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Student8 Features Week 14.10.08

CELEBRITIES HAVE been in public favour for as long as we can remember. However,

unlike the movie stars of old, whose public image was meticulously and ruthlessly protected, modern celebri-ties are often more famous for their wrongdoings than their talents. You’d never hear of Grace Kelly downing a bottle of vodka then getting behind the wheel, or Marilyn Monroe beat-ing up a fellow actress to the point where she’s jailed for assault, but for a modern celebrity such instances just mean more column inches for their latest movie/single/fragrance. So, the question is, why are modern celebri-ties so prone to bad behaviour, and why are their punishments different from other criminals?

This week American citizens saw football star O.J Simpson convicted on 12 charges including assault, armed robbery and kidnapping. Though he was acquitted in 1995 of murdering his ex-wife and her friend, many Americans voiced their satisfaction that he’d � nally been put behind bars. Thirteen years to the day (clearly an unlucky number for Mr. Simpson) since his previous trial’s glove-focused disintegration, he was found guilty of armed robbery in this high pro� le court case. His future

certainly looks shaky, as a possible life sentence has been suggested. However, while O.J’s punishment is being greeted in some quarters as suitable and not before time, many other celebrity crimi-nals are let off a little too lightly.

Take Paris Hilton for example, a self-employed ‘social-ite’ whose day job consists of very little other than

brushing her hair, and whose unsavoury evening activities keep cropping up on the Internet. Originally � ned a meagre £582 and given a three-year probation period for drink driving, Paris managed to somehow re-offend. She clearly didn’t understand the terms of her probation, managing to drive on a suspended license with her lights off, which resulted in the famous jail sen-tence � asco.

I don’t use the word � asco lightly; her 45 day actually had people sighing with relief that a celebrity was � nally going to serve a decent sentence worthy of the crime. When it was reduced to 23 days, the public didn’t seem really surprised that the old ‘good behaviour’ excuse had bailed out yet another starlet. The wealthy heiress was released only 3 days into her sentence and ordered to stay in her house with a tag around her ankle. One can only assume that the tag was more of a punishment than the house con� ne-ment to such a fashionista. Her brush with the law seems to have inspired a trend for starlets getting arrested: Lindsay Lohan was arrested for DUI and cocaine possession, and Paris’s weasel-faced ‘frenemy’ Nicole Richie was charged with driving under a suspended license and heroin posses-sion.

Another example closer to home

is disgraced footballer and all-round bad guy Joey Barton, a man with an inexplicable temper and thousands in the bank. 25 year old Barton has been jailed for assault twice, includ-ing an incident where he subbed out a cigarette on a boy’s face, and another where he punched a 16 year old after punching another man 20 times earlier that evening. Charm-ing.

Yet, despite his jail sentence and clear lack of discipline, Newcastle United manager Kevin Keegan clearly thought he was worth another shot. He, like Paris, served a ridiculous amount of his sentence: 74 days out of a given 6 months is clearly unac-ceptable. Of course football has its own rules, where a suitable punish-ment for assault, this time on team-mate Ousmane Dabo, cost Barton 6 matches. Matches, not months in prison, as many say it should have been.

And how can we forget good old Pete Doherty? With a previous-list as long as his relationship with Kate Moss, how did he get away with only 18 months of rehab and a 2 year supervision o rd e r ? Easy:

he’s

f a m o u s . Possession of crack cocaine, and heroin, driving offences, alleged robbery and blackmail, all offences that would cost the regular criminal a good

7 year stint in prison, left Doherty laughing. Well, maybe not laughing, but certainly free to continue a tour with Babyshambles.

Appropriately really, as celebrity justice itself is a shambles. When stars are punished for their wrongdoings, they are treated like fallen heroes rather than common criminals. Where ordinary members of the crime-com-mitting-public receive maximum sen-tences in some cases, celebrities are treated with cotton wool. Though it’s not an explicit failing in the justice system, the fact that such people have the ability to afford teams of the best lawyers advantages them, and their fame in� uences opinions in a way other criminals could only hope for. Ordinary criminals don’t have their sentences cut short, or their multi-million pound j o b s

NUDGING ITS way in alongside Societies Fair veterans such as Model

UN, Link and Oxfam, is one of this year’s EUSA Societies newbies: The Edinburgh Group, an excitingly original student group that marries the values of social contribution with a professional, business-orien-tated approach.

The Edinburgh Group (TEG) offers consulting services for local non-pro� t organisations – com-pletely free of charge – and is fresh from its � rst semester of work, eager to start on its next set of projects.

Inspired by a concept started in Berkeley University, TEG offers stu-dents a new way to get involved; reaching outside the self-contained student community in a focused and tangible manner. Members hail from across the spectrum of University disciplines, bringing different per-spectives to projects, and they then work as a team to solve the prob-lems that their client organisation is facing. After researching the area as fully as possible, the team comes up with practical solutions which the organisation will be able to use to strengthen themselves. Members jokingly refer to themselves simply

as “an extra set of heads” – the idea being that TEG acts as a ‘think-tank’ for the clients, who are often far too busy doing their day-to-day work to afford the time to think ‘outside the box’.

Last semester, The Edinburgh Group’s three projects included a feasibility study for a � oundering boat-building social enterprise, a detailed � ve-year business plan for a door-to-door care service and a re-branding strategy for a homeless outreach programme at risk of huge funding cuts. These projects might sound complicated, but given a bit of help along the way, members are

often surprised by how simple it is to use straight-forward thinking to tackle the assigned task.

TEG believes that charities and non-pro� t organisations require an insight that stems deeper than just isolated � nancial awareness. Their teams consist of people who have a true passion for charity and social contribution, a passion which is applied to responding to the sensi-tivities of individual organisations, thereby delivering valuable recom-mendations and suggestions.

Flushed by last year’s positive results, the young society is looking ahead to this year, with new clients

and projects in the pipeline, emerg-ing ties within the consulting and business sectors, and a more pub-licised position within the Uni-versity community, hopefully re-sulting in wider recruitment. The Edinburgh Group hopes to offer more students the chance to get in-volved in projects that help tie the typically isolated University popu-lation of Edinburgh into the city’s local fabric.

For further information check out the website at: www.theedinburghgroup.org

“I’m ready for my mugshot Mr Demille”Jen Bowden reads the riot act on Hollywood’s Bright Young Felons, and asks why celebrities receive such unwarranted leniency

Students with an ounce of inTEGrityImran Shahryar believes that when it comes to charity, it’s a matter of mind over money

Student Features

waiting for them when they get out, so why should it be different for those in the public eye?

Anne and canoe-enthusiast John Darwin each got 6 years for fraud. Although what the Darwins did was wrong, they didn’t cause anyone any physical harm (although the emo-tional damage caused is not to be discounted). Joey Barton seriously injured a fellow player and received a 6-match ban and served a pathetic 74-day prison sentence. It just goes to show that there’s no room for justice in the world of celebrity. The courts, it would seem, don’t quite reach the stars.

You’d never hear of Grace Kelly downing

a bottle of vodka then climbing behind the wheel,

or Marilyn Monroe getting charged with assault and battery

And how can we forget good

cut short, or their multi-million pound j o b s

days into her sentence and ordered

his relationship with Kate Moss, how did he get away with only 18

and a 2 year supervision

Easy:

Students with an ounce of inTEGrity

certainly looks shaky, as a possible life sentence has been suggested. However, while O.J’s punishment is being greeted in some quarters as suitable and not before time, many other celebrity crimi-nals are let off a little too lightly.

for example, a self-employed ‘social-ite’ whose day job consists of very little other than

“I’m ready for my mugshot Mr Demille”

StudentWeek 4 14.10.08 Features 9

WHILE THE search for British identity contin-ues, one integral feature

of daily life in the UK continues to be chronically overlooked. Hope-ful candidates for UK citizenship may now have to answer questions such as what do vets do, and where is Scouse spoken (two obvious hallmarks of Britishness according to the government handbook). Yet our country’s most beloved insti-tution goes without men-tion though it’s more

British than the British museum. I am talking, of course, about the biscuit. While sceptics may doubt the potential of a ginger nut or a hob-nob, the humble biscuit might be the missing link to understand-ing just about everything British and good.

Of course the biscuit did not origi-nate in Britain. Perhaps its earliest ancestor was nibbled in Persia where inhabitants began cultivating sugar, capitalising on its many sweet uses.

With a little help from expand-ing trade routes and the

crusades, sugar steadily made its way from

Persia to the East Mediterranean

to Europe. � e avail-

ability and a f f o r d -a b i l i t y of sugar steadily i n -c re a s e d so that by the Eliza-

bethan age, British cook-

books were full of recipes for

biscuits, cakes and pastries. � e Goode

Huswife’s Jewel, pub-

lished in 1596, advised women on the art of making fi ne cakes, warning, “do not burn them, if they be three of four days old they be better.”

Biscuits travelled further still. Ac-counts from the third crusade say that King Richard the Lionheart left for battle in 1189 with a ‘biskit of muslin’ made largely from mixed corn, barley and rye. Biscuits remained an inte-gral part of a sailor’s diet until canned food and bread was introduced in the 1800’s. In the year 1521, follow-ing Hernan Cortes’ conquest of the Aztecs, European explorers returned with another ingredient destined to revolutionize the fl edgling biscuit in-dustry: chocolate.

Meanwhile European immigrants to the Americas adapted their biscuit recipes to life across the pond, laying the foundation for the centuries old rivalry between the American crack-er or cookie (derived from the Dutch word koekje meaning little cake) and the British biscuit (derived from the Latin bis coctum, meaning twice baked). Despite the rivalry between these two sweet-toothed baking gi-ants, cookies and biscuits are inargu-ably the product of a shrinking world, where seas became smaller and bor-ders much less imposing.

With ingredients and recipes whizzing from continent to conti-nent the biscuit gradually came to resemble the sweet treat it is today.

biscuits came to our shores more often through

war and conquest than through good-natured curiosity and trade. But the history of most countries is tinged with bitterness and is stale around the edges. Biscuits should still be cel-ebrated as the sweet and simple result of far weightier and complex forces. In short, anyone who has even a pass-ing interest in being British or under-

standing people who are, should dig out some change from un-

der their sofa and start at the biscuit aisle.

In 1799, Edinburgh dwelling biscuit pioneer, Alexander Grant, invented the now beloved Digestive. � e name digestive was derived from the widely held belief that one ingredient, baking soda, greatly aids diges-tion. � is humble biscuit was d e s c r i b e d by Bill

Bryson as a “Br i t i sh m a s t e r -piece” with the chocolate-coated variety be-ing guzzled down at an average of 52 biscuits a second in the UK alone. South of the bor-der, in Yorkshire the Rich Tea Biscuit was developed, designed to appeal to the upper classes. While it is of-ten criticized for its bland taste, the tea biscuit remains a staple on British supermarket shelves, presumably due to the transformation that takes place when it is dunked in a cup of tea.

Of course the Rich Tea biscuit can-not perhaps compare to the luxury and complexity of the Jaff a Cake, which McVites launched on the confection market at the end of World War II. Despite the fi nan-cial austerity of post-war Britain

ANYONE WHO is fortunate enough to live south of the University will be all too

well acquainted with the cold, damp walk across the Meadows to George Square. They might also be aware of the graf� ti that litters the route. One in particular confronted me every day last year. Scrawled in foot high white letters on one of the Universi-ty sub-stations was the line, “AVIA-TION IS VANDALISM”. What was this, I used to wonder, idiocy or iro-ny? Were we supposed to look at the ideological contradiction of using vandalism to condemn something as vandalism and suddenly realise the error of our EasyJet ways, the ge-nius of our anonymous artist? I, for one, did not. To me it was an con-stant reminder that a section of our student population are determined to foist their moronic priorities on us, whatever the rest of the student body thinks.

I was reminded of this fringe grouping again last week as Student

reported Topshop’s decision to remove their staff from the univer-sity campus, claiming that they could not in good conscience allow their staff to suffer intimidation from the student pressure group People and Planet.

Neither should we. Now is the time to stand up to

People and Planet: an unrepresenta-tive, small but incredibly vocal fringe group of post-gap year beatniks and ideologues that have made it their mission to impose their environmen-tal totalitarianism on the rest of us. Nor is this the � rst time that a mi-nority agenda has dictated university policy. Nescafe products were banned from the Union shops years ago and the same self-appointed commis-sioners of ethics have attempted to have Coca Cola products banned for years, defeated only by a steady wave of apathy and the inability of this tiny fringe grouping to muster the votes required for a quorum at the University AGMs.

People and Planet will defend their unrepresentative actions as “ethical consumerism” and “en-vironmentalism” and in doing so assume a moral monopoly – and cer-tainly, who is going to dare defend giant corporations against these plucky hippies?

But this isn’t a debate on Topshop, Nescafe or Coca Cola and university students should be educated enough to make their own moral judgements on these companies without the en-vironmental ma� a imposing theirs on us. It is the determination with which this unrepresentative minor-ity attempt to enforce their views on us via intimidation and banning that should be deeply worrying to all liberal-minded students.

However, unlike our graf� ti cru-sader above, People and Planet are not anonymous. They rely on our much-celebrated student apathy to thrive, without which they would be revealed for what they truly are - a minuscule fragment of the student

body who represent less than 1% of us. By failing to � ex our political muscles at our university we allow People and Planet to wield a dis-proportionate share of power, and because of that we cannot buy a KitKat in our university shop.

What a ridiculous state of affairs; what a pathetically futile gesture.

So why do we meekly allow this ethical posse to dictate terms to us? Environmentalism and ethical con-sumerism seem to have been decided upon as the Great Causes of our age, and support of them has become political orthodoxy. To speak out against these causes is to be con-demned as an eccentric at best, a dangerous nutcase at worst, akin to the sort of hysterical reaction that greets any perceived hint of racism or sexism. But extremists also come in the colours of political orthodoxy, and People and Planet should not be tolerated or supported just because they are perceived as being on the

right side of the argument. They may have been transformed

by their exposure to the upsetting re-alities of the global economy, but we must remember that the members of People and Planet are neverthe-less happy to publicise events with the likes of former Zambian dictator Kenneth Kaunda on their Edinburgh website.

What People and Planet trade in is gesture politics. Without the po-litical muscle to actually in� uence anything, they rely on protests, in-timidation and prohibition to spread their message. Yet by our own apathy we have somehow allowed this little gang to wield a woefully disproportionate amount of power over the past decade. Perhaps it’s time to make further use of a � ne slogan which rose to popularity with another alienated majority, and stand up to People and Planet and loudly declare, “Not in my name.”

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off for a fucking KitKat chunky.

� at’s the way the cookie crumbledMairi Gordon digests the history of biscuits: which involves everything from hob-nobbing with Alexander the Great to making the fortunes of sugar-daddy Alexander Grant.

My planet, not my people� omas Kerr takes a stand against the gesture politics of People and Planet

Student

British than the British museum. I am talking, of course, about the biscuit. While sceptics may doubt the potential of a ginger nut or a hob-nob, the humble biscuit might be the missing link to understand-ing just about everything British

lished in 1596, advised women on the art of making fi ne cakes, warning, “do not burn them, if they be three of four days old they be better.”

Biscuits travelled further still. Ac-counts from the third crusade say that

� at’s the way the cookie crumbleddigests the history of biscuits: which involves everything from hob-nobbing with

Alexander the Great to making the fortunes of sugar-daddy Alexander Grant.