Are we losing the love of the game? Is football becoming simply a business? Owen Keating, News Editor, discusses more…
Football is losing its soul. While an outsider may see a sport in rude health – with ever-increasing amounts of money being poured into the game through transfer fees, sponsorship deals, and ticket prices selling seats in huge stadia – those inside the game, especially those who support teams across the whole of the footballing pyramid, are seeing the other side of the extremely profitable coin. In 2014, football fans are not only regularly being priced out of watching their team in the flesh, but, increasingly, even from being able to watch their side without an expensive television subscription. The sport of the people is increasingly being taken away from them.
As if exclusion from the sport as a whole wasn’t enough, some supporters are being excluded and marginalised from the running of clubs that have sustained local communities for decades. The genesis of this article came following the news that Hull City owner Assem Allam has threatened to quit the club, withdrawing his financial largesse if he isn’t allowed to break 109 years of tradition by changing the club’s name to Hull Tigers. The fact that this outburst came on the day that he broke the club’s transfer fee by signing Croatian striker Nikica Jelavic for a fee of over £6.5million is especially telling: Allam believes that his financial contribution effectively voids any right that the club’s loyal supporters feel they have over helping to shape the club’s future. Until 2008, Hull was the largest city in the UK to have never had a Premier League team, and it is worth remembering that the club faced relegation from the Football League and financial meltdown as recently as 2003. In light of this, it is admittedly impossible to disregard the impact that Allam’s contribution has had on the club since his tenure began in 2010.
However, I would argue that more importantly, there wouldn’t have been a club for Allam to buy without the loyalty and determination of the Hull City fans who have been so shunned by his recent antics. While this month the ‘City ‘Til I Die’ campaign was told by Allam that they should “go away”, and that “no-one is allowed to question [his] decisions”, they are a key part of the nucleus that kept the club alive. On a visit to Hull last year (as part of a thankfully fruitful 400-mile round trip to watch my own team), I was struck by the ferocity of the city’s support for the team. If support of this quality is let down by the Football Association, who have the final say on whether to ratify Assam’s desired name change, then the new Hull Tigers badge will become an extremely powerful symbol of the prioritisation of funds over fans in the modern game.
It would be naïve to suggest that this alienation is only present in lurid headlines about the uprooting of a city’s footballing history to exploit commercial markets; fans across the country are increasingly unable to afford admission to the game they love, especially at the higher levels of the sport. A BBC survey about the price of football has shown that season tickets in the Premier League in 2013 cost four percent more than the year before, with the most expensive season ticket at Arsenal, one of the clubs in this season’s title race, charging between £985 and £1,955 for a seat this season. Chelsea and Tottenham’s most expensive season tickets also cost more than £1,000.
Despite the increase in season ticket prices, individual ticket prices on average fell by around five percent this season, although this came after the 2011/12 season, during which prices rose by eleven percent, four times more than inflation. This, along with concern about the increasing cost of following one’s team, gave rise to the Football Supporters Federation’s (FSF) launch of the “Twenty’s Plenty” campaign, which encouraged clubs to set ticket prices for visiting supporters at a maximum of £20. This, along with demonstrations at games, including Manchester City’s decision to boycott some of their allocation at a particularly expensive away game at Arsenal, has led to some clubs partnering with one another to ensure the mutual setting of cheaper away tickets for fixtures between the two sides involved. In addition, Stoke City have set a welcome trend by offering free coach travel to every away game this season.
However, such a statement seems futile against a monolithic, megalomaniac Premier League which consistently sacrifices supporter experience to the relentless need for profit margins. As the average age of those on the terraces increases, the young fans of the game are driven away, leading some lower league clubs to run advertising campaigns telling fans that “Football isn’t a TV show”. Given that the team that finished bottom of last season’s Premier League table earned more TV prize money than the team that won it the year before, and that some top teams, who hold enormous fan bases, see nearly half of all their matches televised on pay TV, some campaigns may have a hard time convincing.
Despite the intervention of provocative campaigns by the likes of Stand AMF, whose fierce defence of the game’s more traditional values is, despite being occasionally overreaching, a welcome tonic to the sugary sweet PR which normally accompanies initiatives which alienate the modern fan, the game faces a serious challenge in terms of overcoming its own hubris and doing more to engage the force that SHOULD be driving football’s ideological development: the ordinary men, women and children who sacrifice hours and petrol money to travel up and down the country for their team. When Saturday comes, service stations from Devon to Derby are filled with people dreaming of the potential rewards of their arduous journeys. We don’t deserve to be ignored. Our devotion to our game, to our cities, to our teams, will far outweigh the chequebook of any prospective investor you could care to mention: it’s our game, and we want it back.
Jack Reid writes about his experiences starting music-review site PearShaped with a few close friends, and the IT nightmares that soon followed…
Pearshaped Exeter is a student run service that produces high quality music journalism and does everything it can to promote live music in Exeter. This is the story of how I went from having no idea, to building the website we have today.
In the courtyard of Timepiece at some point in January 2013, a few friends and I were rambling on about doing something musical in Exeter, something to connect people. The conversation was tied off with something like ‘We should totally do it!’, and then ‘I’m in. Drink?’ The idea floated around a little bit without coming to anything significant for a fortnight or so. Then, a meeting was convened in the Rusty Bike. ‘Let’s actually do this.’ I was assigned to do all things technological and graphical, and before I knew it I was registering the name we had agreed on five minutes before without even a logo, PearShaped Exeter, to Twitter, Facebook, SoundCloud, everything. I’d been using Photoshop for years and figured I’d come up with some sort of logo, somehow…
I sat down with a cup of tea and opened Photoshop, a blank canvas laughing at me. I tried a little square icon with the letters ‘P’ and ‘S’ in Helvetica. Everything looks good in Helvetica I told myself. It didn’t look good, it looked completely indistinct. At the same time, in our new Facebook group, we were asking each other what this thing was even going to be. We would provide the best listings around, we said, and make sure that nobody ever misses any good music in Exeter. We knew so many talented and passionate writers; we would get them all to contribute. At my computer screen, I was reading an article about how Wes Anderson always uses Futura in his films. I thought, I kind of like it too.
I had a logo. I had a colour (which has come to be known as ‘PearShaped Green’). Next, I registered a Tumblr. Tumblr has a reputation these days for being the perfect location for angst-y self-designated artists and hipsters to post their favourite pictures of triangles. However it’s also a free hosting service and content management system if you jump through some hoops. To design a Tumblr, you design a theme. There was no way I knew how to do that from scratch so I got the code from a theme that looked something like what I wanted. I opened it in a text editor and screamed internally. You know those scenes in CSI where they hack into somebody’s laptop and random letters scroll down the screen?
After a week of frantic googling and swearing, we had a passable website. The black background evoked nightlife, exclusivity, and fun. Navigation was simple, four sections for content and an About Us page. We were getting our first pieces of content through, all written between the four of us. An illustrator that we know had drawn us a page full of pears and I was scattering them across the images on the site. Things were coming together on the website, but I still wasn’t happy with it.
Summer came and the staff of PearShaped Exeter grew. My girlfriend came on board to become our Editor. I had been both designing the website and filling it with content, and things were moving too slowly with just me doing that alongside everything else. Lizzie had been watching me code for months by now, and could fairly confidently put an article together without any guidance. She told me that it was quite hard to read articles on the site; the column of text was too narrow and it’s hard to read white on black. I told her to get lost, that it looked really edgy. Then a few weeks later I showed my Mum the website; “it’s a bit hard to read”, she said. I flipped all the colours around and widened the column slightly, and to my great displeasure it was indeed far easier to read. I reluctantly took a series of pointers on the website, and it got better but it still wasn’t good enough. I wanted something like a magazine, something that would really make people want to read our content.
Lizzie and I were sketching wireframes in a square ruled notebook, and I decided to start the whole website again. I would use a framework to build the site up from the bottom. I had learned enough about the HTML structure of a Tumblr theme at that point to write one from scratch, and that way I wouldn’t keep finding things I didn’t know the purpose of in the code. I realised that I could break the content up into columns, we could have sidebars with videos and players, we could have fancy headers and headlines to break things up. We could have a homepage with a slideshow, to really show off what our contributors had been doing. Our new navigation would allow more sections on the website, and it looked pretty good too.
Freshers’ week rolled around. We were roping in people to write for us as quickly as we could and the content was coming in thick and fast. I was checking our analytics every day, waiting for a spike and getting far too excited when I saw the numbers move. I was designing flyers and posters to advertise our service to the people of Exeter. We had decided to hold a live music event, just like the ones we wanted to promote. I made the poster with love and care, and we ordered only twenty posters in luxuriously high quality. Though they were collectors’ items, we never did that again. I was taking time out of my web development time to hang around pubs and sell tickets. People were actually turning up and buying the things, and the staff all smiled at each other for our dumb luck. We’re pulling this off, we thought incredulously.
Our launch event was the perfect opportunity for me to fish for opinions from the general public about the website. The compliments were abundant and unexpected. Whenever you make something for the public to see, it’s only the problems yet to solve that you see (that spacing looks unnatural, you can break the navigation menu if you do this thing, etc.). It was a relief to see that people didn’t laugh at my attempts to appear adept at something so exposed. Words like ‘professional’ were thrown around. I went away with a sense of incredulity that I’m beginning to associate with whenever PearShaped Exeter doesn’t fail spectacularly.
We’re coming up to our Christmas event now, and I’ve been Photoshopping Santa hats onto drawings of pears and making heavy use of red and green. We’re quickly expanding: we have dozens of writers who produce incredible articles, and passionate staff members who agree with our message and want to spread it. When I walk around campus now, I see the logo that I made on posters and flyers, and I see the URL that I registered not that long ago. I am often recognised with the question, ‘Oh, you’re PearShaped right?’ A few short months ago, that would have been completely non-sensical or even insulting. Now, we have a visual identity and a presence in the city.
It’s been an absolutely astonishing ride so far, and it looks like the website has actually helped what we want to do, which is a great feeling. When I sat down with trepidation in front of a text editor back in January, I never thought I could make the product that we have now. I’ve learnt the pieces as I’ve gone; I read web design blogs now. I never considered that I could ever be a ‘productive’ or ‘busy’ person, and it just goes to show that all anybody needs is the right project, the right spark to get them going. Never let anybody tell you that you can’t just learn something because you have to, to do what you want to do.
In the final instalment of his tales from Tajikistan, Robin Butler tells us about sleeping under the midday sun, scrambling to the mountain’s summit and Tajik monobrows…
So here we were, high in the Fann Mountains of Tajikistan. Our only link with the outside world was a frightfully swanky satellite phone which was becoming increasingly useless as the battery died.
Despite this we were confident. As the third morning dawned, we shouldered our packs and strode up the valley towards the Dukdon Pass. As we worked our way along one side of the stream, a couple of shepherds passed down the other, a reminder that we weren’t the only humanity traversing these mountains.
What research I had done before the trip suggested this pass was not a formality in any way, but evidently achievable for anyone with a vague level of fitness and skill. We didn’t think that anything could really slow us down or force us to question our ability to complete our trek.
Rounding the bottom of the glacier’s remnants, we reached a stunning mountain meadow, chequered with wild flowers and the local marmots. The view back down behind us was, in my opinion, the most beautiful we saw. However, we’d already been walking for a couple of hours and here we were, only at the bottom of the pass proper. Little matter though; we were stocked up on water and a few boiled sweets to keep morale high.
Five minutes in and our different tactics became clear. Freddie powered on, trying to clear as much ground as possible before stopping for a long break. I, on the other hand, went for the ‘little and often’ strategy. Both were effective, but it was the mountain that really began to take its toll. At only a few hundred metres below the 4000-metre mark, oxygen felt like it was at a premium and my legs began to really ache.
As the path clung to a scree-face, bending its way ultimately towards our goal, we hit the first patches of snow. Even though we were on the exposed south-facing side, the midsummer sun had yet to clear the way fully. Nervously, with Freddie in front, we edged our way across, all too conscious of the 50-metre slide down sharp scree that awaited us were we to slip.
Another snow patch was coming up. We successfully ground our way across, our legs really aching now. It seems as though the pass is a matter of metres away, and yet it never seems to get any closer, until finally, we are there. There is no more up, no more traversing to be done, just a bracing wind. We would have loved to stay there a little longer, but as our chests heaved to suck in what oxygen there was, we opted instead for a quick photo and a charge down to the heavy air of lower climbs.
Slipping and sliding down the other side of the pass, we both started to get a little grumpy under the midday sun as blood sugar ran low. Eventually, to our immense relief, we found an overhanging rock and collapsed asleep in the shade.
Rejuvenated, but still with several hours hiking to do, we heaved the packs back on. This in itself was becoming a problem for Freddie as his pack was starting to come apart in many places. The bottom zip had broken halfway up a scree slope and was now held together with cable ties, creating a certain sense of trepidation every time he picked it up.
Nevertheless, we carried on down this new valley. It was strikingly different to the one we had just left. Gone were the barren scree faces and mountain meadows, to be replaced by smaller boulders tossed around by forces long since gone and woodland of gnarled little trees that writhed out of the ground.
It was beautiful, and promised a fire for the evening when we found somewhere to set up camp. Our roles by now had become well defined: I dealt with the language side of matters and got us from A to B; Freddie entertained the inevitable gaggle of children and was designated Fire Master. This campsite was his greatest hour, fashioning a huge fire that must have been clear to see for miles around. A hot meal resting inside us, we settled down to enjoy the view of the mountains and appreciate quite what we had achieved that day.
Day four. In theory a simple day of flat that would get us to the base of the Munora Pass, the second of the three passes between the Seven Lakes, our final destination. We’d slept well – Freddie’s tendency to hug things in his sleep only disturbing me once.
The beauty of having 5kg of ration packs was that every day got lighter as we got fitter, and the mornings were always the best.
You might be wondering what we actually talked about with only each other as company for so long. There was a lot of debate over girls, both present and past. We planned, down to the most minute of details, Freddie’s 20th and 21st, as well as my 21st, and our respective careers. Remarkably there was little else of much note, other than the banal conversation that fails to stick in the memory.
That morning the hours quickly flicked past, as the day warmed up. At one point Freddie got a little over-excited by a sophisticated irrigation ditch (he does ‘geographical science’, as he likes to call it) that led eventually to a group of huts. We were able to help them in a small way with a few Nurofen for a girl’s sore tooth, giving a bit back to the people who had helped us so much.
Apart from that we were making serene progress, or at least that’s what we thought. We knew there was a river that signposted where we had to turn off this valley towards the pass. However, our ‘trusty’ map let us down again. We ended up caught halfway up a slope on a path that suddenly disappeared under the weight of a scree slide. Turning back wasn’t an option, so we very gingerly slipped and slid down this steep slope, silent in our concentration on not falling to a very painful landing.
Reaching the bottom matched the relief of cresting the Dukdon Pass, and we were prepared to sleep there and then. But again, the Tajiks came to our rescue. A lonely farmer had seen us being such idiots in our route and he soon arrived at our resting spot, a grin of knowing on his face. Tired as we were, he beckoned us to his little house, braying donkey standing guard outside. Inside we flopped onto some cushions and were accosted by a little kitten. As we began to relax our saviour put on the kettle, produced some delicious bread and beckoned for us to start.
Aside from the hiking, one thing I had been interested to discover was whether the Tajiks were as diligent in their observance of Ramadan as the Jordanians, who I had spent the previous three months with. This man was the first we came across who was staying true to his religion, and it was hugely impressive to see given his hard life working the mountain. He had a mobile phone, one of the few signs of the modern world around, but it was a six hour round hike to reach somewhere that he could charge it.
Back to the hut and with the sugary tea coursing through to our dehydrated muscles we quickly dozed off, happy to be out of the midday sun. An hour or so later and we were ready to head off. Our saviour kindly walked us to exactly where we had to go, clearly not confident after our earlier exploits that we would find our own way.
Full of gratitude we bid him farewell and climbed up towards the base of the pass. The sun was begin
ing to dip in the sky and we knew that we had to put our heads down and crack on if we were to reach the base of the pass. Coming round a bend we came across yet another little group of huts and the requisite gaggle of children.
Conscious of time and slightly intimidated by the guard dog that didn’t warm to us quite so much, we made it clear that we had to keep going as they invited us in for the customary cup of tea. Impressed by their level of hospitality yet again, the head of the family gestured to follow him up the valley to a good campsite used by the shepherds as base for tackling the pass. At a slow and steady pace we trudged behind him, weaving along goat tracks to a small clearing alongside a small stream, a perfect campsite if ever there was one.
Here we pitched the tent, took another very brisk bath in a deeper pool and hunkered down for the night. As the sun set we knew that we were coming to the final stage of our hike and it felt a little strange that soon we would be coming across proper civilisation. There were still a couple of days’ hiking left, and still many memorable experiences in front of us. Content with what we had already achieved and intrigued by what was to come, we slept well that night.
Our second pass, with the somewhat mystical name Munora, was within sight of our campsite on the sixth day. Nestling to the right of a towering mountain and laced with goat paths, it seemed easily within reach. Our guide from the night before clearly knew his thing, because although the ascent was steep we were soon cresting the first false summit and within touching distance of the pass proper.
Logistically this was a tricky moment as our platypus water carriers could only hold two litres each, so as we approached the thin line between sky and grass we sucked dry the final dregs. Not to fear, we thought, as every time this had come close to happening before we had always stumbled handily across a little stream to replenish our supplies.
So onward we pushed, sucking diligently on boiled sweets to moisten our mouths and bolster blood sugar. The final 100 metres were a gentle amble compared to everything before, and so it was in high spirits that we scrambled on top of the cairn that marked the summit, keen for a photo or two. Unlike the last moment of triumph, this one was far more enjoyable given the greater abundance of oxygen to replenish our lungs.
Looking back after the trip, we both agreed that this was the most beautiful of the three passes we conquered. Perhaps it was the weather at the top, or the feeling of accomplishment without the absolute pain of the Dukdon, but either way our grins were face-wide.
Descending down the sharply winding path that led towards the valley floor, we fortunately found a brook just as our final water bottle ran dry. Restocked, we powered on forward with a real sense of purpose. As we rounded a little knoll we were confronted by a large herd of goats and sheep, guarded by some very officious hounds that certainly didn’t take a liking to us.
Skirting well round the side, we rested for a while under our tarpaulin to avoid the midday sun. Snoozing contently away, the dogs were fortunately not to be seen again.
Conscious that the previous day had been a lot tougher than we expected, and keen to reach the base of the Tovasang Pass before nightfall, we strode on through a steep-sided ravine that opened up into rolling grass meadows dotted with reclining cows.
Spying the path that would lead us to our night’s sleep, we passed through yet another village where we (very self-consciously) turned down the myriad offers of yoghurt, tea and a full-blown meal. I can’t stress enough how generous these people are with their time and food, however precious it may be to them.
As we carried on up a new path, giving way to a couple of oncoming cows keen to be back home before nightfall, we reached another village. Here we had different ideas; whilst Freddie wanted to carry on to the true base of the pass, I was happy to accept their kind offers of shelter. Thankfully my idea held through, and we were sitting down in the tent as the family busied themselves about the fire preparing dinner.
In one of the more bizarre moments, one of the children had acquired a couple of Tajik/Russian-English phrasebooks, and was impressive in what he could say even from that. He was also very proud of his donkey that we both had a ride on. His other defining feature was most definitely his truly outstanding monobrow. The monobrow is in fact a sign of beauty in Tajikistan!
As dusk drew in, the clan gathered round the fire to feast on mounds of ‘plov’, the renowned regional dish. It was delicious, although very filling, and our appetites were hardly helped by the fact we were in need of a quiet loo break but felt too embarrassed to ask.
Finally convinced that we had eaten our fill, Freddie was able to make his excuses and retire to our little yurt that had been vacated by the women of the village to make room for us. I remained for a while, happy to laugh away as they tried to marry me off to one of the daughters. Prominent monobrow aside she was rather attractive, but I felt that was not something I should bring back from my travels.
Brimming with tea I drifted off to our yurt, very full and very happy. Snuggled up under a weight of blankets, Freddie conceded it was a good call to stay here. Then we fell sound asleep.
Bidding farewell to our hosts, I managed to press a little gift on them by insisting that it was for the baby. Any attempt to pay them directly was flatly turned down and ignored, so I was happy to find a way round this stubborn hospitality and give a little bit back.
The final pass was something of a formality now that our packs were markedly lighter and our legs fitter. Reaching the summit within a couple of hours, we got our first bit of phone signal in over five days. Happy as we were to get back in contact with the world and confirm our survival, it had been rather nice ignoring everything for a short while.
Below us was Marguozor Lake, one of the stunning Seven Pearls of the Shing. Each of these lakes is a different colour, and folklore has it that those who reach the final lake are enlightened. Marguozor was only the sixth lake and so we may not have achieved enlightenment, but camping on its shores that night was a beautiful end to the most incredible trip, and the perfect way to say goodnight to Tajikistan.
After wide reporting, and more than a few images horrifying enough to keep arachnophobes up all night, Chloe Forsyth separates fact from fiction on the terrifying topic of the creepy-crawlies invading the UK.
“Killer
Image credits: Steve Gibson
False Widow nearly made my leg explode”
“False Widow Alert: Millions of killer spiders on loose across the UK”
“Black Widow spider invasion from USA sparks fears of lethal bites”
The False Widow headlines certainly make for interesting reading. If the hype in many of the papers is to be believed then we are on the verge of being invaded by the infamous Black Widows, and their False Widow relations, who have already made their home here and are beginning a savage attack on us. But what truth is there to the hype?
I, along with half the female population according to statistics, hate spiders. Even the miniscule 1p sized ones that stay out of your way on the ceiling are enough to make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and get me reaching for the handy spider catcher. And let’s not even think about the occasional Shelob sized monster that I find sitting smugly on my bed knowing that there’s not a chance in hell I’m going within a three mile radius of my room until someone exterminates it. OK, I exaggerate, but I know there are many of you reading this and sympathising with my plight. Arachnophobia is one of the most common phobias around. It’s perhaps why there are so many depictions of monstrous spiders in books and movies: Shelob, Rowling’s Aragog – even Bond faces a poisonous tarantula in Dr No. Perhaps the worst one for me was Arachnophobia. I can still remember being forced to watch it with my cousins one Christmas and then spending the rest of the holiday in abject fear of my life. However, while we may not like the clichés “they’re more scared of you than you are of them” or “they won’t hurt you” at least we can live secure in the knowledge that it is true and we don’t have to fear poisonous beasts like people in some tropical countries do.
Until now, apparently. But before we shut all the windows and move the bed into the middle of the room to protect ourselves, I think we should sort the fact from the fiction when it comes to the Theridiidae family.
Arachnophobics out there may want to stop reading as, according to new research, the infamous Black Widows are invading Britain. Two days ago it was reported that the number of America’s most dangerous spider coming over to Britain was increasing, with six being found alive on one boat from America. OK, so only six spiders may have made Arachnophobia a slightly more boring movie but it was enough to attract several headlines in British papers. However, while they may have survived the journey over the Atlantic they would not have survived our damper climate, so the likelihood of a fatal Black Widow attack is slim to none.
The False Widow, or to give it its full name steatoda nobilis, is more of a pressing, and perhaps more realistic, problem. Also known as the Black British Widow, and a cousin of the infamous Black Widow, it is Britain’s most poisonous spider. It is similar to the Black Widow in appearance as it has the same bulbous abdomen; however, it is brown with pale markings unlike the famous black and red of the Black Widow. Trawling through the internet and newspapers while doing research for this story, the number of articles I saw about bites were quite frightening, and the previous hyperbolic headlines are only a smattering of what I found. There were several other unfortunate victims who had been at risk of amputation, and even death, because of reactions to the bite.
While they are Britain’s most poisonous spider, that’s a little like winning the hundred metres when your competitors are toddlers. There are only ten species of spider in Britain that can even bite and it is pertinent to remember that no one has ever died after being bitten by a British Black Widow. Usually the area around the bite will swell and turn yellow while other symptoms may include a fever and chest pains. However, the headline inducing bites that nearly prove fatal are only experienced by people who are allergic to the venom. Dangerous, yes. Painful, yes. But it’s similar to there being an article every time someone suffers an allergic reaction. It’s unfortunate for the victim but hardly newsworthy.
Image credits: Peter Hager
It’s important to note that these aren’t the malicious creepy crawlies from Arachnophobia which kill person after person. They are only believed to attack out of self-defence, if they feel threatened or if they are accidentally sat on. Ironically, the most likely time to get bitten is when you are trying to remove them from the house as the upheaval makes them feel endangered. So if you want to get rid of one, it’s best to use a cup or, even better, a handy spider catcher.
From the spate of recent newspaper interest you’d be forgiven for thinking that the British Black Widow was a new phenomenon but actually, while it is not a native species, it has been in Britain for over a hundred years after it came in a shipment of fruit from the Mediterranean. For a long time the population was localised around Devon but it has recently moved further across the South and even into Wales and London with experts predicting that as our climate becomes milder the population will increase and continue to move further North.
So there you have it, a quick guide to the British Black Widow. While not something you’d ever want to keep as a pet, if you stay out of its way then the likelihood is that you will not get bitten. And even if you are unfortunate enough to get on a False Widow’s bad side then most people will only suffer mild irritation around the wound. Hopefully this will put anyone unnerved by the recent spate of headlines at ease about the dangers of Britain’s most poisonous spider but if not then it may be time to get a petition going at the marketplace for spider catchers.
What message should these magazines be giving? Image credit: kalleboo
Emma Sudderick looks at FHM’s 100 Sexist Women of 2013 list, and asks if being ‘sexy’ is sexist.
As Mila Kunis becomes FHM’s sexiest woman for 2013, the male magazine’s controversial award raises all the expected questions; is it acceptable to portray women as sexual objects in the media? Does using phrases like “trouser-shatteringly sexy” degrade the female gender? And is this award just another example of a core societal problem regarding expectations of the body?
There is something to be said for the magazine’s popularity, despite accusations of derogatory publications denouncing women as little more than sexual objects. After the outrage at Tulisa Contostavlos of N-Dubz being named sexiest woman of 2012, FHM experienced their highest polls in the history of the magazine. The outcome named Perrie Edwards of The X Factor winning girl band Little Mix 55th in the list, Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke at 33rd and Beyonce Knowles still making the top 20 despite having a baby bump for most of the year.
Yet, despite criticism that it is degrading and chauvinistic in its approach, the photographs used for the list are not as revealing as you expect. Though this cannot be said for the entirety of the publication, there were some unexpected names revealed this year such as the 51 year old television presenter Linda Barker and News Reporter Susanna Reid, which proved that the list is not merely a repertoire of scantily-clad models.
That is not to say that the FHM list is media at its finest; far from it. Rather, there seems something hypocritical about those who say a woman must be proud of her body but only exercises the right to express it in a way that society deems appropriate. In other words, by suggesting there is a deeper societal problem with categorising women as ‘sexy’, the problem itself becomes solidified. I am all for the argument that what is inside matters more, but it seems many of those who criticise publications such as this have more of an issue with the sexual objectification of women rather than sexual objectification as a whole.
Though it is undeniable that judging women based on their physical appearance alone is vanity at its worst and debases the gender as a whole, the truth is that men are objectified in exactly the same manner. You only have to look at the equivalent glossy magazines like Glamour, which publishes their equally shameless sexiest male award, to recognise the extent to which the male body is scrutinized by mainstream media. Take as another example the Diet Coke adverts, which appear to rely on little else other than the skimpily dressed gentlemen to sell the product without even a murmur of contradiction.
The crux of the argument then is that to recognise a woman as ‘sexy’ is to degrade her somehow. Yet, by suggesting that the female body should be considered sacred, women’s bodies are being put into exactly the patriarchal category which feminists are contesting. Indeed, feminism is about having freedom to choose their own bodily expressions and it would seem many of those announced by FHM as ranking in the worlds sexiest women consider the recognition flattering, even honourable. Last year’s winner, Tulisa reportedly stated that “[the title] is a true honour and definitely a lovely confidence boost […] I’m proud of me and who I am”.
Though I am not contesting the notion that sexism is still rife in society, it seems that by singling out magazines like FHM as portraying women as nothing more than physical objects, the barriers which are being challenged are actually strengthened. Instead, we should look at these images as liberating and light-hearted rather than criticising women for exposing their bodies and men for appreciating them.
Following Devon author Hilary Mantel’s comments regarding Kate Middleton, Imogen Watson evaluates the public outcy and calls for a closer look at the context.
Lambasted? Newspapers across the country have leapt to the Duchess’s defence. Picture credits: thesoduke
You can hardly have missed the furore over author Hilary Mantel’s comments about the Duchess of Cambridge, previously Kate Middleton. Newspapers across the country have leapt to the Duchess’s defence; the vast majority lambasting Mantel for the unfavourable descriptions of Kate quoted in a voiced extract on BBC Radio Four.
Well what did she say? In Mantel’s speech, she described the Duchess as, ‘as painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities, without the risk of the emergence of character’ and ‘precision-made’, before going on to compare her with both Marie Antoinette and Henry VIII’s famous second wife, and mother of Elizabeth I, Anne Boleyn.
But that appears to be where the newspapers stopped reading. Upon hearing the initial news, I decided to listen to it myself and make my own judgements. I, too, heard only the extract, and deeming that enough also condemned the author as being harsh and completely unfair. It was the Prime Minister who sent me running in the direction of a transcript. Because David Cameron waded into the whole affair, I thought it time to give the full version of the speech the benefit of the doubt. Where there’s a quote, there’s a context.
And indeed there is, and it is one largely ignored by the media at large. When the speech is read as a whole, something I recommend you do if you are at all interested, Hilary Mantel is making an argument related to the British public’s relationship with the monarchy: the tendency to watch their every move, every decision, every appearance, to examine their actions in comparison with others’, or even to an extent, to idolise them.
The speech itself is called “Hilary Mantel on Royal Bodies”. It is perhaps a fair point – as she says, even BBC News devoted time specifically to how a pregnant woman may or may not be able to walk in high-heeled shoes. She discusses Kate in comparison to the widely-held perspectives of her husband’s generally beloved mother, the late Diana, Princess of Wales to make a point – a comparison of another future wife of a King. It is wise to point out that the speech is not a fully-fledged review of Kate. Mantel also discusses her impressions of the Queen on a visit to Buckingham Palace. It makes for interesting reading, whether you agree or not.
Not just a Royal because of the official portrait, Kate was compared to both Anne Boleyn and Marie Antoinette by Mantel. Picture credits: The British Monarchy
Arguably, the point could not have been made without the strength of choosing such words as Hilary Mantel did to talk about Kate. However, point or no point, the criticisms of the Duchess of Cambridge are unkind and unwarranted. For someone who is so well-liked, of course the comments came out of the blue. No one, especially not Kate, deserves to be accused of having a ‘perfect plastic smile’, or being ‘designed by a committee’. Of course marrying into the Royal Family brings a certain unfortunate inevitability of attacks and a certain required openness towards criticism but a cause is usually a prerequisite.
At the same time, in this age of twenty-four hour instant news, media outlets appear to feel unable to take some time to do research in order to get to the bottom, in case of being left behind in the race towards a “scoop”, and that is just irresponsible. The comments were unfair on the Duchess, but by enlarging the comments beyond what they were without any perspective in terms of the speech the news was also reported unfairly, and that simply helps no one involved in the story. Question what you read, and what you hear – therein lies the difference.
Charley Allen’s latest column takes a comedic look at the group of Spanish mothers taking off their kit to save the school bus.
Worth getting your clothes off for? Picture credits: Pablo Cruz Roya.
Calendar Girls seems to have inspired Spanish mums to bare all in an attempt to save their children’s school bus. In December last year, authorities in the region of Montserrat decided that in order to save money they would be restricting the school bus service.
The normal Spanish thing to do to kick up a fuss would be to go out in protest, waving banners and getting rowdy but these Montserrat mums thought they would try a different approach: a topless calendar, naturally.
Montserrat near Valencia, which is one of the country’s largest cities, has a population of around 7,000 and has felt the effects of the crisis particularly badly according to Reuters. Along with Cataluña which is just North of Montserrat, the two areas are the most indebted in the country and harsh cutbacks have had to be made, the limited bus service being one of them.
However, mothers such as Eva Maria Casas Sancho, the calendar’s Ms. June, whose children were forced to walk almost 3 miles to their elementary school, is not happy according to NRP. “There’s no sidewalk and there are lots of trucks going fast. The truth is, it’s pretty dangerous for kids to be walking there.”
The monastery at Montserrat, Spain: one backdrop that the scantily-clad mums won’t be likely to choose for the calendar? Picture credits: Jennifer O’Sullivan Photography
This risqué move to do the calendar has certainly paid off though; sales have raised enough to keep the bus going until the end of June and considering that the Associated Press reports about $4,100 is needed to fund the bus, driver and monitor for a month, they must have sold an awful lot.
It is a pretty outrageous move and although it is obviously great to keep the much-needed bus service alive, I can’t help but feel sorry for the kid whose mum becomes an instant hit amongst his schoolmates for being an absolute MILF, or on the other (slightly worse) hand, the kid whose mum’s breasts sweep the floor… eek.
In the second post from her ‘Weird and Wonderful World’ column, Charley Allen warns us of the dangers of ‘sleep texting’.
It is a well-known fact that people are becoming more and more glued to their mobile phone, but replying to texts in your sleep is a bit too far-fetched surely?
Apparently not, experts are saying that it is becoming more and more common for people to respond to a message in a sleep-walk fashion, something we can refer to as “sleep-text”.
Does this scenario look familiar? All photo credits to Sam Howzit
Dr. Elisabeth Dowdell, a nursing professor at Pennsylvania’s Villanova University, claims this manic night-time behaviour often happens between 90 minutes and 2 hours into your sleep cycle. She told CBS earlier this week, “The phone will beep, they’ll answer the text. They’ll either respond in words or gibberish.” There are still no scientific studies on sleep texting to tell us how often, or not, this is happening but more and more doctors are hearing about it and the trend seems to be on the rise. Well, this can be rather dangerous can’t it? You drop off peacefully to sleep and wake up in the morning to a text from your best friend you secretly fancy asking you why you texted him about beaches and skinny dipping. Oh dear.
But fret not; there is a simple solution so you can sleep in peace. Just take the plunge and do that almost unheard of act; turn your phone off! Besides, it will do you good to switch off for a while and will stop your parents from worrying about you being too wired and not sleeping enough. Unless you really are an extreme example of our tech-dependent society and you go searching for your phone to turn on in the middle of the night, this should do the trick.
Got an interesting story to tell about sleep texting or maybe a confession? Please send us a comment below.
Nasal hair plays an important role in filtering what we breathe in. Picture credits: murkotik
Exeposé Features Online’s newest columnist, Charley Allen, shares a bizarre campaign to raise environmental awareness for her ‘Weird and Wonderful World’ column.
Think you’ve seen a weird campaign to raise awareness? Think again. It doesn’t get much more bizarre than the latest campaign launched in China. The “hairy nose” campaign was launched in December last year by NGO Clean Air Asia as a humorous way to make people aware of the worsening levels of pollution in Asian cities.
The idea is that nasal hair is actually pretty important in filtering out the harmful things that we breathe in. Last year Popular Science reported that “nose hairs trap dirt, viruses, bacteria and toxins until we blow them out, sneeze, or swallow.” From this idea Clean Air Asia have made an interactive hairy nose map showing the levels of pollution in cities not by boring air quality graphs but instead by showing how long your nose hair needs to be in order to deal with it. It ranges from excellent where your nose hairs can remain nice and trimmed to critical where your nose hairs need to sweep the floor!It is eye catching that’s for sure and has certainly got people talking. One person who can profit from this is famous hair artist Fan Qi who yes, you guessed it, styles nose hairs in weird and wonderful ways. You have to watch the video.
This is one way of adapting yourself to pollution but as Sophie Punte, Executive Director of Clean Air Asia pointed out in an article by Campaign Brief Asia, “People look at air pollution like the weather. You complain about it but you cannot solve it”. Some people have started wearing masks, fitting in air filters in their homes and even moving from heavily polluted areas if they can afford it. But as we all well know, it is better to actually do something about pollution rather than just avoiding the problems.
Picture credits: SighlentJ
This funny campaign acts as great bait and then the NGO goes on to provide all sorts of information and advice on fighting pollution like using public transport or not leaving your car engine running unnecessarily.
A great idea for a campaign in my opinion and I’m thinking I’d like to see where Movember activists could go with this!
Arthur der Weduwen explores the age-old controversy created by abdication and resignation.
Saying goodbye. Picture credits: Catholic Church (England and Wales)
The announcement of the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI has shocked the political and religious community of the world. The BBC covered the announcement with a special section of quotes from reactions of different world leaders, such as David Cameron, Mario Monti, Angela Merkel, and the Vatican itself. Other notable commentators included Christine Boutin, of France’s Christian Democratic Party, who stated that “…this is shocking, very shocking, unheard of for the Catholics and certainly for the entire world.”
The unprecedented nature of Benedict’s resignation is the most prominent item in the majority of reactions. Everywhere comments are made regarding the fact that it has been around 600 years since the last pope resigned. It was in fact 1415 when Pope Gregory XII resigned due to papal strife. Before him, four pontiffs had also resigned from the post, due to a variety of reasons: John XVIII in 1009 due to ill health, Benedict IX in 1045 for financial advantage, his successor Gregory VI a year later as it was claimed he bought the office from Benedict, and Celestine V in 1294, who officially decreed that it was legal to resign as pope, and subsequently lived as a hermit.
Similar shock erupted internationally when Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands announced several weeks ago that she would abdicate in April. The BBC claimed that there “was probably not going to be a constitutional crisis”. This claim seems absurd to Dutch ears. Of course a ‘constitutional crisis’ wasn’t going to occur. Beatrix will be the third Dutch monarch to abdicate due to old age, a common and rather expected decision in the Netherlands. There are many other instances throughout history of abdications, all for a variety of reasons once again. In Medieval Japan, it was highly appropriate for an Emperor to resign and live the rest of his life in pampered retirement. More recent examples include that of the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, Jean, and the King of Belgium, Leopold III.
The reason for the international and Anglican shock has origins in the stigma attached to the resignation of a monarch. Edward VIII resigned in 1936 voluntarily, in an event now known as the “abdication crisis”. The mere phrasing of the event portrays the gravity of the emotions associated with a resignation of an important leader. However, this does not seem to be well-founded anymore. There are few monarchies remaining in the 21st century, and those that still stand do not exercise any autocratic control: the majority of monarchies are purely symbolic. While the Pope’s role is much more than simply symbolic, his position is not much different. He is an elected leader, and elected leaders have the right to resign whenever they wish, even if the justification is unreasonable. Benedict’s reason is highly justifiable, as he states that his old age will prevent him from further continuing his duties. I therefore do not see why one should be shocked.
The announcement of the resignation of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands was met with similar shock several weeks ago. Picture credits: CamerOB
In conclusion, it is a wise move for Benedict to resign. A presiding leader, monarch or Pope should be able to tell when he or she is no longer able to take on all the responsibilities of such a role. While Benedict’s decision is relatively new and revolutionary, it should not be viewed as either unprecedented or strange. In a world where monarchs no longer hold absolute power, they should also be free to resign or abdicate whenever they see just, without fear of scandal or embarrassment. One may hope that Benedict will be followed as example in the future by other ageing leaders.
exeposedev 