after it was found that Tower Hamlets students would be re-fused entry. It was reported that new rules meant that students’ and societies’ bookings would now not be able to include exter-nal guests or the general public in their events on campus. How-ever, having investigated further,

Sophie RichardsonPresident

George RyanBLSA President

Dom BellVP Student Activities

Oscar WilliamsonVP Education & Welfare

Sam CreightonVP Communications

10

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You may have already heard about the Queen Mary Graduate Attributes – through your School induction session, as part of an extra-curricular activity or through last week’s feature on graduate employability in QMessenger. So what are the graduate attributes and why are they important for you?

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Know Your Queen Mary Graduate Attributes - for your Academic, Personal and Career Development

a leading University of London College and member of the 1994 Group of research-intensive Universities, with a well-established reputation for the quality of our research and teaching. We are proud of our diverse and cosmopolitan student population, and our lively campus environment with a vibrant community spirit in the heart of East London. In order to capture these distinctive qualities for our students, our staff and employers, we have produced the Queen Mary Statement of Graduate Attributes – a framework identifying the behaviours, values, skills and knowledge we want all our taught programme students to develop during their time with us. Our Statement identifies 32 attributes – grouped into 7 themes – that will help you prepare yourself for your future employment and enhance your understanding of what employers expect of you. According to the Principal, Professor Simon Gaskell, Queen Mary aims “to produce graduates with both high levels of subject and professional expertise and the capabilities to exploit the distinctive attributes they develop while studying with us. By means of the Graduate Attributes initiative these complementary dimensions will be manifested increasingly in all our graduates.”

To develop our Graduate Attributes Statement, we worked with current

students, academic and professional services staff, recent alumni and top employers to capture the distinctive features of Queen Mary student experience. Employers have called our project ‘inspiring’, ‘very valuable’ and a ‘great initiative.’ Queen Mary is one of the first universities in the UK to launch a Statement of Graduate Attributes – a policy that has been successfully developed in Australian Universities since the mid-1990s, with research indicating that such statements helped foster a culture of teaching excellence.

All Schools, Institutes and Professional Services departments, together with the Queen Mary Students’ Union, are collaborating to embed the Statement of Graduate Attributes into all curricular and extra-curricular programmes. The project is overseen by a Steering Group, chaired by Professor Elizabeth Davenport (Institute of Dentistry) and including the Deans for Taught Programmes, senior staff from Schools and Institutes, the QMSU President and members of the Learning Institute and Careers. Sophie Richardson, QMSU President, said that ‘Queen Mary Students’ Union strongly supports the work being carried out in developing the Graduate Attributes Project. It is a priority for us to ensure that our students have the opportunities to develop both personally and professionally while studying at QMUL. In a time

when the graduate job market is becoming increasingly competitive, it is essential for students to fully understand the skills they have developed throughout their time at QMUL and know how to use them in future employment.’

So how can you ensure that you develop the knowledge, skills, and behaviours that employers value during your time at Queen Mary? Whether you’re studying for an undergraduate or taught postgraduate degree, make sure you identify where in your programme the opportunities for developing graduate attributes occur – and ensure that you engage fully in these learning activities! You can further enhance your progress by recording and reflecting on your progress through your School’s academic advising and personal development systems. Find out more through your School and your School website.

Your opportunities to develop your graduate attributes extend beyond your degree course. Queen Mary offers a wide range of extra-curricular activities to enhance your employability and personal development – whether you get involved in a QMSU society or sports club, serve as a course representative, mentor or ambassador, volunteer through Provide or lead social enterprise projects with Queen Mary SIFE. Sign up for an award or certificate –

such as the Queen Mary Certificate of Student Achievement – that is designed to enhance your ability to reflect on your learning and to help you gain the most from your student experience.

More details and resources on how your degree programme and extra-curricular opportunities can develop your graduate attributes are available on Mind the GAP, our new Graduate Attributes and Employability-focused website for all students – http://mindthegap.qmul.ac.ukYou can be active in your career decision making and preparation for employment from your arrival at Queen Mary – by taking part in your School Careers programme, signing up for College wide activities, such as XING enterprise events, or planning for a summer internship. You can also develop key skills by undertaking paid part-time work, whether on or off campus. Queen Mary Careers can help you to ensure you maximise the opportunities available to you to support your future career throughout your time as a student at Queen Mary.

Look out for further articles on the Queen Mary Graduate Attributes coming soon in QMessenger – and don’t forget to check Mind the GAP for regular updates on developing your graduate attributes and making the most of your student experience!

[email protected]

SatireQMESSENGER MONDAY OCTOBER 10 201112

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Please don’t mistake anything on this page for fact.

Aaron Barber

Read this! . . . . if you can find it

Fancy yourself a cartoonist? Then email Maria D’Amico at [email protected]

A special report into why you can never find the books you need.

As you may well know, the uni-versity libraries’ index number appears on many a prospectus with numbers ranging from one to ten. The number is a weight-ed ratio based on the amount of in demand course books the li-brary has available for borrow-ing on its shelves on any given day. This means if a library has 4 copies of Space Time for Be-ginners on its shelf doing noth-ing it will have a higher ranking than a library that has all four of its copies on loan. As expected, Oxbridge’s libraries have rank-ings nearing 10 whereas Queen Mary scores a measly 4.8. For a university, the higher the rank-ing the easier it is to attract re-nowned doctors and professors. It also helps to bounce the uni-versity higher up the league ta-bles, The Times’s league tables are especially weighed by the li-brary index.

The obvious way to increase this ratio would simply be to buy more books, but books cost money, money that was ear-marked for new book stacking robots and librarians’ redun-dancy pay. A more cunning so-lution would be to make it more difficult for students to take books out the library. Measures such as preventing you from taking out books once your li-brary fines reach £12 (instead of the £15 last year) and reclassify-ing books as non renewable one day loans all help to slide the uni up the table. Oh, and if you’re having trouble finding your books due to the rearranging of the shelves (specifically in the

highly in demand teaching sec-tion), you’re not alone, this is yet another more subtle method to stop you taking books out.

Perhaps a greater reason to stop you reading is a generous government grant issued annu-ally for the most improved uni-versity libraries in the country. Queen Mary received this grant two years ago and spent sixty percent of it on a revolving door designed keep the heat in and reduce the gas bill. The remain-der of the money was spent on two regular doors either side of the revolving door to let the heat back out again.

Still it could be worse – the University of Warwick has closed one of its libraries for what it calls “budget realign-ment” but what its union cites as “an attempt to manipulate league table standings and meet irrelevant government targets at the expense of students studies”.

On questioning Liam Burns, head of the NUS, he said: “It’s really such a shame that librar-ies are seeking to stop books be-ing taken out. It’s kinda what they’re there for.” When asked what he would do about it he said “Ooh, umm... perhaps a march, maybe some people may attend if it happens”. A march against needless and pointless target setting would be a great idea, we could get on the news, the police could beat us and the government could ignore us. Again.

Bon Appetit

Fact of the week

Studies reveal that people who have more birthdays are likely to live longer. Those who have fewer birthdays die younger.

Leif Halverson

Joke of the week

Q: What do you get if you cross David Cameron and Nick Clegg?

A: David Cameron

Michael Hammond

Facebook Status of the week

“One thing about QM are those pathetic small fat bouncers! Hate having a private union bag of utter shit!”

Toby Jeff

Quote of the week

“Study harder at A-level and go to UCL.”

Simon Gaskell, Principal of Queen Mary

At the Conservative Party conference this week, Prime Minister David Cameron an-nounced that he would like to see the national currency changed to “enthusiasm”. He said, “The British public know that we are all in this togeth-er and never fail to show passion. Our economy has been devastated over the 10 years of Labour rule, but despite now not producing any-thing of any val-ue, we British folk have tried our best.” Chancellor George Osborne added, “The pound is, as we all know, performing poorly in the glob-al market. We need a change.”

However the prop-ositions have not been without con-troversy. Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls spoke out in oppo-sition of the plans saying, “Enthusiasm isn’t even a real, tan-gible thing. This is stupid, why did anyone vote for this bunch of utter pricks?! I literally

have no time to deal with this shit.” Fiona Mactaggart, Shad-ow Equality Minister, said she thinks that, “An enthusiasm currency would be a terrible idea. Those individuals who are depressed will be lacking in enthusiasm, thus making

them poor. Their lack of mon-ey will then make them less enthusiastic, and so the cy-

Feeling enthusiastic? Cameron is.cle continues.” When asked if he had anything to add to this, Mr Balls said, “That’s all well and good, but you’re missing the sodding point. I honestly cannot believe that we’re still discussing this. This has to be some kind of fucking joke.”

After waiting on hold for 45 minutes with the IMF, we gave up and asked 70s pop sensation, Leo Say-er, for his opinion on the matter. “Ten years ago, the obvi-ous choice of curren-cy would be the Euro, but in recent years it has been notorious-ly unstable. This could be the real alterna-tive we need.” He add-ed, “I swear to god if that cheque bounc-es, I’ll come over there and chop your rob-bing balls off.” And it seems that the PM agrees with Mr Say-er, “If we really are all members of the Big Society, which we are because I said so,

then we’ll embrace this change and see a brighter economic future for Britain.”

Image by the The Prime Minister’s Office.

GamesQMESSENGER MONDAY OCTOBER 10 2011 13

Sudoku

Shape AlgebraRules: Each of the shapes corresponds to a number. What are those numbers?

[email protected]

Sweaty Brow of the Week

This foxy lady is less than relaxed as she legs it back home before they change their minds. She hasn’t dunnit, but who is she?

Answers for all puzzles, including a freshly moist brow in next week’s QMessenger.

Image by the Zings Info

Last week’s answers:The sweaty brow belonged to Mahmoud Abbas.


Societies

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The hole in the cupboard

Shafi Musaddique

Katrine Knudsen

Lauren Mason quite a few years. You might hate what you see, but it could become your new favourite film. Think of it as a game of Russian Roulette, but of course without quite so much at stake. The film showing this week will be David Lean’s classic 1945 drama Brief Encounter, depicting a woman’s struggle to remain faithful to her husband.

This year, we want to encourage the audience to choose the films we screen, because frankly we’re getting tired of choosing on the committee, and it seems a bit unfair for us to dictate to you every week. So come along, and don’t be shy to tell us what you want to see, or what you thought of the films we’ve shown. We want your opinions, so much so that we’re planning on having a screening this semester where you, our lovely audience, each bring a DVD you want to see in the majesty of the Hitchcock Theatre and we’ll all vote on

New Turn: Are child soldiers the new face of African conflict?

14

Student culture can sometimes force the most hardened of mini Gordon Ramsays to hide under the blanket. Cooking itself is a laboured process, hurried between lectures and thrown together at the expense of taste, cash and time. But the same could be said about any given sport and societies. So the big question is: why does Queen Mary lack the presence of a cooking club?

Societies currently range from the Pakistani Society to the Film Society. Every corner of the globe and genre of entertainment has been covered. But there is no sign of confronting the most common fear of the student: cooking.

With many students opting to pay an extra £200 to eat lunch and dinner at The Curve, it will make bad reading for the food editor.

The advantages of a cooking society would be like any other society. Beginners mingling with experienced cooks to share ideas, and share the common bond that is food. Unlike many of societies, however, a cooking club will bring out the best of Queen Mary as a university – those looking for jobs could utilise projects in a cooking club for a Drapers menu. Residence dinners, usually done during Christmas and end-of-term, could also be student led.

And of course, the next celebrity chef could be hidden at our university. Whether it’s a career in cooking, or bringing together friends in your flat, this

hole in the society list must be filled.

With the cooking society yet to be established, who will take the initiative? Food for thought, anyone?

Every Thursday, a group of eager and not so eager film lovers from departments across the university gather in the Hitchcock Theatre in Arts One to watch something new. A comedy starring people whose faces you just about recognise, but can’t quite place; a decades old B movie that’s as pointless as it is entertaining, or a gore-filled European horror. The line-up changes every week, as films legendary, unknown, or films that have become cult classics are shown to the delight and delectation of all present.

Well, sometimes. Because the point of Film Society is to give you the chance to see something different, something you won’t get the chance to see elsewhere. And then we go to the pub and you tell us what you thought of it. It’s a simple formula, admittedly, but one that’s worked well for

the options. If your film gets the most votes, it’ll be shown – be it The Little Mermaid, Inception, or something you love that no one else has heard of. Truly democracy in action.

As well as flexing your electoral muscles, we want to explore the great cinemas London has to offer and get off campus for a bit. We’re planning trips to screenings at the BFI, as well as visits to smaller independent cinemas around London like the Rio or Prince Charles. If you know of any other film-related events in the city you think would be ideal for a Film Soc visit, please get in touch!

If this sounds like a pretty good deal and you’d like to find out more, join our Facebook group ‘QMUL Film Society’, email us at [email protected] or simply turn up and see us at our screenings, held every Thursday at 6pm in the Hitchcock Theatre, Arts One. We look forward to meeting you!

Queen Mary’s New Turn society hosted its second event of the academic year, and invited both QM students and other ULU students to an interesting speech on the topic: are child soldiers the new face of African conflict?

The atmosphere among the nearly 90 students quickly became serious and at times shocked as Mark Waddington, CEO of War Child, held his presentation on how the nature of conflict in Africa has been changing as there are now 250,000 children worldwide who are associated with armed groups and where 80% of those are younger than 15. Waddington began his speech by challenging preconceptions and breaking down the typical stereotypes around the topic of child soldiers and thus made the audience susceptible to the shocking statistics, which Waddington presented both verbally and through the use of graphs and diagrams. He continued his speech by addressing the important issue of whether child soldiers are

coerced or if they are recruited voluntarily. Building on this, he identified certain push factors such as poverty, discrimination, domestic violence and sexual abuse, which are determining factors; and pull factors like food and money the child soldiers receive when recruited. Waddington traced many of these factors back to the lack of access to education and emphasised the importance

of the work that War Child do in providing children access to education. The last half of the speech was devoted to explaining what needs to be done in order to address such a serious issue, and in order to highlight this topic Waddington argued that not nearly enough funds are invested in this, and that NGOs need to cooperate as War Child is not able to address this issue alone. Waddington

stressed the importance of spreading the word so that the issue of child soldiers receives the attention and support that it needs.

Walking out of the lecture theatre, one was left with a strong feeling that this serious issue must be addressed and a desire to participate in fundraising for War Child, which is a reflection of the convincing arguments presented by Waddington.

Next week on Tuesday 11 Oct 2011, Maajid Nawaz, the former leader of the UK radical Islamist party, will be hosting a speech on Islam and the rise of Al-Qaeda. If this is a topic that interests you then I highly recommend attending, as these New Turn events are well organised, interesting and very relevant to the issues we are dealing with today at a national and international level.

Students at a New Turn event watch Mark Waddington, CEO of War Child, lecturing about child soldiers Image by Robert Pritchard.

Society Spotlight: Film Society


[email protected]

Sport in spotlight: QM Netball TeamEmma Swan

Sport15

QM Netball (QMN) is one of the largest and most thriving clubs within the university with over 60 members, and is the hub of the social scene at Queen Mary. It holds four competitive teams ranging in levels of ability with each team playing matches on Monday evenings and Wednesday afternoons. QMN compete in both BUCS and the ULU leagues and train every Tuesday and Thursday with an ex-England playing coach. It is a great way to keep fit and socialise and for those that either do not make it into the four teams or simply want to play for fun, QM have introduced netball into the Get Active scheme with a Intramural league held at Mile

End Park playing courts. These are held every Thursday at 7pm with training sessions Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings at 6-7 in QMotion Sport Centre.

Sessions are held every Wednesday at 7pm in Drapers where the club gets together,

plays games and socialises. It is a must for any budding netballer to become integrated into the club. QMN are also very involved in charity work and have participated in 10k runs as a club for Alzheimer’s and Help for Heroes along with the naked calendar, raising vast

amounts of money for these great causes. In the last week of term, we are organising a Netball Christmas Sports Ball which invites all sports club members to celebrate Christmas before the end of term. More details of this event will follow soon.

Over a million people were hoping to get tickets to the men’s 100m, which was the most sought after event of London’s 2012 Olympics. Until the IAAF World Athletics Championships this September in Daegu, South Korea, it was almost a given that the fastest man in the world, Usain Bolt, would be on the podium holding the gold medal. However, in the Daegu 100m final Bolt false-started, resulting in instant disqualification (a rule surrounded by controversy). This opened the way for a relatively new face on the sprinting scene, Bolt’s training partner Yohan Blake, who took gold with a time of 9.92s.

Although clearly an excellent performance from the twenty one year old and the youngest ever 100m world champion, it is still way off Bolt’s 9.58s world record. Many said that had Bolt not been disqualified, he would have retained his title. These sentiments were only strengthened with his 200m success the following week. However, in light of recent events at a meet in Brussels, Bolt’s dominance in the field of sprinting no longer seems so sure. After wowing the crowd with a season’s best of 9.76s in the 100m, Bolt was upstaged by Blake’s astonishing performance

in the 200m (19.26s). Blake’s sprint puts him right behind Bolt with the second fastest time ever in the event.

In interviews that followed, Bolt was highly congratulatory of his training partner and explained that he’d given him some advice on running the bend section of the race. Evidently, Blake gave this advice some serious consideration and it would now seem that Bolt is going to have some real competition next summer in not only the 100m but the 200m as well.

Sprinting’s past has been a murky one, with numerous athletes using various banned substances to improve their

performance. Some sceptics have already accused Blake of succumbing to the lure of performance enhancing drugs. Not long ago, ill-informed commentators were suggesting that the main man of sprinting himself (Bolt) was doping. It is true that in 2009 Blake was accused of being involved in a doping scandal, but was quickly cleared as it turned out the substance discovered was not on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned list. So let’s let the figures speak for themselves. Anyone can glance at Blake’s track record and see that, despite a few dips in performance due to injury, this man has been a long time

coming.N e v e r t h e l e s s , L o n d o n ’ s

Olympic sprints will be about more than Bolt and Blake. With fellow Jamaican Asafa Powell, and America’s finest, Tyson Gay, hopefully back in the game for 2012 (both were out injured this summer), as well as Christophe Lemaitre (France) and Walter Dix (USA) in the 200m, there will be fierce competition in both the 100m and 200m. Perhaps their combined threat will prove to be the spark that pushes Bolt to make history yet again. But it is undoubtedly the case that Blake’s recent performance has created an even greater buzz around what will surely be two key events of 2012.

Yohan Blake: The Pupil challenges the Master

The Rugby World Cup has been underway for nearly a month now, and this weekend sees three of the home nations taking part in the quarter finals. But can any of them go on to win it?

As a Welshman, I would love nothing more than our run to victory to begin with a win over Ireland in Wellington on Saturday. Our relentless battering of Fiji last weekend showed that we are arguably the most prepared we have ever been for a World Cup. As a realist, however, I think our chances are extremely slim when we come up against someone far stronger such as Australia or New Zealand. Even without the majestic Dan Carter, New Zealand pose a huge threat to even the most aggressive of defences. Almost everybody expects them to breeze through the notoriously tricky Argentina side they face on Sunday, but rugby fans will be watering at the mouth at the prospect of seeing the All Blacks take on one of their Tri Nations competitors in the semi final.

And what about France? The free-flowing rugby and daring passes of the likes of Vincent Clerc and Dimitri Yachvili are usually enough to undo most defences, yet their shock upset at the hands of a physical Tongan side last Saturday will lead many to believe that they are simply not consistent enough to put up a serious challenge. They’ll be boosted by the fact that their opposition have come under so much scrutiny from the press this week. Jeremy Guscott slammed them saying “Martin Johnson’s got a few kids that aren’t acting as though they’re playing for England, or at a World Cup”, and such significant criticism cannot be helping their preparations.

This weekend is set to serve up some mouth-watering rugby. England will be more determined than ever to overcome their critics, and it would take a brave man to bet against Jonny Wilkinson leading his men to victory against France. As for the overall winners, it could be one of about three or four teams, but if pushed I would have to say New Zealand. Their sheer physicality and intensity is just too much for any of the other sides left in the competition. Not even Wales can match that…

Ruby World Cup Round-up

Muireann McCannAshley Sweetman

Sprinter Yohan Blake is in strong form in the run up to to the 2012 games. Image by Andre Zehetbauer (via Flickr cc).

QM Netball, one of the largest, and loudest, clubs at QM. Image by Grace Hunt.


Sport

[email protected]

16

with a football, throw a rugby ball around, play some tennis or hire out the squash court at QMotion. If you didn’t make the team this time around, then there is nothing stopping you heading back to those teams during the Refreshers Fair after Christmas to show how you have improved and are now more determined than ever to get involved.

Good luck to all QM sports teams in their first fixtures of the season, and let’s hope it is as successful as the last!

Sean Mahoney

Ashley Sweetman

During this period at the beginning of term, it is always tough to think about what to write. There are only so many times that I can tell everyone to “get involved in as much as you can” or “at least try something out - you’ll never know if you like it otherwise!” Everybody is slowly settling down into their routines, getting used to their timetables and realising just how much

commitment. Get Active has had a lot of publicity lately, but this really is because the scheme offers so much, even to those already involved in more competitive activities.

As for those sports teams who have picked their players, the next couple of weeks provides a great opportunity for preparation, be that through social events or team training. James Mountain and Toby Emmerson are visibly working as hard as possible to ensure that QM reach the next

level in sport participation, and it is up to captains, treasurers and even new members to ensure that their hard work pays off.

If none of these options are for you, then why not get a few of your course mates together and organise something yourself? Most departments would love it if you and your friends set up inter-department games or staff vs. students fixtures, so why not try it out? Go to the park and have a kick around

As soon as the 2010/11 season finished, 5ths captain Ashley Sweetman moved to make his first major signing of the summer – to make the loan deal of 4ths keeper Sean Mahoney a permanent one after single handedly keeping the 5ths from relegation with a string of impressive performances towards the end of last season. The deal was seen as a real coup for the 5ths and vice captain Sam Lowe spoke of his sheer delight that Mahoney had agreed to drop down, especially amidst strong interest from the 1sts and even Leyton Orient. “It’s brilliant, for the club and for me personally, he’s a model professional and for me to play alongside someone of his calibre would be very special to me”, said the lightweight midfielder. Mahoney had this to say: “I personally don’t see it as a drop down, its more like a homecoming for me”. Manojee Thadani, Adam McDaid, Oliver Westlake, Mitch Ingram and Jack Gibbs also follow Mahoney from the fourths but despite a deadline day deal falling

through for defender Max Thompson, 5ths skipper Ash Sweetman remains in a buoyant mood ahead of their opening game against Goldsmiths next week. “I am very confident”, he said. “We have managed to sign some very good players from trials but we did have to settle with Olly Westlake at full back. Plus we have kept the

nucleus from last season and I think Mitch Ingram can step up if called upon. I really do think we can win this league – despite narrowly avoiding relegation last year”. When questioned on whether or not Sam Lowe will feature in his plans for this season, Sweetman refused to comment. QM veteran Adam “Drapers” McDaid hopes he

can break his personal record of three goals in one season. The Darlo born striker thinks he can fire the 5ths to glory this season, saying, “This is my 5th or 6th season playing for QM and I think this is the best bunch of lads we’ve ever had, who knows, the double could well be on”. McDaid’s sister, Hayley, has become

something of a good omen for the fifths, as they are yet to drop a single point whenever she has been watching. The lads will be hoping she puts in a few appearances this season. If Sweetman can lead the fifths to glory, it will represent the club’s best era since the days of West Ham being a solid Premier League side.

QMFC 5ths for League Glory?

Don't get angry ... Get Active sport or other activities they can manage. But for those who don’t make it into their chosen teams, this can be a pretty rough time too.

However, the beauty of QM now is that people can get involved in a number of different ways, not necessarily through playing club sport. QM Get Active, where we have advised a number of our football trialists to go if unsuccessful, is a great way to play in an exciting atmosphere without the same level of

Can the 5th march to victory this season? They’d have to avoid relegation to do so, maybe Sean Mahoney can help with that. Image by Finn Daniels-Yeomans.

QMessenger Issue 42

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Transcript of QMessenger Issue 42