Roar!

ROAR! YOUR UNSPENT £137K

Page 22

October 2013 King’s College London

Ben Jackson

YOU could lose out on funding as College cash previously earmarked for students is under threat.

The £137,000, currently gathering dust in an untouched bank account, was due to be spent on the King’s membership fee to the University of London

Union (ULU).

The withdrawal from the union, which is no longer profitable, has left King’s bosses sitting on thousands of pounds which could be diverted to projects that do not benefit students for whom it was originally intended.

SEE PAGE 4

roarnews.co.uk

KING’S NEWEST LEGENDS

Students left in the dark Cash could be spent on you

ROGUE REVIEWS BESTIVAL

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ROAR!

Hello.

Starting this month, Roar! has a new ethos.

We want to put you at the centre of what we do.

So we’re giving the newspaper back.

We want you to direct our news reporting, commentary and style.

What does this mean?

It means if you care about it, We’ll print it.

It means if you think it’s relevant, We’ll upload it.

Roar! belongs to you.

So, the question remains: what do you want to read?

Ben Jackson Editor of Roar! News

Get in touch with the intelligent student tabloid at editor@roarnews.co.uk

4 ROAR! NOT AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF The Virginia Woolf Building on Kingsway opened its doors to students this September. Projects manager Tanja Manners said she has received positive feedback. “Students have expressed their excitement about the bright open spaces for studying, the brand new kitchens and comfortable sofas in the social areas,” she said. However, one lift is out of service and the other was down on Wednesday.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH October marks the start of Black History Month. Academic Affairs VP Areeb Ullah says it is an important reminder of past struggles. “Racism is alive and kicking. From government policies like the #RacistVan targeting and scapegoating migrants in heavily multicultural areas, to disturbing discourses of potentially banning the niqab in the UK.” The latest figures put the black population at KCL at 6.2%. KCLSU has made £500 available to societies who want to host Black History Month events.

THE ULU CASH CAMPAIGN: B

YOU’RE OW

Roar! launches a campaign to make sure the CONTINUED from front page: This year, King’s stopped paying the fee.

The cash now sits in a College account gathering dust, while King’s students continue to live and study with simple issues that could be addressed by financial help.

These issues might include WiFi quality, welfare provision or the need for more study space.

Colleges have ceased paying into the Londonwide union due to its expected closure next year.

Earlier this year, the federal University of London, of which King’s is a founding member, voted to close its union, pulling its funding.

As a result, ULU is being run on reserves of around £700,000.

King’s is currently in negotiations with KCLSU to determine what to do with the massive membership fee.

The College told Roar!: “Planning ahead for the

closure of ULU from 2014-15, the College and KCLSU are in ongoing discussions about how the annual King’s ULU membership fee of £137,000 could be reallocated to support student-facing activities.

“The College has committed to redistributing all of this money for the benefit of students at King’s.”

The money should be focused towards student-oriented projects, activities and facilities.

We are supporting KCLSU’s student officers in their fight – because it is a fight – for this money.

Against the backdrop of higher education cuts and the rise in fees that two thirds of current King’s undergraduates will have to deal with, the ULU cash campaign is ever more urgent.

Roar! believes King’s students are entitled to the full amount and should not settle for a penny less.

This year’s student officer team has plans to use the money for you.

KCLSU President, Sebastiaan Debrouwere, said: “The annual funding the Col-

lege made available to ULU was designed to help unions run by students, for students.

“It is a personal priority for the Student Officer team to make sure this funding continues to be spent on student-led activity through the work of their own local union KCLSU. “Ensuring the future of the ULU funding has been high on the agenda for our Officer team since we started in the beginning of August.

“We are in discussions with the College, and I have every confidence that we will swiftly and effectively come to an agreement that will benefit King’s students and that will further empower KCLSU to deliver value in those areas that are important for our students and our community.

“We will of course also be consulting with students on how best to spend the money.”

The £137,000 could be spent in a number of ways, all of which Roar! believes would improve the quality of the student experience,

WATERFRONT DAZZLES KCLSU’s revamped bar needs to invest in a dimmer switch, according to some students. “I like the decor but the lights make it feel like a tanning bed - not that I’ve ever used one,” said one first year.

RE-SIT FEES ABOLISHED The cost of retaking a KCL exam has been scrapped after pressure from student officers.

KCLSU President Sebastiaan Debrouwere said it was an important breakthrough for students. “In the present funding climate, students face a great number of financial barriers to education,” he said. “As a Students’ Union it is our duty and privilege to work hard to improve the lives of our students.

I’m confident that there are more victories to come!” Re-sit fees were previously £5 per credit.

All news in briefs

by Harriet Pavey

Ben Jackson EDITOR OF ROAR!

I’D pour the money into means-tested bursaries for students from poorer backgrounds because I think the cost of living in London is a large barrier to students coming to King’s.

KCLSU could also pay for the Roar! Editor’s job to be a full-time sabbatical post. Please?

Anthony Shaw

KCLSU VICE PRESIDENT REPRESENTATION AND COMMUNICATION I WOULD upgrade Tutu’s into a student space with student media facilities, performance space and social space. I would also cover the new NHS levy for international students.

Durr-e Maknoon Tariq ROAR! SCIENCE EDITOR

PROVISION of more laboratory experience for students within science schools as it is essential if they want to pursue a career in research.

More library books because there are still not enough for everyone. No one should have to buy there own books just because the library hasn’t got enough as university books are quite expensive to buy.

BECAUSE YOU’RE WORTH IT

WED £137K

e College pays YOU what YOU deserve. some of which are at relatively little expense.

There are two clear programmes that could help improve the welfare provision made available across all campuses.

The first is for KCLSU to re-affiliate with Nightline. Nightline offers support services to students in distress.

Two years ago, KCLSU dropped its affiliation citing a lack of financing.

The cost of this is 10 pence per King’s student per year.

There would be little excuse for not re-affiliating once the College has handed over the cash.

Secondly, the Peer Support Scheme run at Guy’s Campus.

The project involved trained students offering support to other students during their time in need.

The project is ideal, but suffering from a lack of financing. Roar! believes KCLSU should be supporting this project and looking into expanding it College-wide. The cost

of this project is currently £1,200 per year.

By returning the money to studentled organisations, the College is taking action mutually beneficial to everyone.

By funding projects like those mentioned above, student satisfaction at King’s can only improve.

We all know one of the reasons King’s is held back in the national league tables is poor student satisfaction.

Recently times have been tough for KCLSU. By providing the cash owed to KCLSU, not only would facilities improve, but it should help project the voice of King’s students London-wide.

Roar! hopes this article sparks the College into action and sees the £137,000 currently withdrawn from students returned.

Wherever you are on the political spectrum, the ULU Cash Campaign is a mission all King’s students can unite behind.

What should the money be spent on? Email us at editor@roarnews.co.uk with your ideas. •

WHAT YOU CAN BUY FOR £137K 13,700 SNAKEBITE PITCHERS 21,076 WATERFRONT BURGERS 5,480 KING’S HOODIES HALF OF THE PRINCIPAL’S SALARY (probably)

ROAR! 5 LIBRARY NOISE CONTINUES Construction work next to the Maughan library can still be heard by students inside. “I’ve started going to Senate House during the week because the building work is so loud,” said third year History student Joe McGee. The site has been closed off to students for over a year and a whole section of grass and benches is now blocked.

RUSSELL GROUP ‘LIES’ A report by education thinktank LKMco suggests that applicants are being misled by Russell Group universities about which A Levels they should take. LKMco found that at least two subjects on the Russell Group’s list of preferred subjects had higher success rates than the majority of those on the list. KCL spokesman Jack Stonebridge said the college has contributed to the Russell Group list, “Informed Choices”. The chairman of the Government’s Education Select Committee, Graham Stuart, has asked the Russell Group to investigate the issue. In his letter, Stuart asked for clearer guidance. “Applicants to our best universities should not be short-changed by incomplete or inaccurate advice,” he said. LKMco also found A Levels whcih are often considered easier, such as Drama and Economcs, have higher acceptance rates than some traditional subjects like History and English. Stonebridge said KCL gives sound advice to applicants. “King’s does not have a list of subjects that are valued less than others,” he said. “We prefer to take a more positive approach and clearly identify those which should be taken.”

KCL RADIO GOES LIVE Steph Fairbairn

Jessy Howard

MORE space for student media. It’s getting kind of crowded in the Roar! office, and we’re one of the few that actually have an office!

A central sports facility for all. I believe joining societies and clubs is one of the best ways to integrate yourself into university life.

What stopped me from joining a sports club was the fact that I would have to pay £12 a week to travel to and from the venues, on top of subscription fees.

King’s should have a sports base like so many other universities do.

MORE money given to societies as this would be the most direct way of investing the sum back into the student body.

More money spent on resources for disabled students - it’s ridiculous how little there is at King’s.

Spend money on more teaching staff, especially in the arts! Bring seminar sizes down in order for everyone to take part.

ROAR! DESIGN EDITOR

ASSISTANT STATION MANAGER OF KINGSTV

Michael Di Benedetto ROAR! POLITICS EDITOR

WELFARE issues should be a priority for the College. I’d like to see more money put into those areas.

Mental health services as well as the King’s doctors services need more money in this time of austerity.

We should be protecting these services rather than leaving the money to gather dust.

KCL Radio broadcast its first live show last month. Craig McDonald, who presented a show on the opening day, said he had high hopes for this year.

“There’s a ton of stuff to listen to,” he said. “We’ve got a brand new studio with state of the art equipment so the output so far has been great.”

Got a story?

Email your news pitches to James and Ben at news@roarnews.co.uk

6 ROAR!

STUDENTS CAN’T GET NO SATISFACTION

With King’s failing in domestic rankings, JAMES LEEMAN asks, are you satisfied?

KING’S has been ranked in the top 20 universities in the world by the QS world rankings.

Hallelujah! I hear you say.

But apart from massaging the ego of every student, alumni and staff member at King’s, what does this really mean for us?

Produced annually by Quacquarelli Symonds, the QS world ranking is one of the most highly renowned international rankings systems.

The system works by using five weighted categories in which the respective universities are given a score: an academic peer review survey, the studentfaculty ratio, citations per faculty, a recruiter review survey and the level of international orientation.

The ranking allows us to do what we seem to crave so much in our modern society, compare ourselves to what others have.

It shows that King’s is internationally well-known as a successful higher education institution, from which a good degree will be highly respected and get students jobs.

But why is the QS, out of the many international rankings produced, now King’s ranking of choice?

QS’ 19th place ranking for King’s is quoted everywhere by the university, from inside our campus corridors to multiple pages on the university website.

Macho world

But why not quote the Times Higher Education World University Ranking of 38th place, or the 67th place we come in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (more commonly known as the Shanghai ranking)?

The fact is, different rankings favour different variables to rank universities, and King’s hasn’t made an objective decision about which method it thinks is the best, it’s just happy to quote the one that makes it succeed in the pumping our chests, macho world of cross-university competition.

In fact it’s no surprise that King’s doesn’t choose to shout about our domestic UK ranking positions as much.

Despite King’s regularly achieving top positions in international rankings, the university often struggles to make it into the top 20 universities in the country.

The Complete University Guide

ranks us as the 19th best university in the country, whilst the Sunday Times and the Guardian put us at 27th and 32nd respectively.

But what is behind this huge variation?

The main reason is that the domestic rankings focus less on the number of Nobel prizes and grand awards that academics have been winning, and factor in variables such as student satisfaction and teaching quality.

Yes, that revolutionary idea that if we are going to judge universities we should probably see what the students who actually pay tuition fees think about the experience.

But it is in this exact area that King’s underperforms and therefore looses out in the domestic rankings.

In the Complete University Guide of UK universities, King’s comes in at 103rd out of 124 universities for overall student satisfaction, and in the Guardian ranking we are 14th from bottom, whilst the Sunday Times puts us 11 places off the worst position.

Of course student satisfaction is a difficult thing to quantify, but all

these rankings based off the Na-

are

How do you define a good university? International reputation?

Quality of teaching? Student experience? There is no right or wrong answer.

Any ranking is making a subjective decision about what it thinks makes a good university and covering itself in so called-facts, figures and formulas to try and make its verdict sound concrete and objective.

Sure, it’s a good thing that King’s is an internationally well recognised university, and it’s good that this will help thousands of our fellow students achieve.

But this 19th position in one particular arbitrary ranking cannot be used as the wallpaper to cover over all the cracks at King’s.•

PHILOSOPHY EMPLOYMENT PROSPECTS

tional Student Survey (NSS) and show that students at King’s aren’t entirely impressed with the university experience offered to them.

This point gets right to the heart of the problem with league tables:

1

2

LONDON 1

FASHION WEEK

GO ROGUE Music: Joe Brookes reviews BESTIVAL

NEW YORK, MILAN, PARIS, STRAND CAMPUS

FASHION EDITOR’S NOTE

IN mid-September, Somerset House’s courtyard was invaded.

There were no KCL Law students in sight, Strand office workers on a lunch break or tourists eager to spy the Neoclassical architecture.

Instead, a colourful sea of bold lips, dip-dyed locks and swathes of fur and camouflage tentatively navigated the cobbles. The sound of blogger camera shutters clicking and six-inch white stilettos tottering accompanied the smell of custom Penhaligon’s scents. London Fashion Week Spring/ Summer 2014 had hit the capital.

This bi-annual five day sartorial indulgence, held at various locations across London, has become globally renowned for innovation and pushing the boundaries of what is au courant. The irony of an aging, seventeenth century mansion hosting the unofficial cult of everything brand spanking new is amusing. Indeed, London Fashion

Week, like those held at New York, Milan and Paris, is the opportunity for the fashion world to wipe the slate clean and start again. An influx of new ideas, trends and looks each season provides the prime time for the imagination to be stretched, and one’s look to be reinvented.

The fact that this reinvention will arguably boil down to buying pink rather than purple and flatforms rather than platforms is not the point. The fashion world’s keenness to recharge and try something new could perhaps inspire us all as we start a new year at KCL Yes, that could include trying a new sport, joining KingsTV and seeing your course in a new light through fresh modules.

However, with a cultural bias I suggest that making time to visit an art gallery, sync new songs to your iPhone, buy tickets for a National Theatre production and, naturally, invest in some AW 13/14 wardrobe updates will be

things you won’t regret. Reinventions at the moment are not exclusively fashionable or personal, but also extend to this culture section at Roar!. We have recently been christened Rogue, with a brand new look, tone and extended Film section to boot.

In this issue’s Fashion & Lifestyle we have for you the ultimate trend lowdown, key beauty looks and why the front row has become such a big deal in ‘Phenomenon of the FROW’.

Film are celebrating Black History Month with profiles on the best black actors, and have compiled a list of which Halloween films you should be watching in three weeks’ time.

Music are also looking forward with a feature on the creation of a new society, the King’s Record, and a fresh perspective on the freak-folk band CocoRosie. Hey, why not include us in your cultural reinvention and contribute an article! •

LAUREN CLARK

FASHION & LIFESTYLE fashionlifestyle.rogue@gmail.com LAUREN CLARK FILM & TV filmtv.rogue@gmail.com CHARLOTTE WOODS & JOSH STUPPLE MUSIC musicreviews.rogue@gmail.com JOE BROOKES & OSCAR DAVIES ARTS & THEATRE artstheatre.rogue@gmail.com JESSICA MOFFATT-OWEN & DAISY BARTLETT

R OGUE FASHION & LIFESTYLE

LONDON FASHION WEEK

Bulldogs, bare legs and brocade, we have the ultimate London Fashion Week Spring/ Summer 2014 trend lowdown for you...

ROKSANDA ILINCIC

THE BEST OF THE REST

IT was a poignant moment in Ilincic’s career.

Having won the Red Carpet Award at the British Fashion Awards in 2012, this collection provided the opportunity to cement the idiosyncrasies she has become renowned for.

Yellows and oranges were fundamental, and accentuated her geometry through sharp distinction from delicate hints of black, and the softer use of pastel greys and whites. Ilincic’s ability to intricately contrast evocative textures with well thought-out geometric lines is her forte. Her use of crystallised beading and PVC flowers as embellishment cleverly juxtaposed with her zeal for architectural precision and unadorned silhouettes. The rare marriage of understatement and elegance is always at the heart of Ilincic’s designs. Although her designs appear minimalist and effortless, she creates excitement and drama using simple shapes and patterns. She is arguable not just a designer, but an architect. • HANNAH YATES

BURBERRY PRORSUM

IT was time for the highly-anticipated Burberry show in Kensington Gardens. With a finale of falling petals, a front row including Chung and Styles, and not to mention the likes of Delevingne and Dunn gracing the catwalks, the show did not fail to wow the fashion elite. Chief designer of the quintessentially British brand, Christopher Bailey, shocked his followers with a soft and delicate mood. A pretty pastel palate of spearmint, palma violet and rosepetal-pinks ran throughout. See-through tops, skirts and lacy dresses were a shocking and suggestive twist for the brand; Burberry has turned sexy. The famous trench coat was now embellished with hand-sewn crystal flowers and huge elaborate belts. Bailey titled it an “English Garden”: indeed, it was the epitome of elegance and grace. • EMILY FOLKES

TOM FORD

LONDON welcomed the former Gucci designer’s cementing of his love for the city this year with the opening of his first store. This week, Ford showed further appreciation for the capital in a show that juxtaposed mini with oversized, monochrome with glitter balls, and extravagance with simplicity.

Opening with an oversized oak biker jacket and matching mini skirt, Ford channelled 1970s biker chic before launching into a series of monochrome cobweb and zebra prints, combining a simple colour scheme with lavish, sheer fabrics. A few standard Ford tuxedos later, and an army of glittery gladiators strut down the catwalk. Thigh-high boots and exaggerated shoulders celebrated what Ford’s collection was all about, strong women; women who can own their femininity by wearing super short skirts and glittery dresses should they want to, but who are simultaneously physically strong. • LYDIA

MULBERRY

BEFORE the beautiful models had even appeared on the runway we knew that Mulberry had something special in store. The catwalk had been decorated in a fairytale style: delicate white roses and ivy climbed the surrounding walls, while daisies dotted the grass floor. It was if we had been transported to a hidden meadow. The show opened with supermodel of the moment, Cara Delevingne, who elegantly entered in a chic, light and dark silvery jacquard coat paired with a matching just-above-the-knee, tailored skirt. This jacquard trend fed through into other looks in the form of a pretty, fitted jacket and exquisite cropped trouser, all of which displayed the natural curves of the female body. Crisp, white skirts, dresses and shirts with a textured floral pattern conveyed a charming, polished look. The shot of black leather in the collection added contrast and edge, transforming the show into a modern fairytale. • TALIA OGUNYEMI

JW ANDERSON FOR the quickly rising design phenomenon, Jonathan Anderson, the past five years have

proven extremely eventful, and SS14 is no exception. His collection this season was rich, with textures and shapes melding together to tell an interesting story. The show opened with floor length sheaths, periodically and beautifully placed cinching down the silhouette.

The colours remained simple, with charcoals and ivories, but still a hint of metallic to draw complete focus. An almost liquid effect can be observed in some of the pieces; however; as the show progressed the story shifted from romanticism to harsher origami shapes. Closing with voluminous sequin skirts and architectural, yet simple, white tops, this collection will certainly be remembered among an impressive repertoire. • RACHEL HUMMEL

MCKEE

TOPSHOP UNIQUE TOPSHOP Unique tends be treated with a fond bias by shoppers and bloggers

over other designer collections. Nonetheless, they do not cut any corners in ensuring a fabulous show. There was a natural theme in the colour scheme, with waxy, woodland greens, and sea and sky blues prominent. This collection offered a slightly more luxe value to the quality and style of designs than standard Topshop. Silk was popular, with prints consisting of Moroccanesque tiles, uneven stripes and patterns. The collection included Middle Eastern influences, but toned it down with soft, neutral colourings. Tassels and fringing adorned some of the later designs, really giving the aura of being on holiday in Abu Dhabi or Morocco. Suede cover-ups were also prominent throughout for the chillier moments in one’s holiday. It’s nice to know that, as per, Topshop has thought of everything! • AMIRA ARASTEH

BEAUTY NOTE: FASHION WEEK TRADITIONALLY London Fashion Week presents beauty fans with a serious dilemma every season.

Eye shadow heavy on one runway, lipstick galore on another; there is usually too much diversity to define an overall trend.

However, the shows for Spring/ Summer 2014 have taken the beauty world by surprise.

For once, it seems that London Fashion Week has spoken with a collective voice.

The muse they presented us with was that of a lady who defines the

grace and nature of English beauty, while still embracing London street edge.

Dewy, natural and radiant skin was seen at every show. Make-up artist Lisa Eldridge at Temperley London even sent out models with no foundation at all.

English rose

Henry Holland spiced things up, taking the look from natural grace to graceful edge.

Our English rose became Shakespeare’s Juliet as Holland, inspired

by Baz Luhrmann’s masterpiece, using bold tulip-red lip stains, and

statement religious iconography nail art.

Christopher Kane and JW Anderson further emphasised the look with full brows and natural lip colours.

Burberry, however, introduced the ‘Modern English Rose’.

Their pastel palette was complemented by a fresh, petal-pink eye shadow, along with no mascara.

This look sent the beauty bloggers into an experimental craze, and is sure to be a top trend for SS14.

PPQ, on the other hand, transformed the English Rose dark and seductive, presenting the ‘Poisonous Flower’.

Maybelline Colour Tattoo in purple was the exact shade used to create a deeply defined, penetrating effect.

Julien Macdonald and Michael van der Ham further pushed our London lady into the realms of expensive seduction with gold glitter and a touch of dark shadow.

Topshop Unique, however, should take the prize for best spectacle of LFW. Their make-up artist Hannah Murray’s concept of a beachy, disheveled beauty was breathtaking: smudged, shimmery, smoky eye with a touch of silver sparkle at the inner corner.

This was not the rock star smudge of LFW’s past but one of grace. A first for London’s fashionable eye.

LFW SS14 directed us to embrace our natural beauty.

Use light and glowing bases, and rose-toned pinks for a beautiful natural look, but spice it up with glitter for a sophisticated and playful edge in the evening.

EMILY FOLKES

@Emily_Folkes and check out her blog at folkesthinks.blogspot.com

THE FRONT ROW FASHION FRENZY

What is it about the catwalk front row at Fashion Week that makes macho pop-gods pout and fashion fillies whinny?

WHAT is it about the front row catwalk view at Fashion Week?

It may as well have its own spotlight shining down on the seat allocations for all the fuss made over it.

Anyone who is anyone sits on the front row (also known in the fashion world as FROW), and it is an insult to be demoted even a row further back.

American Vogue editor Anna Wintour sits front row. Wintour’s assistant sits on the row behind. Now that puts things into perspective.

Every fashion magazine will cover the four main fashion weeks across the style capitals London, Paris, New York and Milan. In every one there

will be, without fail, a feature on the FROW. Watching fashion shows with an unobstructed view equals status. Therefore securing a front row seat has become an unofficial war in the fashion world – the winner gets the legroom, the loser a cramped backseat.

Often it is not typical fashion people on the FROW. Indeed, it has become so prestigious that now ordinary celebrities are vying for this recognition from fashion world. Take a look at the Topshop Unique catwalk show for AW 13/14. Sitting front row were Pixie Geldof and Daisy Lowe, who have an edgy, cool style that many budding fashionistas ad-

STYLISH WORDS OF WISDOM: HILARY ALEXANDER Legendary Telegraph fashion journalist speaks at London Fashion Weekend.

“I feel like a dinosuar. It was a very different type of journalism when I started out in news in New Zealand many, many years ago.

“It wasn’t until I moved to Hong Kong that I fell into fashion almost by accident.

“It was very different getting into the industry back then.

“However, in terms of writing about fashion, I use my news journalistic training to research and tell stories in the same way.

“Fashion is as much an important part of news as anything else.

“The industry employs and affects millions of people.

“During my career I have attended many incredible shows; however, the Alexander McQueen final show, and

mire and emulate. However, singers Demi Lovato and Louis Tomlinson from One Direction joined Daisy and Pixie, despite having little previous fashion credentials. It has become well known that the FROW is where everyone wants to be, and so everyone, whatever profession, wants a place.

Victoria Beckham even ensured baby Harper got a front row seat at her own New York Fashion Week catwalk show. Harper, cuddled by a doting David, stole all the limelight off Posh’s clothes, and even distracted Anna Wintour’s attention from the catwalk. She proves that all eyes are on who is at the fashion shows rather

than what is being showcased there.

Harper may be an adorable exception, but perhaps it highlights that the front row nowadays detracts from the reason there is a show in the first place: the clothes. When people you would not expect sit front row, does it provide them with more publicity than the designer and their collection?

Take Cara Delevingne, the model of the moment, and Olivia Palermo, a beauty who always has impeccable style. Would they settle for second row? Not at all. They would expect a guaranteed front row seat. They deserve it. Cara is all anybody is talking about right now, and Olivia is a style

icon within her own right. Those on the front row get their own style photographed and commented on, and they are the ones people are talking about. The second row gets a brief look-in, but no one talks about who they are or what they were wearing.

The claws are out to get a FROW Fashion Week seat, and no agent or publicist is worth their fee if they cannot get their client that ticket.

Check out Amira’s blog at

www.mymode101.wordpress.com

AMIRA ARASTEH

SPOTTED ON CAMPUS Follow Lauren Clark on Twitter @Lauren_Clark555 and check out her blog www.museforfashion.wordpress.com

the John Galliano first of his own label are probably my favourite.

“In terms of my own style I like tribal, print and decorative jewellery. If in doubt always opt for a size larger, as one tends to look better. Remember, clothes should be fun!”

LAUREN CLARK

FASHION & LIFESTYLE R OGUE

R OGUE FILM HOT? OR NOT?

filmtv.rogue@gmail.com

BEST BLACK ACTORS

DENZEL WASHINGTON Acting in 43 feature films (and sadly dying in what seems to be nearly all of them), Washington has got to be one of

the biggest African American names in cinema. Firstly, Washington defined what it means to be a black man in cinema and blew us away with his portrayal of Malcolm X in Spike Lee’s 1992 film (for which he was nominated for an Oscar). Then he made us cry, gasp, shout, cry some more, clap and cheer throughout his performance in The Hurricane (nominated for another Oscar). Then he made us weak at the knees as the sexy, corrupt, leather-clad Alonzo Harris in Training Day (you guessed it, he won an Oscar). •

SUPER SCARY HALLOWEEN FILM FAVES WITH Halloween fast approaching, what better way to get in the mood than to scare yourself silly watching some horror films.

Nick Batley gives his expert opinion on the horror films you absoultely must see and the ones you should avoid this Halloween...

HOT - You’re Next (2013)

In an area of cinema rapidly running out of ideas, this off-key, blackly comic slasher was a breath of fresh air. Well-shot, well-paced, genuinely scary (SUCH a rarity these days) and with an innovative use for a blender, this home invasion movie is by far the most enjoyable horror of the year so far. Fab female lead, too!

HOT - American Mary (2013)

Student life can be hard, especially when you’re a poor medical student. So what better way to supplement your income than as an illegal backstreet surgeon? Funny, gory, scary and subversive - this was a surprisingly entertaining gore-flick that went down very well at last year’s Frightfest.

HOT- Evil Dead (2013)

I recognise I may be in a minority here, but while I do not feel that the remake of Sam Raimi’s iconic Cabin in the Woods film is anywhere near the original, I still found that, despite it lacking the humour of the original, it had a certain level of visceral intensity that is often lacking from modern horror. Plus it has one of the best final lines of the last few years, which I cannot repeat, even in a student newspaper.

NOT- Insidious Chapter 2 (2013)

Quiet-quiet-bang-quiet-quiet-bang-quietquiet-bang-this-is-so-boring-sleep-snorezzzzzzzz-wakeup-quiet-quiet-bang-seriouslyis-this-what-horror-has-become-these-days?oh-god-kill-me-now

NOT- The Conjuring (2013)

See above, but with an added particularly rubbish ending. This actually had me sitting on the fence for a while, but towards the final act it just descends into completely hyperbolic chaos, and shows that the once interesting James Wan (who directed the not-completely-terrible opener to the Saw series) has completely run out of ideas.

NOT- Dark Skies (2013)

Aliens. Seriously. Just aliens. A word of advice: don’t pretend you’re going to have a big reveal of the nature of the threat two-thirds of the way into the film, if you are going to destroy the suspense in the first twenty seconds.

NICK BATLEY

MORGAN FREEMAN WHAT better leading man to kick off the list than everyone’s favourite narrator, Red, Fox, God, Boss, lieutenant,

president, captain, judge, principal and Mandela (except Nelson himself, of course), than the honey-voiced man himself, Morgan Freeman. Who can forget the loveable, endearing Hoke in Driving Miss Daisy, the witty yet tough Somerset in Se7en, the gritty ‘scrap-iron’ Eddie in Million Dollar Baby and, of course, the undeniably outstanding ‘Red’ in Shawshank Redemption? And with so many more unforgettable characters played by Freeman, this black actor is definitely one to be celebrated and remembered for years to come. •

JAMES EARL JONES

IN the industry for almost 50 years, James Earl Jones is easily one of the world’s favourite African American actors, especially in the ‘voice’ department. I can still remember my two-year-old self mesmerised by Mufasa telling me to “remember who you are”. Not to mention the iconic voice of good old Darth Vadar. Bringing these two characters to life alone earns him his place on this list, but there is far more to Jones than his voice acting. He is a must-see in the 1990 The Hunt for Red October, the 1970 The Great White Hope, as Reverand Stephen Kumalo in Cry, the Beloved Country and as the hilarious King Jaffe Joffer in Coming to America. •

JAMIE FOXX A SOLID contributor to one of my other top fives (we’ve all seen the photo), the characters Foxx creates always

stand out from the crowd (excuse all the puns). Foxx as Ray Charles in the 2004 film Ray was pure genius. Not only did Foxx learn to play Charles’s piano pieces himself, he even insisted on playing the role blind. His dedication paid off, and his remarkable acting earned him an Oscar. And I have to mention the sexy, strong and fearless, effortlessly cool Django, brought to life by Foxx. It’s impossible to picture any other actor as Django, and Foxx executes the role perfectly. •

ALI PANTONY

CURTIS QUITS, ABOUT TIME? RICHARD Curtis has monopolised a cinematic niche, full of big stars portraying ordinary people with great hearts, huge ambition and considerable loss.

He has built his celebrated career writing and directing films for the public and not for his reviewers.

With regards to Love Actually (2003), Curtis told the BBC, “I’d rather make a film that most of the audience liked and some critics didn’t, rather than a film that critics loved and nobody wanted to watch.”

This attention to human life, whether acclaimed or not, has earned Curtis his unparalleled success in British romantic comedy.

Curtis, like many screenwriters, has a distinct style.

He has a ‘John Hughes’ tendency to recycle - using the same actors in multiple films and producing a ‘brat pack’ of international stars.

For instance, Hugh Grant has led 5 of Curtis’s 12 films and

Colin Firth and Bill Nighy claim four.

This repetition bothers some critics, but each of these actors have immense audience likeability, which empowers Curtis’s work.

When asked what I look for in a film, I reply “myself.” I think many film viewers do try to relate to characters and storylines.

Thus, the likeability of Curtis’s characters and the genuine nature of his storylines are paramount to his hits. Curtis’s narratives become our own.

One of Curtis’s early achievements, Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), exhibits the grand wedding’s underbelly - the ceremony’s inanity, the guests’ selfishness, and the disconcerting susceptibility to settling for the wrong person.

Four Weddings and a Funeral isn’t a classic but its display of human nature makes for a good satire.

Love Actually (2003), Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) and Notting

Hill (1999) all created a mixed bag of reactions.

Fun and heartwarming if viewed leisurely, and a little sugarcoated if viewed critically.

However, the authenticity of each character and narrative is recognisable in every day life.

Judging by my reaction to Curtis’s catalogue of previous films, I went into Curtis’s latest film, About Time, truly excited and perhaps overly enthusiastic.

I was instantly interested in the topic of time travelling, a topic some might think of as impractical and silly, but it wasn’t.

Curtis makes an impossible dream of the human condition, a well-crafted and amusing reality.

Tim, played by Domhnall Gleeson, isn’t catapulting through embers on his way to Diagon Alley. He merely travels through his own life, changing his mind, his words and his actions.

Tim becomes most loveable when he uses his ability to benefit others, such as altering the course

of a playwright’s opening night.

I was most pleasantly surprised by the film’s actual core. The film becomes less about Tim and his love Mary, and more about Tim and his unnamed father (Bill Nighy).

Tim’s relationship with his father is one of the most moving aspects of this film.Tim’s father teaches him the ultimate lesson to live each day twice.

Once without seeing any of its beauty, and then again, seeing all of life’s little splendours.

It teaches us to see everything through the best lens and be the best version of ourselves.

Written and directed gracefully, About Time is reportedly the last film Curtis will direct.

It is a wonderful farewell. •

CAMILLA BRANDFIELDHARVEY

RUSH: THE GLAMOUR AND TRAGEDY OF F1 I LOVE Formula One. I love the cars, the personalities and the races.

I love the history, and therefore it was almost inevitable that I would love Rush, a new film directed by Ron Howard charting the historic 1976 F1 season and the legendary rivalry between top drivers, James Hunt and Niki Lauda.

These two excellent drivers, Hunt played by Chris Hemsworth and Lauda played by the little known but well regarded actor Daniel Brühl, are shown as having a tumultuous relationship that spurs both of them on to ever greater risks on the track, despite the horrific safety record of F1 at the time.

It is the risk of death that accompanied F1 during the ‘70s that is the real driving force of the film, with Lauda commenting in the opening scene that F1 drivers were all desperate lunatics.

The special effects throughout the film illustrate these risks very well and are unbelievably realistic, I indeed found myself not breathing during the horrific scenes of

Lauda’s near fatal crash - a credit to Ron Howard’s excellent directing.

Niki Lauda himself has stated how impressed he was by the accuracy of the film, despite the fact that elements of his relationship with Hunt have been altered. Fundamentally, the rivalry between the two drivers has been exaggerated so as to make the conclusion, where both drivers acknowledge the respect they have for each other, more satisfying.

Howard chooses to accentuate the differences of the two men to make them into two halves of the same whole.

Lauda is secretly envious of Hunt’s ability to be liked.

However, Hunt is clearly trying to catch up with Lauda’s superior skill. In the end, Hunt finds validation by winning the championship and Lauda’s choosing love over racing is a romantic one, but avoids being clichéd.

Brühl’s skilled portrayal of the difficulties Lauda faces in choosing between the glorious highs but near-fatal lows of F1 and the love of his wife deserves particular praise,

especially in a film that is clearly centred on the playboy lifestyle of Hunt. I would be surprised if major award nominations are not on the horizon for this actor.

Hemsworth holds his own with his excellent portrayal of the charming but damaged Hunt, while a well-rounded supporting cast including Olivia Wilde and Pierfrancesco Favino also excel.

Rush has managed to emulate the award winning Senna (2010) in taking a relatively niche subject like F1 and making it accessible and interesting to not only the fans, but also the general public.

Ultimately, Rush is about friendship and rivalry, love and danger - universal themes played out over a historic season of one of the most dangerous sports in the world.

It is not only a thoroughly enjoyable story told by a fabulous director with star turns from the two leads, but it is also a fabulous throw back to a time when racing was dominated by personalities and a glamour that has largely been forgotten. •

WOODY ALLEN’S BLUE JASMINE WOODY Allen’s latest film to hit the screens is a tale of fall without redemption.

Cate Blanchett masterfully plays Jasmine, a fallen Manhattan socialite who is forced to flee to San Francisco in the wake of a financial scandal, where her exhusband (Alec Baldwin) is exposed as a conman.

Having fallen upon hard times, she moves in with her adopted sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins), who lives in a humble apartment with her two children.

Despite Jasmine’s desperate attempts at maintaining the appearance of wealth and decorum, the truth gradually unfolds as Allen darts back and forth between past and present, interlacing scenes of lavishness and excess with the dawning realities of a midlife meltdown, featuring Xanax pills and one too many martinis.

None of the critics have

failed to notice the parallels with Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire, which similarly boasts a fragile, self-deluded protagonist whose airs and graces wreak havoc in her sister’s home.

However, I feel that there is more to be said about Allen’s heroine and her blithe disregard for reality.

With the film’s undeniable references to the economic crash and the Madoff investment scandal, Jasmine can be interpreted as a modern day Marie Antoinette, who drives herself towards destruction without being aware of it.

Blue Jasmine is far from being Allen’s most likeable film. His protagonist is awful, pretentious and exhausting to be around.

It is impossible to empathise with a character who flies First Class - Louis Vuitton luggage in tow when she is completely broke.

However, watching Jas-

mine’s serial humiliation unfold, with her mascarasmeared eyes and sweatstained underarms, it becomes strikingly obvious that her life is a mess, and one cannot help but feel sorry for her.

Blanchett’s Oscar-worthy performance allows us to glimpse the fear, panic and vulnerability beneath Jasmine’s polished façade.

That sense of sympathy doesn’t last for long though, as the film is set up in such a way that the audience’s feelings for Jasmine can change from one minute to the next.

At the end of the day, it is not about whether you like Jasmine or not, in the same way that this film is not about whether Jasmine is complicit or not in her husband’s crimes.

Blue Jasmine is about a character’s disintegration as she spirals out of control; a tragedy without catharsis.

KYveli short

SOPHIE HAMMOND

LOVE LOST FOR LOVELACE LINDA Lovelace, despite only appearing in a handful of films, was one of the most famous porn actresses of all time.

Her starring role in the film Deep Throat, where the plot revolves around a woman whose clitoris is found to be in her throat, shot her to stratospheric levels of fame and kick-started the ‘Golden Age of Porn’.

Behind the scenes though, Linda

Boreman (her real name) revealed that her life had been an unending torment of abuse, rape and forced prostitution, all of which was exacted by her husband,Chuck Traynor.

The first half of the film (stylistically very similar to the excellent Boogie Nights) has what one may see as a typical rise-to-fame narrative.

Boreman (played by Amanda Seyfried) is a young woman with a

domineering mother and passive father. She meets Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard) while go-go dancing.

They marry quickly, move to New York, and she unwittingly auditions for what turns out to be the highest grossing porn film in history.

She is shot to the top of celebrity superstardom.

This scene concludes with Lovelace being unveiled at a gala screening of her film, seemingly happy and fulfilled.

The reality was really quite different.

The film then fast-forwards six years, to Boreman taking a polygraph test.

She has written a memoir about her life which pushes some extremely serious charges and the publishers want to ensure that it is all true.

A review of Lovelace is difficult; you have to review the film as a piece on its own, but you also have to review its adherence to the history of Linda Boreman’s life.

As a film by itself, it is a decent watch. Seyfried, who will forever be remembered as the nice-butdim Karen Smith from Mean Girls

(2004), is at her best in this role.

Peter Sarsgaard is suitably loathsome as her husband Chuck Traynor.

The film has a very 70s inflected look, and for people who are initially unaware of the true story behind Linda Lovelace, the trick of retelling the story halfway through may prove effective.

However, if you know the story of Linda Lovelace going into the film, I don’t feel there is anything to be gained from it.

After the publication of her memoir, Ordeal, Boreman became, perhaps unwittingly, a spokesperson for the anti-porn movement that was popular at the time.

The film appears to take the narrative stance that the porn industry was directly responsible for much of the abuse that Boreman suffered.

In reality, if Boreman’s memoir is to be believed, the porn industry was actually responsible for taking her our of the abusive relationship she endured.

The film omits the fact that she had

made porn films before Deep Throat. It omits too much detail, or worse, edits it, to be seen as a credible biopic.

I do not usually crave rigid adherence to fact when it comes to historical drama, but with a subject this sensitive, I feel it is necessary.

The fact is, the Linda Lovelace story is complex and cannot fit the traditional cinematic narrative this film tries to give it.

Some would argue that this is necessary to make it more palatable (if such a story can be made so) for mainstream audiences.

This may be true, as some of the things would be impossible to show.

But in doing so, it may have done a disservice to the true story.

Perhaps, ironically, the story of the biggest adult film star is something that can never be committed to film.

NICK BATLEY

FILM R OGUE

Music

THE KING’S RECORD CLASSICAL CENTRE LONDON has a wealth of classical music venues, but there are two that stand out for me.

I’m a big opera fan, and basically watch every opera that goes on at the Royal Opera House main stage. The theatre is massive and the architecture beautiful.

More importantly, ROH’s standard of performance is pretty much unparalleled (New York’s Met splurges more on sets, but the music here is phenomenal).

I’ve recently been dedicating some time to ballet as well, and I particularly enjoy the intimate modern productions at the Linbury Theatre.

The Barbican centre, on the other hand, is where I go for most symphonicand solo concerts, because the London Symphony Orchestra is brilliant and they tend to bring in every soloist I want to watch.

I had the privilege of attending performances by Elīna Garanča, Cecilia Bartoli and Renée Fleming last year, and they were all breathtakingly brilliant.

The best thing about Barbican is that it’s not just a concert area - there is usually a fascinating art exhibition somewhere in the centre, and occasionally there are flea markets too.

In terms of travel, the closest station to ROH is Covent Garden, and Barbican has its own tube station (but is also close to several other tube stops like St Paul’s and Farringdon).

As students, we obviously want to get the most affordable tickets possible. There’s a general misconception that tickets to operas and classical music concerts are

extravagant, but that’s not the case if you play it right.

When going to the Royal Opera House, make sure to take note of public booking days for each season and book your tickets immediately.

The £4 tickets disappear very quickly; they also do very good £12 standing tickets. Day standing tickets are available as well, if you’re willing to wake up really early to queue for them.

ROH is also making great changes to their Student Standby scheme, so it may soon be possible to get better seats for student prices. Demand is extremely high, though. For the Barbican, the LSO does a student scheme where £4 tickets are available for selected concerts. There’s also an app for iPhone & Android called Student Pulse which basically aggregates all discounted classical music tickets for students - you buy your tickets through the app with your Paypal account.

Otherwise, if you book online early, it is very possible to get tickets for £10-20. In terms of going out after, the Royal Opera house is in Covent Garden so there’s plenty to choose from, especially if you pop over to Soho nearby.

Also, you’re spoilt for choice for pre-show food. Shake Shack just opened an outlet in Covent Garden! Post-show at the Barbican, everything closes in the centre, but head out and there are lots of pubs and bars in the Farringdon area. If you’re early in the area before the concert, Dose Espresso does fantastic coffee! •

WHEN I listen to the sublime intro of Helicopter by Bloc Party, I wonder what King’s was like back in 1999 when their lead singer, Kele Okereke, studied English here.

When Bloc Party released their debut Silent Alarm, they sold over a million copies, which in my mind is as serious an achievement as anything among those of the alumnus.

It has been rightfully marked by Kele’s face being put into a window on the Strand Campus among the other pioneers displayed there.

So when I arrived at King’s a year ago, with a guitar in one hand and a synth in the other, I hoped that I would be jamming into the early hours, writing my magnum opus.

As the weeks since freshers’ passed and my synth collected dust the in corner, I realised this dream wasn’t the reality.

It was a disappointment, because like many people I would love to spend my life in the music industry, but higher education forces an element of realism upon us, and realistically having a career among other responsibilities after university, it will be too late to start a band.

I don’t think I am alone. I think there are plenty of people out there who would like to have a shot at

the big time before they are locked into the complexities of adulthood.

Despite this, there was no real scene or a formal place at the university for emerging musicians that I could find.

I realised it was all up to me. I looked at the other societies at KCL, and it seemed like that kind of setup would be a great thing to make use of, a platform for musicians.

It also had to be industry savvy and relevant, for what is really a very ambitious career path, no reservations.

A functional institution but with the freedom that true creativity requires.

Then I had the idea of starting The King’s Record.

The name came quickly, and it seemed like somewhat of a statement, because I knew it might cause initial confusion with the of-

ficial King’s Student Records, but at this point all I had in my head was the need to start a record label for King’s students.

It was easy to get started, with my friend Daisy from halls as administrator.

Last year after going through the motions of getting the society ratified, we had to think about what form it would take.

Initially I thought it might just be a society solely for musicians to meet other musicians.

I wanted to dream big, though, and having had limited success with the small number that had signed up halfway through the year, it was time at freshers’ fair to get as many people on board as possible.

As a society we have big aims beyond just getting musicians together, including a fortnightly single release, an end of year compilation album and a concert.

I am excited to see if this is achievable, whether the society will ever release anything meaningful or big enough to stand up to Bloc Party’s standard.

All I can ask you to do is watch this space, and in the meantime check out our first release, Swingers’by Slagcan. •

WilL KAY

RECORD TIMINGS, EH? LIVE @ NAMBUCCA, Holloway Road.

Sat 12th, 7:30PM

THE Brighton three-piece power blues troupe explode on to the London scene. Close and corporeal tales of living. Supporting Sweet Jonny.

LIVE @ BRIXTON O2 ACADEMY Wed 30th, 8:00PM

CALIFORNIAN sirens bring the black-hole sun to London for a night. A polished live act, tickets almost sold out so get in quick!

Michelle tan

REFLEKTOR (ALBUM RELEASE) Mon 28th

“As a society we have

big aims beyond just getting musicians together”

LIVE @ SCALA

Wed 23rd, 7:00PM

STORMING psychedelic duo bring their beats and synth-driven live set to London. Worth checking out before they hit the big time.

THE exciting new album release from the notoriously consistent band. After such a meteoric rise over the last few years, will they headline Glastonbury?

musicreviews.rogue@gmail.com

ROAR! AT BESTIVAL 2013

BESTIVAL is a success story, going from a smaller operation to hitting the big league in only ten years.

But has it retained its dignity?

The Isle of White is still a quiet holiday retreat, but as soon as one of its many festivals comes around, it’s a place that I’m sure usual residents would like a retreat from.

There is madness from the moment you step on to the ferry. Getting there by boat, it felt like we were crossing oceans rather than just the Solent.

I didn’t know what to expect on the other side.

Bestival is a sea of chemical-induced happiness, the reincarnation of the 90s rave scene mixed with a vibrant colour scheme.

Let’s put it this way, when a beautiful girl asks you desperately for a

line, you know you’re not fishing take a look into her fishbowl eyes.

When I finally got to the site on the Thursday, I was immediately surrounded by slurred voices, and strobes baptising the sky.

The party had by then plateaued at a peak which it miraculously retained for the rest of the next 90 or so hours, until the end of the event.

My first night experience was nothing odd: after using my press pass to have a quick snog with the giant inflatable Lionel Richie head in some kind of drunken haze, the last thing I can remember is lying paralytic on the floor outside the Big Top with “SLUT” written on my back.

Yet despite my unfortunate vantage point, I was still able to deduce that MIA’s late set was terrible.

Endless sub-bass drops marked

her entry into the long list of wannabe Beyoncés. More like a primary school DJ with too much attitude than the political warrior she used to be.

This concerned the then-debilitated me: what would the rest of the heavily sub-bass music at the festival bring?

Of course, there were big names this year, bigger than curators Rob and Josie da Bank have ever put on in previous years: try Elton John (whose classics set nodded it off in style) and Snoop Dogg.

Returning the balance though, the mornings were delicate, people sat in their comedowns on the characteristically nautical site, which is a bold challenge to Glastonbury’s Shangri La. Smaller acts like Lloyd Yates eased us back into the rhythms of the day-

time. Theirs was a mature set.

I had the privilege of speaking to Yates after, and he awakened me to the two-sided coin that Bestival is.

“I am friends with Rob da Bank in London,” he said. “I started this band when I found out my partner was pregnant, I was out in Mexico, and I knew I had to get back to England and just go for it. Make the band work. And Rob has been incredibly helpful.” You can tell from the endless list of spectacular DJ sets that Rob da Bank is firmly rooted in the dance music scene.

Yet in terms of live acts, the festival is still dedicated to a wealth of variety.

This means it retains its integrity as an honest platform for artists, while providing a world-beating end of summer party.

Most notable of the ample dance stages was The Port.

There stood an iron vessel amongst downtrodden fields, with blistering sets from the likes of Annie Mac Presents and Carl Cox. Pyro scorched thrills and a bellowing soundsystem.

The lineup was cleverly well-balanced. Spectacles like Wu-Tang Clan (I can confirm that they are indeed “nothing to fuck with”) and Chic, were held in the light, meaning you could go from watching big names to unknown bands with ease.

This was made more manageable by a medium-sized arena, relatively easy to get around.

Since getting bigger, bringing you everything all the time is what this festival has become about. It does it with style! •

Joe brookes

COCOROSIE LIVE @ OVAL SPACE

LAST Monday I went down to Oval Space, Hackney, to see the wonderfully eclectic Cocorosie, pioneers of ‘freak folk’.

A converted warehouse overlooking stunning gas-holders to the rear, Oval Space opened just last year as a venue dedicated to live music and performance art.

The fan demographic for Cocorosie was hard to pin down, but I finally decided that there was an almost hippy-but-not-quite-hipster vibe to it all.

TThe thing I like about Cocorosie is that they put energy into their performances as an art form, rather than just music.

The stage was riddled with various items, as if a dress-up box had exploded. On top of a chest of drawers was a rickety old mirror (oddly facing the audience), to the side a washing line of mismatched clothes, and on the floor indiscernible exotic instruments: organized chaos.

After much anticipation, the band entered wearing prison convict outfits.

From a visual point of view, we see four figures. There was Takuya,

wearing a sun hat and a green face, who plays keys and trumpet.

Beatbox Tez, fluorescent tears falling down his face, creating guttural noises and busy hip-hop beats.

Sierra, the elder of the Cassady sisters and trained as an opera singer at Paris Conservatoire, resembles an ethereal witch with long raven hair falling to the floor.

And finally Bianca, sporting a heavily exaggerated chola face-paint (angry eyebrows, dark lip liner) whose presence is intense and penetrative. hey opened with End of Time, comprising of a polarized texture: low drum machine bass contrast with high blaring synths.

The lyrics give you an insight into the sisters’ secret world: “The Babes/ The Guns/ The Waste/ The Punks/ I don’t need no human friends”.

The sisters believe in ‘Mother Earth’ and, although not at all Christian, sing “God, She speaks to me” in R.I.P. Appropriately, Sierra’s soaring melodies combined with her hand gestures towards the sky make out

as though she is speaking to a higher being.

As with many great artists, Cocorosie make their songs continuous in live performances, which allows the atmosphere to be retained.

Takuya plays spacey keyboard scales whilst both Sierra and Bianca get changed in front of the mirror.

Now wearing flowing white wedding dresses, they change their make-up to accommodate for the red lighting: Sierra looks like a ‘rainbow warrior’, her face enshrouded in neon colours, and Bianca has two simple war stripes across her cheeks.

Behind the sisters are psychedelic visual tessellations as they sing ‘After the Afterlife’.

Behind the sisters are psychedelic visual tessellations as they sing After the Afterlife.

Bianca’s infantile but haunting voice draws us in, with odd lyrics like “wet snails get wetter”. Her eyes are closed as if no one is watching her, but her face is in fact projected onto a screen behind in kaleidoscopic visions.

Beatbox Tez finally comes out of

the shadows and shows off his unbelievable talents. A cacophony of sound comes from one just his throat, with high clicks superimposed and thudding basslines down below.

As the room blackens, the crowd is surrounded by darkness.

Fragments of an old tape play a horse neighing- it’s the only noise piercing the silence.

Sierra emerges with an Arabian-inspired jeweled veil on her face; both visually and musically it is evident that Cocorosie are heavily influenced by oriental melodies and MiddleEastern fashions.

In Far Away, Sierra demonstrates her staggering vocal range and uses a looping device to record her effortless legato lines on top of one another- separated by the smallest of intervals, they all clash to form hauntingly beautiful harmonies.

Finally, she is joined by Bianca whispering “R.I.P. Humans”. This is classic Cocorosie: juxtaposing evocative hip-hop beats with ominous, hard-hitting truths about the society they live in,which is “ruled by the patriarchy”, as they say in a recent

Music

interview on feminism.

The two sisters are polar opposites on stage. Separated at an early age, Sierra is full of positive energy and bounces around with a child-like innocence, whereas Bianca is an introverted creative.

However, when they come together, an unusual ensemble of sound is created, always heartfelt and thought provoking.

Cocorosie finish with Werewolf, a longstanding favourite of mine.

For the first time, Bianca and Sierra interact with one another, singing “Ride into the sunset/Look back with no remorse”.

Cocorosie’s energy is hard to pinpoint in descriptive terms: otherworldly, emotionally raw and darkly spiritual.

As I have experienced, the only way to truly grasp the weird world in which their minds work is to see them live.

Only then can we understand the ‘secret garden’ in which their musical world grows and flourishes. •

oscar king

ARTS & THEATRE BORED OF THE BARD?

@Roar_Rogue artstheatre.rogue@gmail.com

Ah Shakespeare, the well loved English icon of brilliant drama. With productions all over London, both traditional and modern, Rogue is presenting you the flavours of Shakespeare you can experience around our capital city.

NAy my Lord

Ay, forsooth SHAKESPEARE is often remembered as the writer of timeless classics.

His plays transcend the eras in which they were written, still being relevant to modern theatregoers today.

Maybe this is why Nicholas Hynter’s reimaging of Othello works so well.

His vision of setting the play in the present day, changing the Medieval landscapes to the more familiar war zones we often see on the news is, at first, startling to any seasoned admirer of the bard’s work.

But to Hynter’s credit, the Elizabethan language never jars against the moving set pieces of suave government offices or the army camouflage costumes.

Instead, the English verse flows and mirrors the twenty-first century setting effortlessly.

Especially audacious is Hynter’s handling of the issue of social status.

In one spectacular scene when the overlooked senator, Brabantio, comes to castigate Othello for marrying his daughter, Hynter has the General Othello and his men dressed in slick suits and ties, while Brabantio’s set of hooligan-like followers are dressed in illfitting chinos and creased polo shirts.

Equally brilliant is Hynter’s cast. Adrian Lester is extraordinary in the titular role.

His stage presence is remarkable, being strong and stark in the earlier moments and then suddenly crude and unhinged as Othello succumbs to Iago’s plans in the final acts of the play.

Rory Kinnear as Iago commands the audience just as his character commands the rest of the characters on stage.

His East London twang adds a certain quirkiness, eliciting an electric mix of laughter and fear from the spectators.

Olivia Vinall brings strength and courage to

Desdemona, moving away from the common characterisation of Shakespeare’s heroine being a fragile and vulnerable young girl.

Broadchurch’s Jonathan Bailey gets the chance to show of his impressive acting range as Cassio, while Lyndsey Marshal is underwhelming as the feisty Emilia, becoming drowned by the tremendous acting talent sharing the stage with her.

Hynter’s decision to tamper with Shakespeare’s original conception of the play should be applauded, if only for the way the director assertively takes risks without damaging the source material.

As the story comes hurtling towards its tragic climax, one realises how much incredible talent fills the stage in this production and how important Hynter’s re-imaging of the story is in adding a touch of originality to this classic tale.

When his time as director of the National Theatre ends in 2015, it will be a difficult task for his successor to fill his shoes.

MOOR or less.

Othello doesn’t end well, but this contempory production at the Olivier Theatre doesn’t start well either, with Rory Kinnear (Iago) reprising his father Roy’s blokeney accent, to jeer at Brabantio’s window.

“An old black ram tupping your white ewe” works when set midMed long ago. But here in 21st century Britain, the scene is both racist and ridiculous.

And so this “circumcised dog” of a production hobbles on, with Desdemona (Olivia Vinall) pandemonic in urchinchic pedal pushers and grubby plimsolls, a flirty kid, coquetting round her gentle Obamaish General (Adam Lester).

His joy in his pretty new blonde bride is soon soured by scheming, despicable Iago, lumbering in Estuary “O! beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-ey’d monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on”.

The only time his Corporal thuggishness feels right is when he suckers Cassio into the fight that becomes a mess-room brawl.

With restlessness, as the scenes unfold,

othello NICK VIRK

comes the realisation that Nicholas Hytner’s Gangland-style boot-camp is never going to fly.

Nor does the music (ugly discords off) help soften Vicki Mortimer’s set. Harsh neon in an army portacabin frames the action, to become (cleverly) Desdemona’s council house bedroom. But surely not? Desdemona’s dad is a nobleman, not a dustman. Try as they might, Othello unravelling in Bardic prose and transplanted into modern fatigues, fatigues the audience. Even crazed by revenge, this Iago never wins the loathing that theatre lovers have for villains, even though Iago is the greatest of them all.

It didn’t need to be so. Kinnear and Lester are such fine actors, but not under this direction. Their unconvincing grappling would never happen now. Blubbing Othello in command of an army jars for the audience, and the interval comes not a moment too soon.

Then, at the warning gong, the sudden insight that to sit through Round Two could be one tragedy avoided. Leave the Moor “to die upon a kiss”. Instead, ponder at the bar,whether setting Othello in our present isn’t a military blunder? Hytner leaves all too soon.

He needs to put this right before he goes.

JOHN STONBOROUGH Although Othello is ending on 5 October, the National Theatre’s Hamlet with Kinnear in the titular role will be screened live at King’s (Arts & Humanities festival) for part of the NT’s 50th anniversary. Anatomy Lecture Theatre – 22 October – 19.00-22.00, tickets are £10 and include a free glass of wine.

ARTS EDITOR, JESSICA’S VERDICT: Othello didn’t blow me away like I wanted it to. I just didn’t gel with the modern setting and Kinnear’s ‘I’m Daaaany-Faaaackin’-Dyaaa’ cockney accent - can’t put my finger on why, but I just didn’t click with the production. For me, star of the show was Lyndesy Marshall as Emilia. Stonkingly Good. Tom Robertson as Roderigo was also a glimmer of light relief in an otherwise disjointed show.

@jessmoffattowen

a midsummer night’s dream

By Jessica Moffatt-Owen APPROACHING the Noel Coward theatre, I was excited - Sheridan Smith and David Walliams in the same production?

I had an inkling it was going to be a bit of alright.

What I wasn’t prepared for was actually laughing out loud, hysterically, by myself (bit awkward but I couldn’t restrain myself).

Walliams as Bottom was sheer joy - outrageously camp in his ‘relationship’ with Peter Quince and embodying a ‘theatrical type’ - arrogant, bossy and proud. A com-

bination made for a Shakespearean comedy.

Smith as Titania is a sex machine, overtly sensual and insatiable, her relationship with Bottom is one of sassiness and sauciness - and of course, he’s an ass: cue raucous laughter.

One moment that I think will be permanently etched upon my retina is Walliams with enormous, scruffy, flopping ears persistently thrusting, and a bare legged Sheridan Smith, while her cackle of pure filth reverberates around the theatre. Bizarre, but hilarious.

Are you thinking this production sounds like it could be any old production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream?

Think again. Michael Grandage has set the play in the hedonistic era of the 60s or 70s, and seems to embody the ethos of sex (so much sex, between all the lovers’ trysts: Lysander, Helena, Hermia and Demetrius all run about in their underwear for the majority of the performance), drugs (so many spliffs being smoked in the fairies’ den of iniquity) and rock’n’roll (or

rather, songs inspired by the musical Hair).

Highlight? The side-splittingly funny ‘play-within-the-play’ - Walliams excels himself, but combined with Craig Vye as Snug the Joiner and Henry Everett as Tom Snout, I have never openly laughed so hard. Nearly spilt my red wine and everything.

For the ladies: both Paidraic Delaney (Oberon) and Gavin Fowler (Puck) conduct their mischievous match-making and plot orchestration bare chested, providing plenty of eye candy.

Overall? Shakespeare has been made sexy.

Seriously, seriously sexy. I came away thinking it was a bloody nearon faultless production and can’t recommend it enough.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Noel Coward Theatre, until 16th November, with limited daily £10 tickets.

Lee Watkins interviewed Katherine Kingsley (Helena) and Stefano Braschi (Demetrius) for Rogue...

Lee: How do you do deal with the language? Shakespeare is notoriously difficult.

Katherine: When it’s done well, when you’re listening in rehearsal to people who are doing it well, it doesn’t feel difficult or hard to understand.

I think if the actor absolutely knows what they’re saying and has the ability to facilitate it, it becomes quite effortless actually.

Stefano: It should be effortless, which isn’t always the same as cutting the edges off to make it sound more like what you would say. You just need to know where the thought’s coming from and if the actor knows and is doing it comfortably and naturally, that you can read.

L: I’d be interested to hear your take on the crazy behaviour that happens. It’s

a bit psychotic [for Helena] to pursue [Demetrius, who is pursuing Hermia] into the woods, isn’t it?

K: That’s what love does, isn’t it?

It does make people behave in a not necessarily sane way. Helena is driven by her heart.

S: Love is so crazy that even the fairies, who are in pretty good control of the humans, get a bit ahead of themselves and get it wrong.

L: What is different about this production from previous productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream? It’s a very popular play and I’d love to hear about what you’ve done differently with it.

K: It’s a quite physical production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Also the music, with the Ringham brothers doing the music and the set designers… it’s really quite amazing. The elements of that are going to be really cool.

S: It’s not going to be people in electric suits doing interpretive dance or anything like that!

Read the full interview online at roarnews.co.uk

JOIN THE CIRCUS OF HORRORS: COMPETITION TIME! THE Circus of Horrors storms into London’s Lyric Theatre with what is undoubtedly its greatest show to date. The show that smashed into the finals of Britain’s Got Talent is back with an awe-inspiring rock ‘n’ roller-coaster of a show that flies like a bat out of hell to celebrate an astounding 18 years of shock ‘n’ roll.

The story twists and turns through five murders committed at various London landmarks, each one becoming more and more horrific - all intermingled with some of the greatest, most daring, bizarre & beautiful circus acts on earth.

There’s a great sense of the familiar when you encounter Richard Serra’s work, which I feel I can say, despite the fact I’ve only encountered it once – when I wheezed up the glorious marble steps of the Courtauld to Room 8. Here, Richard Serra has made a series of what the critics are calling “extraordinary” drawings housed in a special installation for our Strand next door neighbour.

He seems familiar, perhaps, because his large-scale, often steel sculptures (for which he is most famous) pop up in cities across the world. These stacked towering sheets and reddening ellipses that seem to make a god of industry aren’t just in galleries, but often appear as environmental art, accessible to the public.

One such piece is Fulcrum, built in 1987 at Liverpool Station, 55ft of Cor-Ten steel and what might be the biggest communal thing for local city boys to not give a damn about pissing on, aside from our economy.

Champagned up bankers incapable of finding a nearby toilet aside, Richard Serra is widely renowned and appreciated for these works, without question inspired by his time working in the ship yards of San Francisco, although his drawing and video work is also fêted.

This new exhibition at the Courtauld is, however, a departure from all of his previous work, in that he has invented an entirely new technique. Reading the confusing annotation at the door of the room and by pestering one of the attendants in the gallery, I found out that Serra uses sheets of a new type of plastic (Mylar- it looks a bit like Acetate) and melted, black litho crayon with which he coats two sheets, then

What year was The Circus of Horrors born?

‘Like the Rocky Horror show on acid’ – Amanda Holden ‘Bloody good night out’ – The Times

A) B) C)

The Circus of Horrors is not suitable for children as it contains some nudity and bad language.

Richard Serra Phillipa Swallow tells us about Serra’s new exhibit at Strand’s next door neighbour, the Courtauld Gallery.

You could win a pair of tickets to come and see The Circus of Horrors at the Lyric Theatre in London. To be in with a chance of winning, just answer the following question correctly.

From sword swallowers to daredevil balancing acts… From hair hangers to demon dwarfs… From a pickled person to astounding aerial acts…

All performed with a forked tongue firmly in each cheek by an almighty cast, to the devil-driven rock ‘n’ roll of Dr Haze & The Interceptors from Hell.

presses both against a clear sheet and uses a stylus to scrape the reverse side, before peeling away the outer layers to give the final image.

The result is something so surprisingly myriad, what the curator describes as a “visual complexity and uncertainty”, partly because of this layer we never see, which lies flat against the wall. There is a texture in each drawing that is truly groundbreaking. It seems to evoke so many things at once: lichen, an oil slick, diamonds, mascara, a cliff face, velvet. For all their simplicity, they have that same powerful, compelling property of Anish Kapoor’s textural work,

Email your answer to: arts. artstheatre.rogue@gmail.com Full Terms and Conditions on roarnews.co.uk

19 September 2013 – 12 January 2014 Free for KCL students 10-6pm every day.

“What might be the biggest communal thing for local city boys to not give a damn about pissing on, aside from our economy.”

the desire to reach out and understand better what the eye thinks it sees.

The shapes conjure images like Rorschach tests; you can see tombstones, gasometers, Babi Yar, beasts in the blackness. You see everything and nothing, infinity and the void, the industrial and the organic. Our faces are reflected in multifaceted reflective surfaces of the wax, in the plastic.

This exhibit is quite accessible (especially if you’re on the Strand campus) and digestible (there are only 12 paintings), Serra seems to allow for this interaction whether

HAPPY REDOUBT ROBOT RACING

1994 1995 1998

his work is hanging in front of you or over you.

I came across his curling sculpture The Matter of Time in the Guggenheim Bilbao without knowing anything about him or it, a massive sprawling thing where you can hide and run (and frighten Spanish teenagers by hiding round corners and jumping out unexpectedly if you want to), touching the rusting patina of the steel, engaging how you please.

Having said that, one of his works got graffitied with lipstick recently and he didn’t like that so much, so best not to do it. I find his work has such appeal from staggering sculptures that, like ocean liners, cut through the conscious inspiring ore - to these simply complex drawings hanging right next door.

Also Sunday Tours From Cézanne to Serra: Pushing Boundaries and Challenging Conventions Sunday 22 and 29 September, 2, 6 and 13 October 2013, 15.00 - 15.45

THE BEST OF THE REST

KING’S ARTS & HUMANITIES FESTIVAL

Part of the Arts and Humanities Festival at King’s.

Suggested by: William Jellis River Room – 16 October – 20.00-21.00 What a name for an event!

Surely this is reason alone to go along! Literally, there will be racing robots, RACING ROBOTS! This event is open to all but booking is required. In order to book, go online to the Arts and Humanities Festival page on the King’s website.

Willam Jellis’ top pick.

Drawing Life

Anatomy Lecture Theatre – 17 & 18 October.

Whether you fancy yourself as a bit of an art guru, or if you are a complete novice (like me), this event is guaranteed to be a good time. Essentially it is a life drawing class, but what is particularly exciting is that the class will be led by Dilip Sur, who teaches at the Royal College of Art, exhibits at the Grosvenor Gallery in London, and collaborated with the King’s research project on John Berger. I mean, unless your uncle is Damien Hirst, how often do you get the chance to paint alongside an internationally respected artist?

There will be three life drawing sessions during the Festival:17 October 2013 – (14.30 – 17.00), 18 October 2013 – (15.00 – 17.30 & 18.30 – 21.00) This event is open to all but booking is required. In order to book, go online to the Arts and Humanities Festival page on the King’s website.

GHOSTS

Suggested by: Ali Pantony Where? Rose Theatre, Kingston When? Until 12th October How much? Varying, but with student concession tickets What? Ibsen classic, remodelled

by Stephen Unwin and inspired by artist Edvard Munch.

Read Ali’s full review online

BLUE STOCKINGS

Suggested by: Camilla BrandfieldHarvey Where? Globe, Southbank When? Until 11th October How much? 700 £5 tickets for every performance What? A struggle for a female’s right for education.

Read Camilla’s full review online

Discover more about the display and our permanent collection in these talks led by Courtauld academic Dr Katie Faulkner.

Free with admission.

Phillipa Swallow

Tweet your Rogue Instagrams to: @Roar_Rogue

ARTS & THEATRE

@sfairbairn7

18 ROAR! careers@roarnews.co.uk

QUESTIONNAIRE BEAR We ask Fiona Richardson - Careers consultant, Bich Tran - Information Manager (at King’s Careers & Employability), Louise Honey - Careers consultant, Sabrina Duggan - Deputy Head of KC&E, Karen Gui - Careers consultant (with the Dicksoon Poon School of Law) for some tips.

WHAT IS THE BEST CAREER ADVICE YOU’VE EVER HAD? “Many people with amazing careers will confess to having had no career plan to speak of, but they seize every opportunity presented to them.

Attending a careers fair can lead to an internship, volunteering can lead to a job offer,having the guts to go up to the CEO of a brand you admire could lead to an interview, standing in for your boss at a conference could give the opportunity to meet your next employer, etc, etc.

Some people just seem to be in the right place at the right time; grasping opportunities maximises the chances of you being one of

STUDENTS’ MOST SERIOUS MISTAKE FOR THEIR CAREERS?

those people.” Fiona Richardson “I would say that the best advice I have been given is “if you don’t know then just ask”.” Bich Tran “Don’t do a job for the money, as it is likely you won’t have time to spend it!” Louise Honey “When under time pressure or feeling overwhelmed by your to-do list and at a loss as to what the next step should be, ask yourself, “What am I trying to achieve?” – that usually inspires an effective solution or way forward. This question transfers very well to the subject of career-planning as well.” Karen Gui

“It’s hard to be competitive in the graduate market if all you have of interest on your CV is your academics. Do other things while you are at university that you can talk about. It doesn’t even matter much what those other things are, go with what your heart, mind and circumstances dictate.” Fiona Richardson “From experience, a common mistake that students often make is leaving things until the last minute ... Getting into teaching without relevant experience

HOW CAN STUDENTS DEAL WITH MORE COMPETITION IN THEIR FIELDS? “The short answer to this is work experience, work experience, work experience is what gives the competitive edge.”

Fiona Richardson “Employers look for evidence from students to show that they are doing more than just attend lectures, eat and sleep. Active participation with the Students’ Union, societies/clubs, sports etc. will help students to stand out.” Bich Tran “Make sure they are taking

advantage of all of the opportunities available to them while at university.” Louise Honey “Stay competitive. That means you need to be aware of what ‘exceptional’ looks like for your preferred job, and work to be it. You’ll almost always need a good mix of knowledge, professional skills and commercial awareness to stand up against the best; meaning you must do well in your course, you must develop your employability and you must

understand commercial impact.”

Sabrina Duggan “By investing time in thinking about and exploring different career options, using the College Careers Service, increasing self-awareness (can be done with the help of the Careers Service), thoroughly researching the employer, and learning how to SELL themselves in the best light possible (without lying!) to the prospective employer.” Karen Gui

WHAT MAKES STUDENTS STAND OUT? “The students who stand out are those with passion. No matter what field you are aiming for, if you can speak enthusiastically about what you have done in the past and what you want to do in the future, and your CV evidences this enthusiasm, then I would

make a bet that you are on to a winner.” Fiona Richardson “The ones with the most interesting stories – where they had been , who they had met, what they had done and most importantly what they had learnt.” Louise Honey

“Passion, enthusiasm, tenacity, resilience, proactivity, responsibility (for their own wants and needs) and a great smile.”

Sabrina Duggan “They listened to my advice AND applied it, thereby securing the jobs they wanted!” Karen Gui

is almost impossible. Similarly with large accountancy, banking and finance companies, it would be difficult if you haven’t had relevant work experience or completed an internship.” Bich Tran “It will always depend on their own circumstances and restraints, but in general most things can be rectified or thought of as a positive rather than a negative. The main thing that will lead to difficulties for them would be having little or no work experience. Employ-

ers are increasingly looking for skills developed outside of the academic setting as these are the things that tend to set students apart from each other.” Louise Honey “Taking a course/job because it’s what their parents want/ friends do - rather than because it’s what they really want to do.”

Sabrina Duggan “Doing what other people say they should do/study without taking responsibility for the decision by doing their own research and thinking on the

WHEN’S THE BEST TIME TO GO FOR A CAREERS SERVICE CONSULTATION? “Come to careers and employability for a consultation when you feel ready. The earlier you come, the more opportunity you will have to engage with the careers events we run and make use of our services, such as Step internships.” Fiona Richardson “The earlier the better, as this will give students plenty of time to research, plan and take the necessary actions to achieve their goals/ aspirations.” Bich Tran “In your first year!” Louise Honey “Anytime! However, the earlier you make contact the more

opportunities you’ll have to use the service to help you progress.

We see a lot of people in their final year and they always say they wish they’d engaged with us earlier, so they could have benefited even more.” Sabrina Duggan “Right at the very start of the first year at university! Even if you haven’t got a clue about what you want to do, the Careers Service can equip you with resources and methods to start exploring. It takes time to investigate and think about different career options, so the sooner a student starts, the better.” Karen Gui

WHAT ARE THE MAIN MISCONCEPTIONS? “The main misconception that I have encountered among students is that you just need to do well in your chosen degree in order to get good graduate jobs. It helps to do well but employers are looking at a range of factors, not just academic achievements.” Bich Tran “Yes. You can never really know what a job will be like until you’ve experienced it, however there is a lot you can do to form an accurate picture of what it might be like. Seek out opportunities to take up part-time work, intern-

ships, shadowing, network, attend industry events and talk with people in the know. King’s C&E have a programme packed with ways to engage with employers and CCs work closely with departments to do the same, so make sure you find out what’s going on in your area.”

Sabrina Duggan “Yes! That’s why it’s important to do Vacation Schemes or other work experience to understand the reality of what they want to get into.” Karen Gui

‘WITHOUT VOLUNTEERS WE’D BE BORED, DRUNK AND FAT’ BEN JUDGE IS WHEN walking around the freshers fair in the Barbican Centre, it was truly amazing to see the number of societies and sports clubs present at KCL.

There was simply everything one could think of. Let us also not forget the GKT Freshers’ Fair, which offered even more spice in the great anastomosis of student activities.

The day before the fair began, the people who I consider to be the great voluntary heroes and heroines of King’s, flocked to the Barbican Centre in an ark style procession so constant that Noah himself would have been proud.

In came the Presidents, the Treasurers and the Secretaries

with all manner of implements some even had burly, blue bikes.

And there, set in amongst the Barbican Centre bunker, emerged the Freshers’ Fair.

I passionately believe societies and clubs should be an integral part of a student’s experience.

KCLSU believes them to be so important that they are called the “life blood” of King’s College London (KCLSU Strategy, p.5). There are three main reasons.

Outsourced service Firstly, students can access activities, skills and opportunities that KCL and KCLSU will never be able to provide. It would be frankly impossible, not to men-

VICTORYOUS

tion financially unviable, to employ rugby coaches, baking teachers and shooting instructors all under one roof at KCLSU. Inadvertently, societies and clubs are an outsourced service.

They allow for all manner of sporting and non-sporting activities to take place.

Furthermore, societies and clubs allow all 4,000 individuals who participate in them to put into practice skills such as leadership, creativity and project management - arguably more so if you are on the committee.

This is not something your degree allows you to do.

It’s phenomenal that students alone are responsible for managing and running these organisations, let alone gaining sponsor-

To find out more about volunteering at King’s visit kclsu.org/volunteering

ship, organising matches and attracting high calibre speakers.

The transferable skills one gets from running a club or society are endless.

Pillars of our university Lastly, the stereotypical image of rowing, debating or lacrosse only being played or practised in independent schools, and deemed to be available to only those at such schools, is wiped out.

University creates a seemingly open playing field where everything is accessible.

You just need the motivation to participate.

I passionately believe that everything possible should be

done to support these pillars of our university community.

But instead, societies and clubs are hindered by inefficient room booking systems, disproportional funding and training which frankly needs improvement.

Those who run societies and clubs should be thanked endearingly and supported in their efforts to the hilt.

Without them, we would end up bored, drunk and fat, sitting in a Fleet Street pub sucking London Pride through a straw.

Societies add the pièce de résistance to King’s. • Ben Judge is the Chair of King’s College London Conservative Society

20 ROAR!

politics@roarnews.co.uk

CARING ABOUT HEALTHCARE Michael Di Benedetto

SUNDAY 29 September saw 50,000 people march through the centre of Manchester in defence of the NHS. Under the guise of austerity, the public healthcare system is facing real term cuts and the threat of on-going marketization and privatisation.

The demonstration, made up of anti-cuts organisations, trade unions and student groups, was spirited. KCLSU sent a delegation of 20 students. Sebaastian Debrouwere, President of KCLSU, explains more: “Our core function as a Students’ Union is to represent our student body and empower them to get their voices heard. Taking part in the NHS demo in Manchester allowed us to speak up on behalf of the students who are being targeted by the Government’s frivolous NHS levy proposals.

“The proposal, that non-EU students pay a levy of £200 per year to access NHS treatment, only adds to the financial burden felt by international students. At a university like King’s, with a large international population, this levy would have a damaging impact on our community.

It would become a less inclusive, less dynamic place to study. Cuts to the NHS also affect our medical students, many of whom travel from across the world to study at Guy’s. The government proposals amount to a double whammy for those students.

“The day itself was really successful and we got our message across as part of a wider national movement, which included many other students' unions and the National Union of Students. It was great to see a solid turnout from King’s and an impressive 50,000 strong crowd from across the UK. Further, the atmosphere at the demonstration was one of firm but empathic opposition, but also of joy and celebration for the great accomplishments of the NHS in the past 60+ years.” There were no arrests, and further demonstrations are planned. •

IS SYRIA ANOTHER IRAQ?

Tamara Juburi

THE debate regarding intervention in Syria is at a standstill.

The suffering of the Syrian people is a tragedy which the UN estimates has cost over 120,000 lives.

However, jumping to the conclusion that this situation merits the use of force is, within the UK, much less convincing now than it was in the case of Iraq a decade ago.

Over many years, we have seen this quest for global human rights as a tool used by “western” powers to impose their ideology on countries with an innocent population and an undemocratic government. The injustice lies in seeing “western” civilisation as the natural habitat of individual freedom and political democracy.

It seems that following the disastrous attack on Iraq, the idea of humanitarian intervention has been sullied forever.

If the Iraq war is even partly explained as a humanitarian intervention, it could be devastating for people in need of future rescue. Above all, the situation in Iraq did not meet the criteria of the responsibility to protect. If anything, it was in itself a breach of human rights.

The occupation of Iraq left the country a shadow of its former self - with its industry, army and unity crippled beyond repair. The consequences of the illegal war continue to haunt the international community, particularly the US. This year marked the official end of the war, as US troops withdrew their last remaining soldiers. In their place now stands a pseudo democratic-government, under the rule of Prime Minister Nouri

Al Maliki. Although on the surface this appears to be hopeful, the reality is that very little is being done to secure Iraq’s economic and political future.

We should know better. Before any action is taken in Syria, it is of paramount importance that there is a clear goal at the end of it. The goal should be the wellbeing of Syrians, rather than a polit-

tions in order to be justified, ensuring that the people of a state are cooperative with peacekeeping efforts and that action taken is legal. A neutral intervention, via the UN, is the only way to ensure that no specific states attempt to mould Syria into what suits their own interests.The process of intervention is a long one, as within the Responsibility

ical manoeuvre in favour of the invading states. The use of chemical weapons, no matter who is using them, is inexcusable in this day and age. However, the desire to help the civilian population will not be achieved through military action. If this concern was the sole purpose of taking action, the world would respond by providing Syria with medical aid, rather than weapons to fuel the already burning fire within the nation. In a bid to end the conflict between two evils, the biggest mistake would be to introduce a third one.

Furthermore, the situation in a state must meet the criteria of the United Na-

to Protect lies the responsibility to create a sustainable and sovereign state, where human rights are a priority. Kofi Anan captures this perspective in saying that “Humanitarian intervention is only ever justified when the international community’s commitment to peace is just as strong as its commitment to war - as it requires no less skill, no less sacrifice and no fewer resources than the war itself.” In the meantime however, the Syrian people continue to try and escape the chaos that is overwhelming their country, many escaping, ironically, to Iraq. •

FIGHTING FOR THE MIDDLE GROUND Agatha Cantrill READERS of any news outlet, from The Times to Buzzfeed, are all likely to have a view now regarding the current government shutdown taking place across the USA and their territories.

The global media has been so exposed to widely differing and contentious viewpoints on the same issue that opinion permeates through the borders of the news story – generating ‘fact’ along the way.

Due to the international interest in this debate, every media outlet has seemed to have latched on to an aspect of the argument and run with it.

This has led to confused and mixed messages which, if all taken on face value, would seem like we’re experiencing different government shutdowns simultaneously.

Controversy has reigned for some time now over the manner in which the media treat the different parties.

British news outlets, typically siding with the Obama administration over the distinctly less relatable views of extreme Republican

party, portray the Republican Senate’s actions as holding the government to ransom in order to deny healthcare to its poorest citizens.

While this may appear inexplicable within the British populace currently coming out in force against cutbacks in our own healthcare, to many Americans, the concept of government interference in the health of their citizens is incomprehensible.

That’s the core dilemma, one which the international media is wrestling with.

In spite of what British politicians would have you believe whilst designing party conferences to distinguish themselves from the other parties, these distinctions come down – primarily – to implementation.

However, for American politics, the ideology takes centre stage.

This is not a question of ‘tweaking’ a policy, of compromise.

American politicians are not meeting in the middle but, rather, shouting across an ideological chasm.

In a speech held at the White House on Tuesday, Obama concisely illustrated what he felt

the Republicans were doing: “They’ve shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans.

“In other words, they demanded ransom, just for doing their job.”

Such a statement, while true in essence, oversimplifies what has become a much greater issue within the American system of governance.

The two-party state has demanded that, no matter who is in power, a significant portion of society do not feel that their views are adequately represented.

In shutting down government services, the extreme end of the Republican Party has made sure that, at least for their voters, more voices are now being heard.

It remains still very unlikely that the Affordable Care Act will be repealed in the wake of this shutdown and it wouldn’t take a desperately astute Tea Party member to have pointed this out last week.

It has already passed both the House and a viewing in the Senate, received approval from the Supreme Court and is currently being implemented across the country.

Therefore, it would be indefensibly short-sighted for the Republican-run Senate to shut down almost their entire public sector solely in a bid to repeal it.

This shows that, while clinging to quantifiable and factual reasoning for their actions, their real gripe runs far deeper than any singular bill.

Such deeply ideological arguments are rarely covered with such scrutiny in the media because they lead us into that ‘grey area’ between fact and opinion.

However, while navigating the middle ground may conclude in a wary, innocuous compromise, what has been highlighted in the Republican’s actions is the anxiety of those feeling unrepresented in politics and being forced to take policy to extremes.

The lingering long-term question from this crisis is not whether or not Obamacare will be implemented, but, rather, whether 320 million people can really be represented by two major parties.

ROAR! 21 features@roarnews.co.uk TWO RIP-ROARING ARTICLES BY ANONYMOUS WRITERS

KCLSU: SUPPORT YOUR SOCS Anonymous MANY words have been used to describe society presidents over the years. These have changed from “dull” to “riveting” or “sinister” to “angelic”, or even simply “the boyfriend of the last president”, according to who you talk to.

Despite the Jekyll and Hydeesque opinion of them, I expected the presidents would be best placed to discuss the ins and outs of their societies – or at least some would be.

I took the opportunity to meet some of the individuals lucky enough to be able to call themselves ‘el presidente’.

Every year the existence of societies at King’s is taken for granted.

It is only when the occasional society collapses, due to the weak efforts of an individual who “only wanted to run for president because they were a CV whore”, that students stop for a moment and question the support societies get from KCLSU and the college.

However, this feeling soon subsides during the next social, as you chug either your 4th or 5th Kirin Ichiban (the fine Japanese beer now featured at Waterfront).

After forcing myself to stick to

3 Kirin Ichibans, I made my way across to meet my first of four so-

This year’s freshers signing up to societies at the Barbican Centre. ciety presidents: the Finance Society President, Olivia Linssen.

The Finance Society is certainly strong, it had 150 paying members in 2012/13, and has relations with Morgan Stanley, Price Waterhouse Cooper, and Procter and Gamble to name a few.

Olivia made it clear that the Finance Society exists due to a large interest from the student body, but also because of the support it gains from external companies.

It seems that Finance Society does not gain its strength from financial or administrative support from the College

or KCLSU, something many would have taken for granted.

Olivia was of the opinion that KCLSU are a cumbersome intermediary between our society and our sponsors.

When quizzed on how KCLSU were “cumbersome”, this reporter discovered that “the processing could be a lot faster”.

Olivia’s response did not quench my thirst for answers, so I ran off to meet with Jacob White, the third year president of Geography Society.

Straight away Jacob was giving me answers where I only had clues.

“They generally ignore us” were Jacob’s first words, soon followed by the damning statement that the Union was “unnecessary and slow.”

Jacob sparked debate further by suggesting there was an “inevitability” in societies becoming incestuous.

However, unlike with Finance Society, the Geography department offer a support network that many other societies dream of.

The department organises careers events for the Geography Society and provides food and wine where needed.

Jacob described the support the society gets from the department as “enthusiastic and dedicated”.

Despite this positivity, Geography Society is clearly in a transitional period after “things fell apart last year”.

So, on I trudged, making my way across Waterloo Bridge

Our message to KCLSU: take care of your socs! to meet with the English Society President Elena Gillies in the Franklin Wilkin’s Library.

Elena admitted almost immediately that “societies can be incestuous” without a question being asked.

For a society with 223 paid members, I assumed the search for committee members would be cast wide,

Elena’s honesty was refreshing.

The English Society continues to exist due to the support of a KCLSU grant and “a really very good” department.

This existence is a flourishing one, with the Society organising a trip to Ireland, releasing the journal Of Cabbages and King’s, and recently hosting a vastly successful poetry night.

Up next was Louise Turtle, the History Society President, and the head of the society pursuing perhaps the best cause seen by an academic society.

The History Society organises an outreach programme, through William Jellis. This outreach programme supports students at schools and helps them to aspire to King’s and beyond.

It is clear the support offered by the departments at KCL offer a safety net. It is also important to recognise KCLSU does seem to ground society presidents well, with its training and on campus presence.

However, if there is one lesson I learnt from meeting these BNOCs (big names on campus), it was that KCLSU needs to be more proactive and use the societies to bring campuses and students together. •

CASUAL SHAGGERS FLOCK TO DIGITAL HOTBED

SEX APP Anonymous

NOT long ‘out of the closet’, I arrived in London a year ago fairly wide-eyed about the gay culture surrounding the city.

Since then, much has changed in my life. A city of this size allows one the opportunity to truly learn of one’s independence, promising a sense of liberation.

You can take over your own fate, carve your own life, and become your own person.

Gay life has been an infamous subculture in London for years, with Hampstead Heath notably having had George Michael prowl through the woods, hunting for his next sexual fix (as caught by the wildlife photographers of the now defunct News of the World).

Clapham Common is another known outdoor place in which gay men can openly engage in sexual acts at night, away from society’s disdainful eyes.

Today, however, gays aren’t sidelined from society and forced outdoors.

We now have Grindr, an app that works as a literal gaydar that allows us to explore the gay world from our own homes, without any of the ‘straight’ bits in between.

You may recall it was introduced to a baffled Britain by Stephen Fry on Top Gear in 2010.

Grindr creates a world devoid of heterosexuality, a purely gay universe where sex is the norm.

So amid the excitement of freshers’ and moving into a new room and a new life, out of all that gay London had to offer, opening Grindr to an unadulterated city of bankers, lawyers and businessmen was something that excited me most.

The app’s logo of a black skull on an orange background, however, should be taken as a warning, as Grindr can quickly flush your morals down the drain.

Anyone who says that their only intentions with the app are to make friends and find love is lying to themselves and everyone else.

Of course, we all enter into such things with optimis-

tic romantic hopes, and Grindr is, essentially, a dating app.

However the focus is very much on sex, and sex in the here and now at that.

Very few people have intentions of going for a drink, maybe dinner, a trip to the theatre before getting to know each other in the bedroom, and on Grindr things go way beyond a kiss on the first date.

I remember the first time I snuck out of my halls, shamelessly dressed in grey joggers and a dark red hoodie, in pursuit of my carnal desires.

It became almost too easy to hop on a bus and travel anywhere in London. My night-time escapades have taken me to Baker Street, Kensington and Hampstead so far.

These liaisons, however, all blossomed and withered away in the course of a few hours. There were never any plans to visit these people, or indeed, talk to them, ever again.

When you invest in Grindr, you don’t invest for the long term. It cheapens sex, and transforms it from a natural act of love into a

FINDINGS

drug. When the high of sex becomes so accessible, it is only natural that the users of the app begin to utilise it more, seeking it out whenever it suits them. This in turn lowers anyone’s expectation of relationships, and alters their sexual mentality. It only takes swapping a few pictures of various parts of one’s body to secure a ‘meet’, making the affair a purely physical one. I know of only one couple that have met on Grindr and entered into a straightforward relationship. From my own personal experiences, however, I know that the app is not in any way geared towards such goals.

One must ask, is this such a bad thing? Homosexuality is not something, no matter how loudly you dress, one can simply detect. One can guess, assume, and make an effort to find out. However, this could lead to embarrassment if the outcome is not what you hoped and the boy in question replies with “no, I just like to dress like a hipster”. Queer theorists must rejoice that the object of their desires, a gay universe where

there is no question of sexuality, has been created in cyberspace. Why shouldn’t gay people have a platform on which there is no question of someone’s sexuality, where they can judge someone for more than if they’re just straight or accessible?

Nevertheless, let’s not pretend that anonymous gay sex is anything new. As stated earlier, cruising grounds have been rampant, with gay men airing their lust in the outdoors for years before now. Just because the situation is more visible, with the cruising happening on the phone screens next to you, doesn’t make it any more potent or sordid. Straight culture is just as guilty of having a laid back attitude towards sex and one night stands, so what difference does it make if you meet someone when you’re drunk in a club or over Grindr?

Surely it should be celebrated that a part of the gay subculture has escaped the outdoors, and has managed to manifest itself in our public places, universities, offices and homes. •

22 ROAR!

KING’S BOFFINS’ HIV MISSION science@roarnews.co.uk Lucinda Ann Curnow WHAT is regarded as the Holy Grail of modern biomedical research? The cure for cancer? A vaccine against HIV? We could very well be on the way to discovering the latter.

HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) is an ever-recurring topic when it comes to biological science.

Since our earliest days of secondary school Biology classes, the topic has resurfaced in the form of presentation posters, class discussions, through to academic papers and scientific reports on this elusive and debilitating virus.

Currently, the virus affects over 34 million people globally, 69% of those originating from Sub-Saharan Africa.

Over 9.7 million people rely on antiretroviral therapy (ART) in order to cope with the virus. (WHO, 2012) For those who need reminding, HIV causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS, which in turn causes suppression and weakening of the immune system.

This results in the body becoming highly susceptible to everyday infections that would usually be effortlessly eradicated, creating

an optimal environment for infections, as well as cancers, to thrive and potentially be life threatening.

HIV overcomes the immune system by entering T helper cells and macrophages (types of white blood cells), where the virus will then replicate itself using the cells’ own DNA replication machinery, allowing for further resistive mutations to be produced within the host cells’ own DNA. This is one of the main reasons why no cure has yet been developed for the virus, although upcoming research at King’s may lead us onto the right path.

A team of researchers have published a study underlining the role that human gene MX2 has in inhibiting the spread of HIV after infection.

The HIV virus was introduced to two separate human cell lines, one with the MX2 gene being expressed, ‘on’, and the other with the gene silenced, or ‘off’.

Where the MX2 gene was expressed, the virus was prevented from replicating and thus producing new potentially resistive strains.

This may pave the road for new effective, non-toxic treatments for HIV affected individuals treatments that make use of the

body’s own defence mechanisms.

However, as the saying goes, prevention is better than the cure and finally we may be one step closer to just that.

Researchers at the University of Western Ontario have recently announced that a vaccine for HIV (named SAV001-H) has successfully passed phase 1 clinical trials, where safety, tolerability and immune response are

FOR KING’S PETER Higgs and François Englert, the renowned physicists behind the Higgs boson theories, have received the Nobel Prize in Physics, appointed today by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The official citation for the scientists’ award, published earlier by the BBC, reads: “For the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles….”

Higgs, whose name labels the long predicted particle, is an alumnus and fellow of King’s College London.

Born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1929, Higgs earned his BSc, MSc, and PhD in physics be-

tween 1947-1954, all at King’s.

He then took a post at the University of Edinburgh, where he became Professor of Theoretical Physics and where he has been Professor Emeritus since 1996.

In 1964, as one of six pioneering scientists in the field, Higgs proposed the eponymous “Higgs mechanism” as an explanation for why some particles gain their mass.

The Higgs boson, also known as the “God particle,” is the core particles responsible for giving other particles their mass.

The validity of the mechan ism has relied on the existence of the Higgs boson, recognised after fifty years in July 2012 at The European Organisation for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, and tentatively confirmed

tempted vaccines where artificial virus vectors were used, the SAV001-H makes use of a whole, killed, genetically modified (for increased safety) HIV-1.

Perhaps it goes to show that nothing beats the real deal.

This vaccine is still far from becoming the next pioneering milestone of scientific research, but optimism is maintained as it passes into phase 2 of clinical trials.

Scientists strain to see through the kaleidoscopic surface.

NOBEL DOUBLE Camilla Brandfield-Harvey

monitored, with no adverse effects to health in human patients.

More surprisingly, the vaccine actually boosted antibody production, particularly in antibodies that correspond to HIV glycoprotein antigens that allow cell to cell transmission of the virus.

But what makes this vaccine so far successful where others have previously failed?

Unlike other previously at-

on 14 March, earlier this year.

The Large Hadron Collider, which cost $10 billion, runs millions of times a second, “all day, all year” according to Daniel Whiteson, a physicist at the University of California, Irvine, and a member of the ATLAS particle physics experiment at CERN. Prime Minister David Cameron praised Higgs’ “brilliant achievement”.

He further stated, “It is also a credit to the world-leading British universities in which this research was carried out.”

King’s alumnus Michael Levitt was also awarded a Nobel Prize the next day. He won the award jointly with Martin Karplus and Arieh Warshel, for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.

EVERYDAY SCIENCE

F***ING READ THIS Vanessa Megaro WHY is it that when you stub your toe against a door, it only seems satisfying to say a particular 4 letter word?

How about when you miss a train and it feels particularly justified to repeat another certain 4 letter word? Fudge or snit doesn’t quite cut it.

Well it turns out that swear words are processed in a completely different part of the brain than regular vocabulary.

Usually it is the left side of our brain that processes language and logic, where as our right hemisphere is in charge of emotional response.

In most of out daily actions it is our left hemisphere that rules.

However, malediction is associated with a high level of emotional content, therefore we override our left ‘rational’ hemisphere and rely on our right side.

We stimulate the limbic system in the brain, in charge of memory, behaviour and emotion and the basal ganglia which controls impulse and motor functions.

It all effectively comes down to

evolution. Language was something we developed over time as a species, residing in the realm of higher brain functions, whereas emotions were considered lower brain functions as they were inbuilt and more of a primal trait.

Swearing is somewhere between the two.

But how exactly does this reduce pain?

Experiments were carried out to test the theory. One example was done by Dr. Richard Stevens, a psychologist at Keele University who made subjects put their hands into freezing water and found that when subjects were allowed to swear, they were able to tolerate pain more significantly.

The conclusion was that swearing actually triggers the natural fight or flight response we all possess in times of stress, which in turn causes chemicals such as adrenalin and endorphins to be released.

These chemicals act as the body’s natural pain relief, letting you concentrate on other more important things, like running away or putting up a fight! Albeit a fight against missed trains and door edges.

ROAR! 23

sports@roarnews.co.uk

EUROPEAN RUGBY AT A CROSSROADS DEALS: Big transfer signings have in general made a positive impact

NEW SEASON THROWS UP SURPRISES APLENTY Dan Brimson

Nick Batley THE Heineken Cup is a tournament that has always thrilled and delighted fans in its relatively short history, but its very existence hangs in the balance.

The English and French clubs have handed in their notice, and plan to leave the prestigious competition at the end of the season to start their own tournament, the Rugby Champions Cup. It’s a much more literal definition of picking up the ball, wandering off and not letting anyone play with it.

Now, why exactly have the Anglo-French teams walked off in a huff?

Mainly because they are displeased with the qualification process for the Heineken Cup. At the moment, teams from England, France, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Italy are allowed to compete in the cup, with the former two qualifying through their own leagues, and the latter four competing in

one league together, the Pro12.

While only around half the clubs from the English and French competitions qualify for the cup, almost all clubs from the Pro12 qualify, and the Scottish and Italian clubs qualify automatically.

The Anglo-French clubs have also taken issue with how proceeds from the competition are distributed.

On one end, it is quite clear to see the reasoning for the breakoff.

Unlike the Anglo-French competitions, the Pro12 has no relegation, and so teams can rest their top players for league matches, and play them for the big Heineken Cup games, since they are almost guaranteed European qualification anyway.

But at the same time, it still seems a little extreme to do the literal equivalent of taking your ball away and not letting anyone else play with it.

The Anglo-French teams have said they are done with negotiations, but it still feels a little rash.

The Anglo-French clubs

haven’t really divulged much information on how their new tournament would work, other than that Pro12 clubs are perfectly free to join (and given the financial implications of not doing so, they are almost bound to say yes).

However, the Pro12 clubs have said that they will only participate if the IRB (International Rugby Board) approves the tournament, and they will only do that if the resepctive countries’ unions approve the tournament.

Imagine a Dante’s Inferno of bureaucracy.

Will there be a European club rugby tournament next year?

Probably, but it will most likely exist in the form of the new Champions Cup. I can’t help but feel a little sad for the demise of the Heineken Cup. It has delivered some of the greatest moments and, for me, the fondest memories of rugby (my favourite team, Northampton, won it in 2000).

It seems such a shame to see it die, simply because a few clubs just can’t agree.

KCLFC ON THE UP William Trow CONTINUED from back page:

PHOTO CREDIT: KCL PHOTO SOC

At the time this article went to print, KCLFC freshers were gearing up for initation, an experience social secretaries George Emery and Nicola Catanzano will ensure they never forget. Well-attended early year sports nights and the creation of popular new ditties for the club songbook (adding to the classics

already coined by past inter-university rivalries) show promise for the upcoming year in a social context.

No longer to be out-sung by the rugby teams, or out-pulled by... well we were always first anyway, this year promises to define KCLFC as a society. Whatever will be will be, we will continue to do bad things to the LSE, but this time the society will be multifaceted, with our significant charitable aspect improving lives and spreading the word of KCL far and wide.

AS Manchester City thrashed Manchester United a fortnight ago, it felt like the Premier League season had finally got going.

Over that weekend 26 goals were scored and the vibrant nature of several matches was in direct contrast to the first few weeks of the season.

Games back then often lacked fluency and ultimately petered out as low scoring affairs.

With the transfer window closing on 2 September, however, recently teams across the division have been able to stick with a first choice eleven and integrate new players.

So what have we learnt from the season so far?

Starting with the form teams, Arsenal has surprised quite a few people. Aside from their opening day aberration against Aston Villa, the ‘Gunners’ look full of goals and will surely rack up some comfortable victories against the weaker teams with their fluid attacking style.

Their obvious weakness is of course the paper-thin nature of their squad, and in particular what Arsene Wenger will do if his only top-quality out-and-out striker, Olivier Giroud, gets injured.

Elsewhere, Tottenham’s squad depth should mean that they won’t run out of steam in the latter part of the season like they have in previous years.

All in all, with Liverpool bolstered by the sublime form of Daniel Sturridge this calendar year, it is quite possible that one of the current ‘Big Four’, Man Utd, Man City, Arsenal and Chelsea, could miss out on the top four and Champions League qualification.

At the other end of the table, the early signs are not good for a few teams. Crystal Palace, unfortunately, have a group of players who would fit in better in the Championship.

The shambolic start to the season

by Sunderland has gone from the bizarre to the ridiculous, to such an extent it is difficult to summarise the goings on in such a short article.

I can understand Paolo Di Canio’s desire to revamp the squad, and introduce a bit of discipline to a group who narrowly avoided relegation last year.

But what I can’t fathom is why he wanted to change things so quickly

and in such a confrontational style.

Although his sacking came as a surprise so early in the season, it is likely that is was his very approach to player management which wore on the patience of Sunderland Chairman Ellis Short.

Fulham’s start has also been inconsistent at best.

They have an exciting attacking trio in Bent, Ruiz and Berbatov, but it is at the other end of the pitch where they need to worry.

They have kept only one clean sheet all season.

Finally, Norwich have also struggled, but I think they’ve shown just about enough quality, thanks to players such as Snodgrass and Van Wolfswinkel, to suggest that once the new players gel they will comfortably be able to survive.

Finally, I cannot write a review of the early Premier League season without talking about the impact of some of the major signings. The stand out arrival over the summer was Mesut Özil and he has made an impressive start to his career in England which has gone some way to justifying Arsene Wenger’s investment.

Personally I believe Özil will flourish at Arsenal and live up to his reputation as the ‘King of the Assist’, which has been coined in reference to his status as the top assist provider for any player across Europe from 2008-2013. At Tottenham, Paulinho and Christian Eriksen look like wonderful, technically gifted players who will certainly aid Tottenham’s push for a Champions League place.

Overall, although one could be forgiven for moaning that the table already has a familiar look to it, I would argue that the table only tells half the story.

An exciting facet to the new season is the fact that results aren’t always predictable, and the failure of the top contenders to maintain unbeaten records suggests this season could be a competitive one.

Although in the end, given the financial might of some of the big teams, the spoils will probably go to the same old suspects, we could be in for some surprises along the way.

A consequence of the attacking approach taken by many teams is a degree of defensive susceptibility.

I would contend that that’s no bad thing.

Is this the end for European rugby?Page 23

ROAR! SPORT

King’s largest sports team is working towards a good year on and off the pitch

VARSITY RETURNS TO KING’S

BALLOCKS TO

THE sporting highlight of the KCL year is returning, and this time it’s bigger than ever. Our famous London Varsity Series against local rivals UCL will this time be a week long affair rather than the usual one night.

Taking place from Saturday 8 March to Friday 14 March, this year’s encounter will be open to all sports societies across KCLSU and UCLU. With a limit of seven sports teams being selected to do battle with one another, anticipation has reached new heights.

Sports teams across both universities hold their breath as they wait to discover who will have the honour of participating in this year’s series of matches.

Event organizers have made the landmark change to how the London Varsity Series is contested, with the attitude of making it more accessible and increasingly prominent across both universities.

Varsity is without doubt the most special time of year for those involved with sport at King’s. It wins the heart of the whole student population and is the unique time when people wear their respective coloured attire and flourish paint in pride.

Spectator tickets will be available in the next few months, so be sure not to miss out!

Needless to say, as we approach the event Roar! will be filling in students with all the goings on around the seven matches that will be taking place. We will be hearing from all the sports teams involved, and informing readers of how training is progressing.

On the topic of KCL sport, freshers’ week proved an overwhelming success for all societies, with over 1000 students signing up to enjoy the wideranging activities KCLSU sport has to offer. After a successful week of trials, everyone will be looking forward to the shenanigans of initiation week.

Long may this continue, and good luck to all as the season finally gets underway after what has seemed an eternity!

The KCLA Games are also upon us once again. Roar! will publish an article in the near future on the day’s festivities.

For more information on the London Varsity Series and KCLSU sport societies, visit the KCLSU website. www.kclsu.org/sport •

THE PAST William Trow

THIS year, the largest sporting society at King’s looks set to revolutionise its operation and perception on campus. Owing in no small part to new president Joshua Jefferies’ charitable visions, a generous new sponsorship deal and increased partnership with the fledgling KCLTV, this is an exciting time to be a part of the galvanised society, which aims to make big differences to people’s lives abroad.

Having already participated in Raw Foundation’s 24-hour match for a day charity tournament, KCLFC is excited to announce an ongoing partnership with Lion’s Raw, a charity dedicated to using football to improve the lives of

people at home and abroad. The charity’s self-funded Legacy Tours to countries hosting major tournaments are used as a vehicle for local change in underdeveloped areas.

This year’s team (300 strong for Brazil 2014) will be meeting with local politicians and dignitaries to lay the foundations of change.

Infrastructure will be built, football will be taught, and World Cup fever will be fostered in the underprivileged younger generation who wouldn’t necessarily have benefited from the global tournament before. These are all ventures KCLFC are proud to be a part of.

The club is excited to be working with Lion’s Raw to organise a 10-day charitable tour to Marseille, where students will coach

children, play local teams, and also be the charities feet on the ground in the community. An annual ULU-wide tournament in aid of Lion’s Raw has also been slated.

Jefferies is excited with the potential of the partnership.

“With our new sponsors Imtech and adding a significant charity aspect to the society, we are confident that this year will be the society’s greatest ever year.”

KCLFC’s new sponsor, a Netherlands-based technical service provider, has also allowed the club to greatly expand on its purchase of branded King’s College football kit. This will ensure that as well as being the best players on the pitch, the KCLFC boys will also be the best dressed.

KCLFC’s partnership with Vieri Capretta’s KingsTV, along with the advent of a second media officer role, will aim to increase awareness of the club.

Matches will be filmed and posted online, (though I’d imagine they’ll be filed under ‘comedy’).

The football club continues to be a major success on the pitch too. Trials for new recruits were held on the week of the 21 September. With a high attendance and standard better than in previous years, every KCL team is well stocked with fresh blood for the upcoming campaign.

Turn to page 23 PHOTO CREDIT: KCL PHOTO SOC

James Monaghan

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