january 2016 edition
DESCRIPTION
This month's edition of Brig covers tuition fee waivers, David bowie's death and gender neutral bathrooms.TRANSCRIPT
Stirling University waives fees for Palestinian and Syrian students
Warren HardieNews Editor
The University of Stirling has agreed to waiv-er the tuition
fees for a Palestinian student and a Syrian refugee.
The University has ap-proved a fee waiver for both a Palestinian student and a Syrian refugee stu-dent to study a postgradu-ate course without having to pay tuition fees. Despite this, extra costs such as travel, visa and living ex-penses will still have to be paid.
The Student’s Union has been working alongside the Scottish Universi-ties Supporting Palestin-ian Students (SUSPS) – a group which has received support from the Scottish Government – Scottish Trade Unions Congress (STUC) and the NUS Scotland, on fundraising
efforts to cover travel, visa and living costs (including accommodation) at Stir-ling.
This campaign has re-ceived backing from no-table figures including Dame Judi Dench and Noam Chomsky. Chomsky himself emailed Union President Andrew Kin-nell to give his support for the campaign, stating that “the SUSPS program is a way to begin to pay that debt and at the same time to help prepare a bet-ter future for the people of Palestine and the region.”
The fundraising cam-paign is aiming to raise £10 000 and is expected to continue over the com-ing months. An indiegogo fundraiser is to be start-ed in the next couple of weeks.
It is currently unclear
who the Palestinian stu-dent will be, as there is an application process un-derway to select the best candidate.
Musician and political activist David Rovics is ex-pected to host a fundrais-ing gig at the university on the 25th of February in support of the campaign.
Andrew Kinnell has ex-pressed his joy regarding the progress of the cam-paign, telling Brig ”SUSPS has so far had a great sup-port from some students and staff as well as nota-ble backing from people such as Noam Chomsky and Dame Judi Dench. We’ll be continuing and expanding on fundrais-ing efforts in the coming weeks. If your interest-ed in helping out or for more info please do get in touch.” CONTINUED ON PAGE 3
Fee waiver raises
questions
David Bowie dies, aged 69Andrew Henderson
Legendary sing-er David Bowie has died, just two days after
releasing his 27th al-bum Blackstar.
Bowie’s social media ac-counts broke the news,
saying “David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his fam-ily after a courageous 18-month battle with cancer”. His son, Duncan Jones, later confirmed the news. A spokesman for Bowie refused to specify which type of cancer the singer had died from, and it was previously unknown
that he was suffering from such a serious illness.
Tributes came flooding in almost immediately from all over the world. The Rolling Stones, whose singer Mick Jagger had collaborated with Bowie for the 1985 hit Dancing In The Street, described their “dear friend” Bowie as an “extraordinary art-
ist, and a true original.”Madonna, who said that
seeing Bowie in the first ever concert she went to was a life changing mo-ment, also said via Twit-ter: “Talented. Unique. Genius. Game Changer. The Man who Fell to Earth. Your Spirit Lives on Forever!”
CONTINUED ON PAGE 3
January Editionbrignews.com@brignewspaper
Ross Brannigan
The new pro-posals by the University of Stirling to al-
low two students, one from Palestine and a Syrian refugee, to re-ceive free Postgraduate degrees raises some se-rious questions.
Firstly, as often is the case when institutions and governments are seen to be supporting refugees and other disadvantaged foreign citizens, why has this not been pressed for British citizens?
CONTINUED ON PAGE 3
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Both a Palestinian and Syrian student will have their fees waived at Stirling University
Editor-in-ChiefLucy McLellan
Deputy EditorJacqueline Boland
News EditorWarren Hardie
Bety TellezDan Vevers
PoliticAL EditorDan Vevers
Music EditorAndrew HendersonNicole Brabender
Film EditorCaroline Malcolm
Jamie [email protected]
Arts EditorCaroline Malcolm
LifestYle EditorBeatriz Tellez
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Editor’s Column
2 Brig | January 2016 News
Welcome back to another semester! The campus is looking extra pretty right now thanks to a nice wee dusting of snow, and its a great time to be back! Refreshers is set to be a good un, especially with Laser Tag in Venue, which I personally am buzzed for! In News this month we look at the Universities ongoing discussion to waiver fees for a Syrian and Palestinian student, as well as one of our own students being shortlisted for the prestigious Student Volunteer of the Year award. This month we will also be launching our collaboration with AirTV, Stir News, in which we’ll take to the screen to present our news, so keep an eye out for that appearing at the end of January. Come along to our Give it a Go on Monday 25th at 7pm in 2W1 if you want to learn more or get involved with the newspaper. I am currently working on my Stirling bucket list, and trying to make the most of my last few months of being a student, so any suggestions for that ONE thing that every student has to do, the let me know!Have a good month!
Lucy McLellanEditor in [email protected]@LucyIsabelle_
Art exhibition highlighting mental illness comes to Stirling
Andrew Henderson
The University of Stirling will soon be home to an exhibi-
tion aiming to reveal the indiscriminate na-ture of mental illness.
Co-created by patients at Bellsdyke Hospital, “Star-ing at the Ceiling, Looking at the Stars” is an artis-tic response to materials from the Stirling District Asylum (named Bellsdyke Hospital since 1960) Ar-chive – housed
by the University Ar-chive.
Artist Sharon Quigley has worked together with a group of patients and staff at the hospital to produce printed artworks as well as sound record-ings, which explore the case notes, patients’ let-ters and admission books to discover the identities of Asylum patients from 1906-14.
Quigley said “we set out to produce a new archive which would reassert the patients’ voice.
This new archive charts the people and the grounds of the hospital, past and present, whilst creating a response to its fascinating history and environment.”
The Asylum, which opened in 1869 and was based in Larbert, admit-ted hundreds of people,
including workers from Forth Valley’s industrial and agricultural sectors.
Officially launching be-tween 1pm and 3pm on Saturday, 23rd January, the exhibition’s opening day will provide the pub-lic with an opportunity to view items from the ar-chive and take a guided tour of the exhibition – which had previously been on display at the Forth Valley Royal Hospital.
It will be on display in the University’s Pathfoot building until the end of May, and includes mate-rial from the archive that have not previously been on display, as well as new works which will be added to the University’s Art col-lection.
Sarah Bromage, Deputy Curator of the University of Stirling’s Art Collection said: “The idea for this ex-hibition was sparked by
the University receiving over 150 years of archive NHS materials relating to hospital care and treat-ment in Forth Valley.
The Asylum records – brought to life through these innovative and thought-provoking works – are among the larger Forth Valley health board archive now fully cata-logued and accessible through our archive read-ing room. “
This is the first time these records are widely acces-sible, after being trans-ferred to the University’s Archives in April 2012.
They include the now UNESCO-recognised re-cords of the nineteenth and twentieth century Royal Scottish Nation-al Hospital (originally known as the Royal Scot-tish National Instituion) for mentally ill children, which was also sited in Larbert.
Bromage continued: “we are delighted that as part of the project’s legacy, a commissioned exhibition piece will be added to the University’s Art Collec-tion.
This phase of the exhibi-tion will include a number of new works never dis-played before and I would encourage anyone inter-ested in delving into these unique records and works to join us for our official launch later this month.”
Tel: 01786 467 176/01786 467 166
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University of StirlingStirling FK9 4LA
3 Brig | January 2016 NewsTuition fee waiver agreed by University
Less informa-tion is available at the moment regarding the
Syrian student, other than that their fees will also be waived.
Stirling is to welcome 100 refugees from Syria in
Warren Hardie
Questions to be asked?
the following year, with a family having arrived over the Christmas period. Stirling Council have com-mented: “We look forward to welcoming Syrian refu-gees to our community and know residents in the area will join us in making them feel at home here.”
Ross Brannigan
Despite under-graduate de-grees being free for Scot-
tish students in Scot-land, Postgraduate de-grees are still not nearly as affordable.
With this in mind, surely a British citizen should be allowed to be admitted to a Postgraduate programme for free, if they made the necessary criteria?
And herein lies the other problem: what criteria will be used to select the stu-dents? Will it be the most disadvantaged applicants, the most educated (which appears contradictory to
the former criteria), or something else?
These are difficult ques-tions to answer, but I fore-see this movement being received somewhat coldly from the Scottish public. Indeed, according to the National Union of Stu-dents, 24.9% of Postgrad-uate students stated their finances were inadequate to meet their needs.
Nevertheless, helping any disadvantaged stu-dent is a great cause. Fur-thermore, it is only two students, and for those who may take this news critically that might ease their hostility to the idea.
Stirling among top 200 most inter-national universities in the world
The most out-ward looking u n i v e r s i t i e s in the world
have been revealed, and Stirling is among the world’s best.
Data from the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2015-16 found that the University of Stirling, home to over 11 000 stu-dents, placed in the top
25% – making it is one of the top 200 most interna-tional universities in the world.
Principal and Vice Chan-cellor of the University of Stirling, Professor Gerry McCormac, has said about the announcement: “We welcome the latest rank-ings from Times Higher Education. Stirling has always been a univer-sity with an international reach and diverse commu-nity. Today we have 120 nationalities on campus
and foster partnerships in over 30 countries world-wide.
“Our position in this list reinforces Stirling’s repu-tation as a progressive and pioneering seat of learn-ing on the global stage.”
The study examines the diversity of the universi-ty’s staff and student body and how often academ-ics collaborate with other international institutions, with 800 universities compiling the full list.
Andrew Henderson
Photo: The University of Stirling
Stirling Student Among UK’s 10 Student Volunteers of the Year
Beatriz Tellez
Stirling student, Simron Kan-dola, was listed among the 10
finalists for the Student Volunteer of the Year Award.
According to The Na-tional Union of Students (NUS) and Student Hubs, the 10 finalists, coming from all across the UK, “have all dedicated their time to causes they care about and were selected
for their leadership, com-mitment and the impact of their work”.
Simon Kandola is the president of the Univer-sity of Stirling Volunteer-ing Society and treasurer of the Barnardos Society. As well as working with Oxfam and TedX events at the university, he has been involved in a list of volunteering projects that have helped fundraised a local food bank and led
to the development of the Volunteering Society, also known as VolSoc, which this past November was awarded a grant of 1,000 that was donated to the lo-cal charirty Start-Up Stir-ling.
Lauren Marriot, Vice President Communities at the university expressed her support for Kandola.
”Here at Stirling Stu-dents’ Union, we really value the work of our stu-
dent volunteers. Simron always goes above and be-yond what is expected of him and commits himself to so many worthwhile causes. It’s so inspiring to see such a passionate and dedicated individual, Sim-ron is a real asset to Stir-ling Students’ Union and the Stirling Community as a whole.”
The Student Volunteer Of The Year Award is part of Volunteering Week, a nationwide celebration of not-for-profit work car-ried out by students. Lo-cal volunteering teams in colleges and universities will organise one-off pro-jects, celebration events and new volunteering campaigns. The winner receives £1,000 to donate to a cause of their choice.
Photographed: Stirling student Simron Kandola
Dead at 69: David BowieAndrew Henderson
It wasn’t just mu-sicians who were paying their re-spects to the Brit-
ish musician. British Prime Minister David Cameron described Bowie’s death as a “huge loss” having grown up listening to his music, and The Vatican bor-rowed a phrase from Bowie’s first number one single, Space Odd-ity, saying “check igni-tion and may God’s love be with you”.
Bowie had not per-formed live since Novem-ber 2006, and had not toured since 2004’s “A Reality Tour” but had re-leased two albums, The Next Day and Blackstar, in the last three years – both of which went straight to number one in the UK charts.
Long time friend and
producer Tony Visconti described Blackstar as a “parting gift” to the world from Bowie, and said of the man himself “his death was no different from his life – a work of art. He was an extraordinary man, full of love and life. He will al-ways be with us.”
Having found success with the aforementioned Space Oddity, Bowie captured the hearts and minds of the nation and catapulted himself to superstardom with the persona of Ziggy Star-dust. The character was intended to look like he had come from Mars, and appropriately it was the song Starman that really cemented his success.
Stardust’s flamboyancy and strangeness in his own time encouraged peo-ple all around the world to be themselves and be proud of who they are. In
an interview with 6Mu-sic, Jarvis Cocker said of David Bowie’s influence: “He was like an umbrella for people who felt a bit different. Bowie was like a like a lighthouse that guided those people and made them feel it was al-right to be different, to try things out and dye your hair and wear strange clothes. I think people feel it very personally because he was very important in how people grew up.”
David Bowie was one of the most innovative and creative musicians ever, a true visionary. He was successful across six dec-ades, which alone is an incredible feat. But Bowie will not just be remem-bered for sales, he will be remembered as a multi-generational inspiration for millions. He will be missed massively.
4 Brig | January 2016 News
Dry January Voted Scotland’s Top New Year’s ResolutionBeatriz Tellez
A new survey of 2,196 Britons reveals that alcohol absti-
nence in January was Scotland’s most popu-lar New Year’s resolu-tion.
Travelling, losing weight and doing good deeds are a among the most popular New Year’s resolutions. As part of an on-going re-search into the lifestyles and influences on Brit-ons, a survey carried out by www.vouchecloud.com quizzed 2,196 people aged 18 and over about their New Year resolutions, the likelihood of maintaining those goals and the costs
they could involve.
The poll’s findings re-vealed the top New Year’s Resolution per region of the UK, with the majority of those in Scotland stat-ing they want to partake in Dry January.
The results come as the country fights to make alcohol more expensive in light of its drinking problem as alcohol abuse costs around £3.6 billion a year and statistics show, according to the Scottish government, that 45% of convicts were drunk at the time of their crimes. However the survey can-not show any correlation between the potential new
law and the Dry January resolution.
· South West - Under-taking regular good deeds (19%)
· North East - Dedicating more time for family and friends (15%)
· West Midlands - Losing weight (14%)
· Wales - Working to-wards getting my dream job (14%)
· Yorkshire and the Humberside - Travelling the world (12%)
· Northern Ireland - Finding true love (11%)
· North West - Losing weight (9%)
· East of England - Vol-unteering with local chari-ties (7%)
· London - Spending time sightseeing and visit-ing attractions (7%)
· Scotland - Dry January (6%)
· East Midlands - Travel-ling the world (5%)
· South East - Undertak-ing regular good deeds (4%)
Luke “Snowwalker” makes Scottish first in South Pole trek
Ross Brannigan
An Aberdeen man has made history after becoming the
first Scot to complete an unassisted trek to the South Pole.
Luke Robertson made the 730 mile journey in an effort to raise money for Marie Curie, after under-going surgery to remove a possible brain tumour.
The trek, entitled Due South, involved Robertson carrying a 130kg sled filled with equipment across snow and ice, experienc-ing temperatures of -50C
and winds of 100mph.Robertson said he felt
“on top of the bottom of the world.”
He added: “I hope this shows that you really can overcome challenges to achieve your dreams, whatever they may be. It’s amazing to repay the faith put in me by all my sup-porters. Now, I think it’s time for a big feed, a wee dram and a shower.”
Luke “Snowwalker”, as he became known, re-ceived words of support from politicians and ad-venturers alike. Adven-turer Sir Ranulph Fiennes
said: “it is an incredible achievement, and I hope this his adventure inspires others to achieve their own goals in life.”
Speaking on his fund-raising, Robertson said: “Thank you so much to everyone who has donat-ed to Marie Curie; they are an incredible charity, very close to my heart, and I feel so proud to be representing them on this expedition.”
Robertson had initially hope to raise £25,000 for Marie Curie, but has managed to raise over £47,000.
Luke Robertson: On top of the bottom of the world.
Stirling academy leading fight against doping
Craig Wright
A doctor at the University of Stirling is to lead a new
study into athletes’ at-titudes towards doping in sport.
Dr Paul Dimeo is to lead a two-year programme, during which athletes will be questioned about their views on the current anti-doping programmes that can be found in sport, as well as how they believe it affects their chances of success.
The study, commis-sioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), will involve 70 athletes from across six countries. Those involved in the study will have represent-ed their country at either national or international
level in one of six sports; cycling, athletics, swim-ming (categorised as ‘high risk’ of doping by WADA), badminton, hockey or fencing (categorised as ‘low risk’).
The athletes that take part in the study will be asked for their thoughts on the fairness and effective-ness of current anti-doping measures in their particu-lar sport. Issues includ-ing the inadvertent use of banned substances, such as in the case of Scottish Winter Olympian Alain Baxter, will be addressed, with the responses of those taking part in the study to be used to help educate current and future athletes on the safe use of prescrip-tion medication and other medical treatments.
With the study an-nounced at a time where anti-doping procedures in sport are subjected to ever-increasing scrutiny, Dr Dimeo is hopeful that the work carried out by his team will have a posi-tive impact.
“My aim for this study is to provide practical guid-ance to WADA and other national governing bod-ies on how to increase athletes’ buy-in to anti-doping policy.”
“This is the fourth in a series of WADA commis-sioned projects by Stir-ling researchers that ex-amine drug use in sport. I hope that athlete input will help shape anti-dop-ing policy, making future programmes more rel-evant and effective.”
Photographed: Dr Paul Dimeo
5 Brig | January 2016 NewsNorth Korea claims to have tested an H Bomb – but the world is sceptical
Warren Hardie
North Korea began the New Year by claiming that
it had detonated a hydro-gen bomb, a claim which has been met with scepti-cism across the globe.
Pyongyang made the announcement on the 6th of January, following reports of an earthquake detected in the region.
North Korean state tel-evision bombastically described the test of a ‘hydrogen bomb of jus-tice’ as a “world startling event”.
This was the DPRK’s first nuclear test since 2013, their fourth in the nation’s history and the second under the totali-tarian rule of Kim Jong-Un.
In the early hours of the 6th of January, the Unit-ed States Geological Sur-vey logged a magnitude 5.1 seismic disturbance in North Korea.
The North Korean state news agency hailed the test as a success, describ-ing the weapon as a ‘hy-drogen bomb of justice’.
The United States gov-ernment have openly ex-pressed their scepticism towards North Korea’s claims.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest suggested that the DPRK
may not be entirely truth-ful with their claims.
“The initial analysis is not consistent with the claims that the regime has made of a success-ful hydrogen-bomb test.” Earnest stated.
“There’s nothing that’s occurred in the last 24 hours that has caused the US government to change our assessment of North Korea’s technical and mil-itary capabilities.”
Following the an-nouncement, the United States and Japan called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Coun-cil.
North Korea has con-tinued to pursue nuclear weapons over the last dec-ade, with the first test tak-ing place in 2006 under Kim Jong-Il’s regime.
Until now, these tests were of atomic weapons, but with this latest an-nouncement it appears that North Korea is at-tempting to dramatically scale up their nuclear ca-pabilities.
As well as uncertainty towards North Korea’s claims, the move was also met with international condemnation.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon described the move as “deeply trou-bling” and “profoundly destabilising for regional security and seriously un-dermines international non-proliferation efforts.
I condemn it unequivo-cally.”
He went on to call for the DPRK to cease all nuclear activity and pursue ‘denu-clearization’.
Pictured: Kim Jong-Un claims the bomb could wipe out the USA. Photograph: North Korea’s Central News agency Korea’s H-bomb not a laughing matterAngelos BakoulasFor many analysts and ex-
perts all this is simply a show by the extreme regime and evidence question claims of DPRK on the success of its bomb test.
But would this really change the political signifi-cance of recent events? Ob-viously, I can hear you say, since it would mean that the autocratic state won’t have a deadly weapon available to use at any time. The political dimension of this announce-ments however could be in fact just as scary as an H-bomb.
The ability of DPRK to defy any minimum respect of in-ternational standards it may have projected in the past, is definite proof that it’s becom-ing angrier and louder.
So, even if this nuclear threat is just fireworks, this doesn’t limit its significance as an omen of an extremely aggressive DPRK.
It is hard to think that inter-national expertise on nuclear affairs would let world lead-ers be afraid for even second that it is highly likely for a “Death Star”-like instrument of war to be in the hands of perhaps the most politically radical international actor. Then why all the fuss?
Security Council meetings, sharp announcements of key global leaders and extensive news coverage may be hints that the international af-
fairs stage may be afraid of a DPRK cocky enough to brag about nuclear bombs, more than one which works quietly behind the curtains since the former is starting to stretch the boundaries of its enemies to a point where their only option is to respond aggres-sively.
Hence, diplomacy with non-democratic forces once again becomes a charades of power and the balance of the rela-tionships affected through such processes may have reached its tipping point. The China-Korea-Japan multidi-mensional interface is now creating two poles of sympa-thy and antagonism towards the Northern regime, while Korea and Japan establish a clear, and internationally accepted, rejection of the Kim Jong-un state, China appears more sympathetic. This bomb however, seems to blow even that rare sym-pathy in the area while China is risking global cooperation in various cross-national af-fairs due to the radicalism of North Koreans.
It could then be argued that even if we accept that the H-bomb is fake, or at least much smaller and limited as it was presented to be, the events of January 6th seem to mark a crucial diplomatic shifting point towards a pre-vailing and showy North Ko-rea which had only been seen in a very limited extent in the past.
The United Nations Se-curity Council has also pledged to seek new sanc-tions on the hermit king-dom.
US Secretary of State John Kerry joined in the condemnation of North Ko-rea’s nuclear efforts.
Kerry stated: “We do not and will not accept North Korea as a nuclear armed state, and actions such as this latest test only strengthen our resolve.”
South Korea has re-sponded to North Korea’s nuclear testing by blast-ing K-Pop music and propaganda on loudspeak-er over the Korean border, in a move that the DPRK claims has brought the pen-insula “towards the brink of war”.
6 Brig | January 2016 NewsOverseas students suffering due to visa restrictions
The Scottish Affairs Com-mittee met in Aberdeen in
December to discuss the launch of a new research project into the post-study work schemes available to graduate students in Scotland.
The study comes three years after the Post-Study Work visa scheme was scrapped by the UK Gov-ernment, which allowed overseas students to stay in the UK for two years af-ter graduating.
Students wishing to study in the UK are only allowed to stay for four months after graduation, under new rules sur-rounding Tier 4 student visas.
The changes were op-posed by the Scottish Government, who ar-gued Scotland’s economy would be negatively af-fected by the drying-up of overseas talent coming to its universities.
Scottish minister Humza Yousaf, European and In-ternational Development minister, said: “There is no doubt in my mind
Scotland is at a competi-tive disadvantage by not offering prospective inter-national students a post-study work route.”
The costs of tuition for overseas students can be up to four times that of EU students studying in the UK.
For example, University of Edinburgh tuition fees for UK students is £9000. For overseas students, theprices range form £15,300 to £21,900- al-most 2.5 times more.
That is not including liv-ing costs, and costs of ma-terials.
Scotland is currently home to 48,360 inter-national students; the second highest number in each of the UK’s four regions. Of those, a large number are Indian, but after the visa changes of 2012, Universities Scot-land director Alistair Sim reported a 25.8 percent-age-point drop in Indian students beginning stud-ies in Scotland.
This drop is extremely worrying, both for the economy, and for the reputation of the UK has a high-standard country for overseas students to study, work and live in.
In 2009, Strathclyde University found non-
EU students contribute £500m to the Scottish economy – every year. For this reason, many argue Scotland is being worst hit by the current measures in place, with a real push being made to encourage more overseas talent.
They contribute £7.9bn to the whole UK economy, and when international student numbers dropped by 42,000, it cost the UK economy £725m.
Secondly, the reputation of the UK is at stake. This article was published by the National Union of Stu-dents (NUS) in February
2014:An NUS survey of over
3100 international stu-dents in both further and higher education found that over 50 percent of non-EU students polled stated that the UK Gov-ernment is either not welcoming or not at all welcoming towards inter-national students.
These numbers are even higher for PhD students (65.8 per cent) and stu-dents from Turkey (61.3 percent), Japan (64.5 per cent), Nigeria (62.8 per cent), India (62 per cent) and Pakistan (56.1 per
cent).19 percent of non-EU
students would not rec-ommend the UK as a place to study to a friend or relative. This number is higher for PhD students (23.5 per cent) and stu-dents from India (34.5 per cent), Nigeria (36.8 per cent), and Pakistan (38.5 per cent).
This is a deeply con-cerning set of results, and means the UK and its four nations are losing out sig-nificantly on overseas tal-ent. It was not helped by Theresa May’s plans be-fore the General Election
to deport international students immediately af-ter graduating.
Her idea was put forward due to concerns the num-ber of overseas students could rise to over 600,000 by 2020.
Humza Yousaf is re-ported to have said there is a proposal planned for March 2016 on reintro-ducing a post-study work visa programme for over-seas students. This would come just before the Scot-tish parliamentary elec-tions in May.
Ross Brannigan
Obama defends record in final State of the Union address
Obama declares the State of the Union to be strong. Photo: Getty Images
Ross Brannigan
President Ba-rack Obama used his sev-enth and last
SOTU address to de-fend his record in office,
rather than propose any new policies or proce-dures.
He also took the chance to lambast the Republi-cans, even if it was not by name.
He criticised those who
continue to deny climate change, as well as saying those who ostracise racial minorities “[do not] make us safe…it’s just wrong. It betrays who we are as a country.”
The President also made
a strong stance on so-called Islamic State, say-ing “when you come after Americans, we come after you…Ask Osama bin Lad-en.”
Finally, Obama said he wanted America to be the
country to cure cancer, and help reduce the cost of college tuition.
There was an empty chair beside First Lady Michelle Obama. Normal-ly reserved for VIPs, it was a mark of respect for those killed in gun violence across the United States.
Obama’s final SOTU come just weeks after an emotional plea to the American people to move to stronger gun controls, particularly on those background checks not being carried out my on-line retailers.
His speech received criticism from recently appointed Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who said it was none of a Presi-dent’s business in the af-fairs of the primary of another party, referring to Obama indirectly criticis-ing Donald Trump.
He said: “Speaking up for our values and speaking up for our beliefs is one thing. But kind of wading into the primary politics of the other party is just not really what presidents ought to do.”
He added: “I think it sort of degrades the presiden-cy to then talk about pri-mary politics in the other party, during primaries.”
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9 Brig | January 2016 PoliticsLooking ahead to a year of politicsPolitics Editor Dan Vevers looks ahead to the upcoming political events of 2016, and gives his predicitons of the year ahead.
Last year was weird.
The SNP went from having
10% of Scottish seats at Westminster to having 95%, overwhelmingly at the expense of an implod-ing Labour Party, which once viewed Scotland - at least in the House of Com-mons - as its own impreg-nable citadel.
Two days before the Gener-al Election, I spent the morn-ing at a Jim Murphy rally in Glasgow.
The Labour faithful were in a delusionally optimistic mood, especially after Gor-don Brown bounded onto the stage and did that angry passionate bull thing he per-fected in the week before the referendum campaign.
It was all for naught, and Labour in Scotland were dec-imated. All this to say, expect more of the same in 2016.
UK Labour is run by a radi-cal hippy now, while in Scot-land Kezia Dugdale has man-aged to make no impression whatsoever.
At the Holyrood elections in May next year, there will be blood.
It is a pretty good bet that Scottish Labour will not win a single constituency seat, and will be relying purely on the list vote.
It is also not unthinkable that Ruth Davidson’s Tories might beat them into third place.
The media has been all over a series of supposed scandals and crises surrounding the SNP, from suspended MPs to the closure of the Forth Road Bridge, but polls suggest the Nationalists will return to power with an increased ma-jority and a hugely weakened opposition.
In the UK, the Conservative Government have also been blessed with a divided and weak opposition.
Cameron and Osborne give off the impression of having never felt more secure, and they have reason to, with a near double-digit lead over Corbyn’s Labour in the latest poll.
By the end of 2016, I predict Corbyn will not have gone anywhere - by which point, it will be put up or shut up time for the Labour rebels.
There’s a chance that the party could split, perhaps
with the self-proclaimed “moderates” allying with Tim Farron’s Lib Dems.
It wouldn’t be the first time - just ask Michael Foot.
But the Prime Minister’s position may not be as se-cure, nor his future as rosy, as he would like to think.
In February, he hopes to return from Brussels with an agreement from EU member states on a renegotiation of the UK’s membership.
There is, however, no guar-antee he will get the unanim-ity he desires.
On welfare, he wants to deny in-work benefits to European migrants for four years - which will meet with fierce resistance from East-ern European states.
Meanwhile, his proposed exclusion of the UK from the principle of ever closing Union may not go down well with the likes of France, Bel-gium and Germany.
My prediction: Cameron will walk away with a much watered-down agreement, and go for a snap referendum in the summer or early au-tumn of 2016.
I predict the UK will vote to leave - especially if the refugee crisis from the Mid-dle East continues to worsen, and if ISIS succeed in strik-ing Europe again.
Scotland, meanwhile, will very likely vote to stay.
What happens next consti-tutionally will have colossal ramifications for the issue of Scottish independence - one that could easily see another referendum come Scotland’s way.
In the US, it seems increas-ingly likely that - defying all laws of political gravity - Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination.
Mull that over for a second.On the Democrat side, it
is not so clear-cut. Hillary Clinton is not, in the main,
trusted or particularly liked by Americans.
Obama overturned a near thirty-point deficit to defeat her between 2007 and 2008.
2016’s Democrat alterna-tive, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, seems to have all the momentum on his side at the moment, even with a dis-missive US press.
With a huge batch of the controversial Clinton e-mails being published on New Year’s Eve, and the last of them slated for publication in January, any damaging rev-elations could seriously cost her.
As such, I’m going to make a bold prediction: Bernie Sanders will become the next President of the United States.
And if it is a choice be-tween him and Trump, we’ll call that prediction a fervent prayer.
At the H o l y r o o d elections in May next year, there will be blood. It is a pretty good bet that S c o t t i s h Labour will not win a single c o n s t i t u e n c y seat, and will be relying purely on the list vote.
2016 may be the year the EU referendum is held Photo: http://www.markpack.org.uk/92980/osborne-warns-eu-one-political-cartoons-year/
Corbyn calls for unity in new Shadow CabinetRoss Brannigan
Jeremy Corbyn has performed his first Shadow Cabinet reshuf-
fle since the beginning of his term as Labour Party leader.
In making changes to his frontbench, Corbyn sought to gain unity within his party, after successive criticisms against his leadership style from within his party.
Corbyn’s new appointments are Kate Hollern, who takes the role of a Shadow Defence Minister; Jenny Champman, who becomes a Shadow Edu-cation Minister; Jo Stevens is moved to a Shadow Prisons Minister.
Andy McDonald becomes a
Shadow Transport Minister; Angela Rayner goes to Shad-ow Work and Pensions, and Fabian Hamilton to Foreign Affairs.
One appointment which raised many an eyebrow was the replacement of pro-Trident minister Angela Ea-gle with anti-Trident Emily Thornberry as Shadow De-fence Secretary.
In the wake of the reshuffle, three MPs quit, one on live television.
There may have been more resignations had Jeremy Corbyn sacked Hilary Benn, Shadow Foreign Secretary.
Mr Corbyn spoke passion-ately of his opposition to airstrikes in Syria in early December.
Mr Benn made his speech
vehemently supporting air-strikes, making for uncom-fortable viewing for those at home, who watched Cor-byn’s face looking more and more like stone with every second.
It is believed Benn’s post re-mains intact to prevent more outrage in his party, al-though it is unlikely Mr Benn will keep his apparent agreement to not speak out against Corbyn again.
Analysing this strange and very public reshuffle shows two distinct views: one posi-tive, another negative.
To be a successful democracy, every Govern-ment should have an effec-tive opposition.
Unfortunately for Corbyn, despite his
mandate as Labour leader, his party have not been uni-fied up to this point, and so their effectiveness is dimin-ished.
Perhaps this reshuffle will encourage some unity within the party, and make Labour a credible opposition again.
Many are tipping the Scot-tish Nationalist Party, who won 56 of Scotland’s 59 seats in the 2015 election, as the new opposition.
It may not be difficult to re-alise why when, in a recent debate over pensions, just five Conservative MPs turned up, whilst more than half of the SNP’s MPs attend most debates shown on television.
Yet, this unity has come at a price.
With three MPs resigning,
one very publicly, this has become yet another Jenga block out of Corbyn’s tower.
If more MPs resign, and if there are further outbursts of opposition (as has been seen with Tristram Hunt and Hi-lary Benn) perhaps Corbyn’s reshuffle will end in a top-
pling of his leadership.And time is running out; the
Scottish Parliamentary Elec-tion is less than four months away, and Labour are still on a slippery slide of popularity.
Hilary Benn and Corbyn. Photo: Getty Images
10 Brig | January 2016 Features
New Year’s Resolutions:Why do they matter?
It’s January again and that means it’s a new year.
And with every New Year we get a sense of almost magical hope and inspiration.
As the clock ticks to the new hour, the calendar changes and we leave the previous year behind and enter into a fresh one, and for some reason all our hopes and aspirations seem possible again.
We’ve all been there. We’ve all stood on the
threshold of a new year and vowed to change our own little world.
Indeed, statistics show that 89% of people in Brit-ain aged sixteen and over make at least one New Year’s resolution every January the first.
Some people stick to these resolutions and achieve their plans, whereas others give up or hit stumbling blocks on day one, two or who knows, and the magic of their resolution seems to fade overnight and a new day, week or month just doesn’t seem the right time to start again, and we have to wait for a brand new January 1st.
So the question is, what are the top five most pop-ular New Year Resolutions that people dedicate their next 365 days to, or well, however long they last.
The fifth most popular resolution taken on by people is the desire to be better educated.
No matter who we are and how many qualifica-tions or skills we may have under our belt, we always want to be better educat-ed.
This can take the form of finally getting our high school grades, going to university, entering into an apprenticeship or a new form of training or even learning a new lan-guage.
But why do we want this? Well for many peo-ple it is a practical plan in order to get somewhere in life.
Maybe they need high school grades in order to get into university a year later, or maybe they want to enter into a new line of training so they can be-come self-employed and manage their work time better around their family.
However, for some people, it is just about
achievement. They may never intend
to use their new found ed-ucation for any practical reason, because the per-sonal knowledge that they have it is enough.
The fourth most popular New Year’s resolution is to travel more.
The idea of travel sparks so many romantic ideas in our head like adventure, romance, cultural learn-ing and experiences and sometimes even the hope that we will grow and find ourselves in a foreign land.
Often we get tied up with work, educational or family responsibilities and travel take a bit of a back seat both financially and time wise.
But every year millions of people seek travel to both warm and chilly cli-mates, either for fun and relaxation, or to gain some inner peace.
The third most popular New Year’s resolution is to do with work. Most of us can relate to being in a job or career we don’t like or don’t feel fulfilled by.
That is why every year people choose to seek a different job.
We hope that a new job will bring us more money, or better opportunities, more recognition within a field, admiration from family or peers, or might help us relocate some-where more desirable.
Either way, each year people look to change jobs, whether that means getting a promotion in the same firm or moving to a bigger division at the other side of the world, all because we seek material, emotional or professional gain within one of the most influential and time conscious aspects of our life.
The second most popu-lar New Year’s Resolu-tion is all about love. Each December 31st, there are many people who have no one to kiss when the chimes strike twelve and they hope that the next time the bells ring out the New Year, they will be in a relationship.
Now some people are looking for true love and the pathway to happily ever after.
Others are looking to just dip their toes back in the water.
And then there are those
who just want string-free fun.
Either way, studies show that various forms of posi-tive relationships benefit our emotional state and help us to strive for and enjoy other positive areas of life.
But these studies are not news to us, most people innately seek relation-ships and that is why love, in one shape or another, is the number two priority on people’s list.
But what is the big num-ber one New Year’s Reso-lution that tops the charts amongst British wishers and plan makers?
Well, believe it or not, it is weight loss and fitness.
Yes, we live in a western world which is fanatical about perfect body imag-es and is paranoid about health, and as a result, we pledge to sculpt our bod-ies at the gym, trim off the fat with healthy eat-ing and reduce our risk of heart disease and diabe-tes through counting the calories and freshening up our diet.
Once again, there are many reasons for weight and fitness being the top priority on the New Year’s
resolutions list. Often people feel they
need to sort themselves out before the other as-pects of their external world such as the previ-ously mentioned love, work, travel and educa-tion can be focused on.
We can control our own body more than we can change the other aspects of our life.
We think that if we can master our own weight and health, then we will be more physiologically and physically equipped to challenge the other ar-eas of our life we want to reshape.
So now that it is January 2016, it is time for us to think about what change we want to make to our life and to really ask our-selves why. Why does that change matter to us, and what do we really want to achieve? Maybe once we’ve done that we can figure out the best way to stick to our New Year’s Resolution and by Decem-ber 31st, we will finally glimpse that fulfilment we seek.
Caroline Malcolm takes an in-deptH look at the PROMISES we make TO OURSELVES every year
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13 Brig | January 2016 Features
We have all come to u n i v e r -sity for a
reason. The life experi-ence, the degree, the par-ties- whatever. But at the end of it all we all need the same thing- a job.
55 per cent of students start university with an idea of what they would like as a career. Most of us change our mind.
And some of us have no clue when they ar-rive, and still no clue when they leave.
If any of this sounds re-motely like you, do not fear. Brig is on hand with some suggestions of what you can do with your de-gree once you leave the nest of university. And make the most of the skills you have learnt here.
Professional Cuddler
Do all your friends say you are just so cuddly and soft? Have you perfect-ed the ultimate cuddle?
Or are you just a big softy who likes to have a hug? Then professional cuddler is the job for you.
All you need is a mem-bership at Cuddle Pro-fessionals International
and an accredited di-ploma that costs £145, and you can cuddle yourself and others to good health and fortune.
Not to be confused with prostitution, a pro-fessional cuddler can earn up to £40 an hour.
Dog Food Taster
Yes, you have read that correct. If you know someone who is a dog lov-er, has an exquisite taste pallet, or who has dem-onstrated on numerous occasions that they don’t care what they eat, this could be the job for them.
Hired by pet food com-panies to test the qual-ity of the food, tasters usually spit out the mor-suls once they taste it.
Mark Goole, owner of pet food company Huds and Toke says, “If you wouldn’t put it in your mouth, don’t you dare expect your dog to eat it”.
Ice Cream Taster
Anyone with a science based degree can put those lab skills to the test and be-come an ice cream taster.
Or insert any chemi-cally produced fla-voured food of your choice that needs testing.
You do have to get a
specialisation as a food scientist (the technical ti-tle), but it will be worth it!
Pay is usually not much above minimum wage, but again, it will be worth it.
Crime Scene Cleaner
Do you have a flat-mate that insists eve-rything must be spot-less, all the time. Are you that flatmate?
Then why not con-sider a career as a crime scene cleaner.
We have all had jobs where cleaning has been an element, so jump the gun and clean up after the stabbings, murders and gruesome deaths.
Not for the squeam-ish or faint hearted, but when you get to say you dealt in outbreak control and biohazard cleaning, it is a pretty cool way to say you are a cleaner.
Snake Milker
Cows, maybe goats- ani-mals that were meant to be milked. And now snakes.
If you are brave enough to risk your life every day and want to feel that buzz, a snake milker could be the job for you.
Employed by zoos and serpentariums (snakes
zoos) to extract venom for antivenom cures, professional Ken Dar-nell describes his job as: “The only difference be-tween me and any other company in the world that produces some-thing is that the means of production here can kill you...and wants to”.
Most snake milkers have a degree, so you are already one step closer!
IcebeRg Mover
Since the Titanic trag-edy in 1912 this pro-fession has taken off, and pays big bucks.
Become a member of the international Ice Pa-trol and monitor the movement of icebergs, towing them out of the way of ships and oil rigs.
Use all those technol-ogy skills developed at uni to collect data from airplanes, radar and satel-lites, and test your nerves because if one of those ice-bergs you are towing flips it can slice through the boat.
Embalmer
We have all seen some pretty grim sights when living in halls, or liv-ing with that flatmate you have known for too long, or even from
just walking down the Dusk-Fubar Highway.
If it takes a lot to turn your stomach, why not consider becoming an embalmer.
A perfect job for the creative, artistic and per-fectionists, embalming preserves human remains to prevent decompos-ing, so you can look your best on your funeral day.
A decent starting wage and weekends off- what more could you want.
Chicker Sexer
Probably as grim as it sounds to be honest. But you get to work out-doors and with animals.
There are a short-age of chicken sex-ers currently despite the £40,000 salary.
The sex of a chicken is needed to be know fast as males and females play different roles- males for meat and females for eggs.
The technique involves literally squeezing the poop out of the chick so you can see in the intestine where the sex organ is.
Maybe not a direct use of your degree, but who directly uses their de-gree anymore anyway!
Sommelier
If there is one thing that
10 Weird and Wonderful jobs for after you graduateElizabeth RossFeatures Editor
being a student has taught us, it is how to drink. Particularly cheap wine.
A sommelier takes this training to the next level- a wine professional who normally works in fine restaurants, specializ-ing in all aspects of wine service and food paring.
Courses are held across Europe, Asia the Ameri-cas and Oceania, and if you get the qualification you get to say you are a member of the Court of Master Sommeliers. Cool.
Professional Bed Warmer
University is the only time in our lives where we can sleep so much and yet not get enough sleep all at the same time.
But fear not, the sleep can continue into the working world when you become a professional bed warmer.
For £16,000 a year you ensure beds are warm and cosy for the arrival of guests. Some hotels even get you to don a hygienic suit and act as a human water bottle. Four years at uni well spent I think!
We are all going to need patience and a thick skin when we graduate, but with a whole world of jobs out there, there is no reason to lose hope.
14 Brig | January 2016 Features
A human right, or political cor-rectness gone mad? Keeping
up with the times, or just another craze?
It is the debate which has captured the attention of the Western world in re-cent years. Gender neutral toilets.
Denmark, Sweden and Iceland have made all their toilets gender-inclu-sive, and gender neutral toilets (GNTs) are pop-ping up in legislation and public buildings across North America.
Even Westminster has taken a conscious step for-ward and are proposing to introduce GNTs.
GNTs are public toilets that people of any gender or non-conforming gen-der identity can use.
Disabled toilets, air-planes, trains and that one toilet at the back of the local café are GNTs, everyone has and anyone can use them.
Over the last few years trans lobby groups have been making headlines, publically calling for equalities like GNTs, claiming it a human right.
Transgender is an um-brella term for trans men and women whose gen-der identity is opposite of their assigned sex, trans-sexuals who seek medical assistance to transition,
and genderqueer people who do not conform to any gender binary.
But do we really need gender neutral toilets?
Generally speaking there are two sides to the argu-ment. Either: if you have a penis, use the men’s bath-room.
Or: if you think of your-self as female, use the la-dies’.
Attitudes towards homo-phobia and xenophobia sit precariously on the streets of the UK.
A report by the National Centre for Transgender Equality revealed that sixty-five per cent of trans people have experienced violence and harassment at work, and that trans people are twice as likely to be victims of sexual vio-lence.
In the past three weeks two transgender inmates have hanged themselves, saying they would kill themselves if they were sent to a male prison.
In 2014 transgender woman Susan Brook won the first claim of transgen-der discrimination against a pub which refused to al-low her to use the ladies’, and then barred her when she complained.
Maybe we do need gen-der neutral toilets.
Megan Davis (21), an economics student from Glasgow, identifies as a non-binary person, and argues that access to GNTs is a matter of safety.
“Quite frankly, having GNTs allows me to go to the toilet. You don’t have to be concerned about choosing the right bath-room.
“Society has deemed which toilets you should have to use, but if you feel that you would not be safe in one of them or either of
them, then you are in the wrong place to begin with. GNTs allow for this un-comfortable situation to be resolved.
“I haven’t ever faced dis-crimination but I fear that I will at some point. Peo-ple need to learn to not tell people which bathrooms they should and should not be using. If someone thinks they have the right to be there, then they do.”
The Scottish Trans Al-liance, a Scottish Gov-ernment funded project which assists transgen-der people, outlines that GNTs eliminates any har-assment and discrimina-tion that transgender and gender non-conforming people experience when using gender segregated bathrooms.
“No one can be told they are in the ‘wrong’ bath-room when a space is pro-vided for everyone.
“GNTs have become about providing a safe space for those who do not identify within the gen-der binary, and hopefully through further aware-ness we can make every-
one comfortable, no mat-ter how they identify.
“Campaigns such as social media trend #we-needtopee, and the Trans Friendly Venue Charter have raised the profile of the demand for transgen-der toilets and letting peo-ple use the bathroom of their choice.”
With phrases such as tranny, he-she and she-male part of the collo-quial language of society, getting society to accept GNTs may not be an easy task.
Public restrooms are the second most common place for violence against trans people to occur, and by providing a separate space users will be as-sumed to be trans.
GNTs run the high risk of exposing people who do not wish to be exposed.
By law only transsexu-als who have undergone gender reassignment are protected and free to use the toilet of their choice, and not those who sim-ply don’t identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.
Legally a business can decide whether and how a transsexual can use their service, which means they can decide which toilets they want you to use.
A lot of people cannot afford reassignment sur-gery. Stonewall Scotland highlighted what they identify as the problems with GNTs as they cur-rently are.
“As things currently stand a man wearing a dress and lipstick, but
does not wish to change his sex, is not thought of as transsexual and is therefore not protected.
This adds to be stigma that trans people receive, and therefore that GNTs receive.
“A number of the trans community see gender neutral toilets as a punish-ment, not a privilege.”
GNTs have gone from nipping into the disabled loo to being labelled as the ‘gay’ toilet.
The University of Glas-gow has fourteen GNTs across twelve campus lo-cations, but most are out of the way.
The GNTs at Queen Margaret Union are in the same corridor as the board and executive offic-es and can only be reached by a different set of stairs at the back of the union.
Max Sefton, QMU Presi-dent, commented that it would “take time” to “break down the stigma faced by those who do not conform to a straightfor-ward concept of gender”.
At the University of Stirling a GNT toilet was opened in Venue, but when Venue closes at 5pm it cannot be accessed.
“It is not signposted”, commented Emma Binns, LGBT+ Society President. “I didn’t even know about it until last week. We have to question if it is in the right place, and should we move it? Where are people suppose to pee?”
Do we really need gender neutral toilets then if they are going to label people and make them feel un-
Gender Neutral Toilets : What you need to know
Features Edi-tor Eliza-beth Ross looks into the debate sur-rounding gen-der neutral toilets.
Image: abcnews.com
safe regardless?Sally McLaughlin* (34)
has identified as a wom-an for over twenty years thinks they are “a waste of time”.
“A gender neutral toilet does not allow trans peo-ple to be treated normally. Trans people just want to be treated normally, not differently. By using a ‘gender neutral toilet’ I will be labelled and outed.
“By giving trans people a separate toilet you are just giving in to ‘normal’ peo-ple’s fears of having to pee next to a guy in a dress. Nobody should be forced to use a bathroom they don’t feel they belong to, and I don’t feel I belong to ‘gender neutral’.
“Would we make Polish people use ‘Polish toilets’ to make them feel more included in society, or the Syrians that are coming over to the UK?”
A correct answer or uni-versal opinion to whether we need gender neutral toilets is never going to be achieved.
Britain are still far be-hind the likes of North America, but even West-minster, and it seems for the time-being Britain are going to hold on to their traditional toilet values.
Regardless of opinion, the ultimate aim is to be more trans-inclusive. Whether gender neutral toilets is the way to do it, only time will tell.
*Name has been changed.
”“
IN 1969, when the first edition of Brig appeared, the University and
student body were facing a communication crisis.
With almost 1,000 people to inform, the output of paper was overwhelming, and in those days before the internet, Bulletin Boards were almost the only mass media for staff and students alike.
In addition, every other university had a newspaper, led by Edinburgh with their rather classy ‘Student’ paper, supported by the then president of their student union, a young Gordon Brown, later to find fame within UK politics.
The decision was taken to have a Stirling paper and the first thing was to decide on a title.
We initially thought ofcalling it ‘Bridge’, which was to reflect a bridge between staff students and the community, but later found out that Motherwell Engineering already had a house magazine of that name.
As a result, we changed to Brig, which continued to
reflect the inclusive aspect, but also pulling in Stirling ‘Brig’, the historic bridge leading into the town.
The next aspect was funding, and the cash flow for the SRU was (as ever) not large.
The student union was funded on a per-capita basis, and as numbers of students were small, income was restricted.
I spoke to a number of people already involved in newspaper production and discovered that if we could
generate a high level of paid-for advertising, we could cover the full production costs of the paper allowing it to be free.
This was decades before‘Metro’ had exactly the same idea.
There was much debate on this as a free newspaper was seen not to have a value, but we overcame objections by pointing out the many difficulties of revenue collection for a small circulation of around 1,000 copies.
Student number 28: The Birth of BrigPaul Martin reflects on his time as founding editor of Brig Newspaper, and the obstacles he faced setting up a student newspaper in the first year of Stirling University
We then signed up with an advertising agency in Glasgow (Fee Associates) and secured a printer, Johnston’s of Falkirk, already producing a score of local titles within central Scotland, but with the professional capacity to take on a small student newspaper once a month.
Whisper it but we had noshame playing the prestige card of working for the university.
Johnston’s had also invested in one of the first web offset presses in the
UK and were moving away from hot metal into the newest technology available at the time.
The next stage was to actually produce the paper.
In 1969, there was a single mainframe computer in Pathfoot of the punch card variety, but no personal IT and certainly no typing skills for almost all students and staff and almost all course work was written in longhand.
As a result, some of ourcontributions came handwritten, some came typed from departments and most of it was written in the SRU, using our c l e r i c a l backup. I remember turning up in Falkirk on Thursday
evenings with a sheaf of papers that the typesetters patently converted into professional formats on metal Kodak plates, which we retained.
These were then placed on the new presses and the paper rolled off, to be delivered to the door by the Falkirk Herald vans.
Although we respected the inputs of the print pros, we also had ideas of our own about the appearance of the paper. We were influenced by the publications of the day, such as ‘International Times’ and ‘Oz’ which hadintroduced new approaches to the use of graphics over type.
I’ve no idea if the library has preserved all those early editions, but I have fond memories of editions that overlaid art work displayed in the university over front page news stories.
We also seemed to be in constant conflict with the authorities, to the extent that for a while we ran a ‘threats of legal action’ page.
One area never short of stories was sport.
Anyway, as is the nature of university life, we all moved on and others took over.
The amazing thing is that what we created
survived and what are the chances
of ‘Brig’ going totally on-line in this brave new world?
Lectures are as sparcely attended as ever Photo: University of Striling
We also seemed to be in constant conflict with the
authorities to the extent that for a while we ran a ‘threats of
legal action’ page
An interview with our Founding Editor
What’s it like seeing brig still so alive and so
different?
It’s great it’s still going and I get a real buzz from seeing it as is.
I’ve never really lost touch and have kept a propriatorial eye on it over the years. Plus I’ve met so many people who’ve worked on it over the years like Jane Secker, Grace Dent, Cat McPhee and many others who’ve used it to build great media careers.
In this life you don’t get many things that you create lasting 50 years!
I particularly enjoyed your “threats of legal action” page, do you remember any examples
of this?
The University and academics didn’t like us commenting on their issues for some reason. Maybe that’s changed but we were on the side of the students and not the establishment.
One example was when the university appointed a medical officer of health, and a local doctor objected to the appointment saying he’d been promised the job and he
was backed by the BMA. A real mess, and we objected
too as it was depriving students of on - site medical treatment while the dispute was ongoing.
Being neutral was a difficult line to follow as I’m sure you’re finding.
What was student life and student activity in the beginning of the
University?
Remember when we started there was no student body. Just 147 young people selected as tough enough to build a new university from scratch.
Was there a strong political student
scene?
Students Bob Hall, Jim Monan, Charlie Bisset and I started the Political Coordination Group which, even in those early days, was an attempt to get away from narrow party politics and seek a more rational consensus view.
We invited political people to visit us and paid then expenses plus a rail ticket - it mostly worked.
Our biggest ‘nearly’ coup was almost getting American presidential candidate and former vice president Hubert Humphrey to visit.
I phoned him at Claridges Hotel in London and asked
him if he fancied a trip to Stirling but he politely declined. I don’t know who was more surprised – me getting through or him answering his own phone.
The people we did get included those mentioned by Peter and also Robin Blackburn and Tariq Ali, both political firebrands at the time, Donald Dewar, Lord George Brown, Winnie Ewing and Joe Grimond.
I think the University was somewhat bemused at our endeavours on this front but they were always supportive, whatever we did in those days.
They did their own thing with public lectures and one of those was by Lord Snow, creator of the somewhat erroneous ‘two cultures’ theory.
How much did you enjoy your time at
stirling university?
I did enjoy my time at Stirling where I was the first sabbatical Student President and chair of the Staff/Student club. But it sll soured over the Queen’s visit in 1972 as I was also a member of the Disciplinary Committee.
There were deaths linked to that visit which is still vivid in my memory.
By the time I left I was pleased to see the back of the place. But I’ve been back many times since.
Jacqueline Boland talks to the very first Student President and Editor of Brig, Paul Martin
15 Brig | January 2016 Features
16 Brig | January 2016 Puzzles
1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8
9 10
11 12 13
14
15 16
17
18 19 20
21 22
Across7 - Complete failure (6)
8 - Open type of footwear (6)
9 - Unit of type size (4)
10 - Absurd (8)
11 - Stablemen (7)
13 - Colossus (5)
15 - Burst of light (5)
16 - Person who practises self-discipline (7)
18 - State of Australia (8)
19 - Writing fluids (4)
21 - Fruit (6)
22 - Fastening devices (6)
Down1 - The south of France (4)
2 - Institution (13)
3 - Bestows (7)
4 - High lending practice (5)
5 - Extremely small (13)
6 - Squid dish (8)
12 - Course of study (8)
14 - With a look of suspicion (7)
17 - Start of (5)
20 - Retained (4)
x x 5 60
x - -
÷ + 16
- - +
+ + 2 16
13 -3 -2
CARP
FISH
17 Brig | January 2016 Puzzles
ANSWERS
EASY HARD
5 8 3 6 99 2 5
9 2 35 4 7
1 32 6 8
5 2 89 7 5
7 6 1 8 2
9 3 27 9 6 5
87 6 8
5 47 5 3
68 3 7 6
9 2 1
We’re con-s t a n t l y r e m i n d -ed of the
internet these days; there isn’t a student at this university who could claim to have never used it. But are we using it to the best of our advantage? If your usual routine is a quick look at Face-book/Twitter/Reddit before you return to studying then it could be so. Brig has been looking around for the best web resources to make sure students get the most out of their university experience!
First of all, there’s more to Google than searching your own name. It has specific re-sources, Google Scholar and Google Books, which can be incredibly useful with sources for essays. Books gives you the op-tion to search millions of books, which you can either preview or read for free, perfect for when the library doesn’t have what you’re looking for. Schol-ar allows you to search for journal articles, again
18 Brig | January 2016 Comment
Getting the most out of the webLucy McLellan
Editor in Chief
useful in essay writing! Bryony James uses it a lot in essays, ‘I find it really useful, its easy to navi-gate. I’ve used it in the past for finding specific psychological studies for essays.’ So next time you just blindly Google, hop-ing for the solution to all your essay writing prob-lems, bear these two in mind!
Project Gutenberg
Another which comes in useful when writing essays, Gutenberg offers over 42,000 ebooks for free, either to read on-line, or download to mo-bile devices, tablets, Kin-dle etc. So it’s certainly worth a look, and it saves you a walk to the library!
Money Advice Ser-vice
While this isn’t spe-cifically for students, the Money Advice Service is a useful resource for keep-ing track of your money. Kimberley Wallace has been exploring its full potential, ‘It gives good, personalised advice, for example, a budget plan-ner, which you can tailor to your specific needs. They also give out plenty of helpful tips to keep track of your spending!’ The service is free and provides tips, planners and more to ensure you
get the most out of your money, and I think that’s something all students can agree on!
Save the Student
Another money sav-ing site - this time aimed specifically at students.
It also contains deals and discounts, so it’s always worth checking to see the latest offers; think Grou-pon for students! Jenny Barnes said, ‘I think that this website is re-ally useful, it has loads of information relevant to all students - especially those in need of extra cash! I would highly rec-ommend this website to all students who want to live their student life to the max!’
Guardian Student
This page is specifically for students, and fea-tures a mixture of use-ful articles, uni league tables, and future career advice. Certainly worth a read whilst checking the news, and most of the articles are written by students. Also, for any of you interested in getting your own opinion across, there is the opportunity to blog on the site, and
have your voice heard!
The Student Room
– Essentially a chat room designed for stu-dents, The Student Room is well known, and allows you the chance to con-verse with other students about basically anything you want, from uni to relationships. The site features over a million members, so if you have a question, you’re bound to find someone to chat to!
Sources: books.google.co.ukscholar.google.co.ukwww.gutenberg.orgmoneyadviceservice.
org.ukwww.savethestudent.
orgwww.studentbeans.comwww.guardian.co.uk/
education/studentswww.thestudentroom.
co.uk
No single piece of technology has revolu-
tionised our communi-cation in recent years more than the smart-phone.
More like a handheld computer than a mobile phone, it allows you to do almost anything and everything – from taking photographs and surfing the internet to even find-ing your next date with
just a few taps. Smartphones are now an
essential part of our mod-ern lives.
The only problem is, I don’t actually own one.
I bought my current mo-bile phone around five years ago, and I use it to call and text - that’s about it.
I’m more of a traditional-ist - I like to use a camera for photography, an iPod for listening to music, and a laptop for scrolling through Facebook.
But in our technology-driven age, anything less than a multi-tasker will
just not cut it. I’m already feeling the
pressure to join the mass-es and get one of these modern marvels for my-self.
The great thing about smartphones is that they help us to juggle our in-creasingly active lives.
Ploughing through work, maintaining relationships and keeping up with cur-rent events take up a lot of our time, so it helps to keep an eye on everything from the same place.
With a smartphone in your pocket, it will only take seconds for you to be
brought right up-to-date. But this culture of con-
stantly multi-tasking means that it can be im-possible to focus on one single thing.
Smartphones can make it difficult to study or even watch a film as you al-ways have one eye on your smartphone screen.
Smartphones may be useful, but they can be equally useless.
We are all guilty of whil-ing away the hours by playing around with apps (remember Flappy Bird, anyone?)
For every app that’s
actually handy in your everyday life, there are a hundred others that are completely pointless.
Once the initial novelty has worn off, you realise that you have wasted quite a lot of time – and prob-ably money too.
Just think - every minute that you have spent watch-ing video after video on YouTube is a minute that you could have spent with your friends in real life, or doing an actual hobby that you enjoy.
For everything that smartphones have given us, I feel that these simple activities and interactions are gradually being sacri-ficed.
The fact that smart-phones keep you constant-ly connected, no matter the time or place, is also a major part of their appeal.
With a myriad of op-tions, such as Facebook, Twitter, or WhatsApp, staying in touch has never been so easy.
But perhaps this ease is also the smartphone’s curse.
It can be difficult to switch off when you are being continually bom-barded with messages and news.
Are smartphones still so smart?
Amy BeveridgeComment Editor
Photo: www.marketingland.com
And while you are scroll-ing through other people’s posts at three in the morn-ing, you can’t help but feel that they are going out and living their lives when you are squandering yours – even when this is not the case.
Despite these doubts, smartphones are now un-deniably ingrained in our lives.
I know that sooner or later I will give in and get one for myself.
But at what stage will smartphones be at in a few years’ time?
As our technology ad-vances, so will the capabil-ity of these devices.
Even with all of their perks, smartphones aren’t perfect – overpriced mod-els and poor battery life are still concerns that need to be fixed.
With the pressure on to keep up-to-date with the latest tech, it is entirely possible that the humble smartphone may be over-taken by a newer, better, and shinier form of com-munication.
But for now, we still have to deal with group chat spam, Snapchat, and 8% battery – so I might just have to learn to love it.
19 Brig | January 2016 Comment
I’m generally not a very opinion-ated person. I don’t have many
pet peeves. I’m pretty relaxed, but I get un-reasonably aggressive at eyebrows.
Now, I’m a fan of eye-brows, I appreciate some killer shaped brows. I try my best to keep on top of mine, I get them threaded every so often but that’s as far as I go. It’s not on the top of my to-do list.
So what really grinds my gears is in mov-ies with harsh, difficult settings-- such as post-apocalyptic, zombie apocalypse, medieval, etc—the female char-acters all seem to have found time away from
My unreasonable hatred for eyebrows in filmfighting to survive to sit down with their twee-zers and perfectly shape their eyebrows.
It always looks slightly off to me. These badass female characters are too busy being badass to survive to worry about how their eyebrows look. It extends to the rest of their body hair too, somehow during the worlds demise women miraculously stop grow-ing any hair.
Living in hiding and squalor from zombies? Better wax my legs and arm pits.
It’s particularly obvi-ous in popular shows like The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, etc. I know it’s not a big deal, and it would mean the actresses growing their body hair out which they are probably uncomfort-able doing. But for the
sake of realism, and if anyone else cared that much, I’m sure there are ways to do it.
It’s all part of society’s construct that women must be hairless at all times, apparently. Even when it makes no sense in a film that the wom-en would have access to hair removal tools.
This is probably one of those cases that now you’ve read it, you’re going to notice it all the time, and I apologise. It’s one of many reasons why I loved Star Wars: The Force Awakens (don’t worry, no spoilers.) Rey is a fantastic protagonist in every way, and she also has believable look-ing eyebrows! They’re reasonably grown out, and I love them for it.
Jacqueline BolandDeputy Editor
20 Brig | January 2016 Comment
The new year, and in fact the lead up to it, brought a lot
of contemplation about the speed that time seemed to be progress-ing at.
After the clock struck midnight and the hango-ver slowly wore off it be-gan to dawn on me; it was 2016 and I had officially seen 20 different years of the world moving around the sun (not literally, that would be an odd thing to watch for that long).
The thought that my body has been functioning relatively well for the same amount of time people had been crying at the film Titanic (sorry, I struggled to remember anything
else that happened in the five months of 1997 I was alive) scared me.
And recently it has just felt like time is doing a sprint while I stand and watch it go.
Another first year said to me after my final exam that “we were a eighth through our university degree”, this now rattles around my mind as a hor-rific reminder of time.
My mind began to do fractions and maths with years.
By the end of May I will be a quarter done with my degree, and in 18 months, the time it takes to grow a person then another person, I will be half way through my uni experi-ence. And by the Tokyo Olympics I will be a uni-versity graduate.
It sounds odd but I start-ed thinking about circle shaped food, like pizza or cake, and then represent-ing my uni life with the amount I had eaten. I’ve already consumed a whole slice of a medium Domi-no’s pizza in my degree.
I found myself thinking “this isn’t okay!”, then re-alising there wasn’t much I could really do about it.
But that’s the thing, most other things in our life that worry us, we can make changes to having more control.
If you’re worried about money, save more. If you’re worried about uni grades, drink less and work more.
In relation to time, these things are rather trivial. But what if you’re wor-ried about waking up one day and being 25 and still
being able to remember every detail of New Year’s Eve 2014.
Because so far it’s been a whole year and every sec-ond of that night is still so strong in my memory.
I mean some years feel slow but when you’re at the end of it you’re shocked by the fact that it’s over. 2015 was a dif-ferent story.
I mean I could do a depthful rundown of eve-rything that happened in 2015 and then write out some cheesy line about how incredible it has been.
Then rant about how I’m going to live next year with a new attitude but I’m sure we’ve all read enough of that bullshit on our Facebook walls to do us till at least next Decem-ber.
I mean, yes in 2015 I left
high school, moved to uni and a whole load of other emotional crap happened in between but even the lit-tlest details feel as though they have just passed me by, like yesterday.
I spent a whole year with the sensation in my mind of it still being a fresh new year and when it hit No-vember I knew it was time to stop and evaluate.
But with exams and Christmas and all the things we lose ourselves in during daily life, the thought elluded me, as things often do, until the new year.
Then the thought re-turned and I realised that one of the most exciting years of my life had just passed me by without me even taking the time to ap-preciate all the stuff going on. Photo: www.wikiart.org
Time to think about the presentStuart GrahamComment Editor
So without going into some cliche “new year, new me“ resolution speech I am simply going to say that from now on I am going to try and ac-tively take time to appre-ciate points in my life and mark them out as such be-fore they just turn into the memorable blur that was a whole year of my life.
This article seems to have descended into a non-sensical rabble so be-fore I go on to talk about the concept of time itself I will simply end from a quote from a film I hold dear,
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you might miss it” - Ferris Bueller.
Brand new website!
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23 Brig | January 2016 Comment
Another year over, a new one just begun. 2015 has had
its ups and downs, that’s for sure. But it has also had its surprises.
Before last year I knew Justin Bieber as just an-other child pop star find-ing it difficult to cope with fame, with more scandals than recent hit singles.
But with the new year came new songs, new suc-cess and new fans.
It was the comeback no-body was expecting – but has Justin Bieber really completely turned around his image in a little over a year?
Cast your mind back to 2010 and you will remem-ber Justin Bieber as a teen star, churning out syrupy-sweet singles for an army of devoted fans.
Despite his undeniable
success, Bieber’s music was often met with scorn.
He was an example of the perfectly manufactured teenage superstar, created for commercial success.
But Bieber’s squeaky clean image and generic, harmless pop didn’t ex-actly win me over as a fan.
As the years went by and his success started to grow, so did the cracks in Bieber’s carefully con-structed persona.
He had several brushes with the law, including driving under the influ-ence, vandalism, and ille-gal drug use.
This didn’t exact endear him to me, as I was al-ready critical of him and his music.
Even Bieber’s own fan-base were losing interest, as he changed from the sweetheart popstar to just another young singer go-ing off the rails.
It seemed that everyone was ready to write him off
as another tragic case.But then at the start
of 2015, Bieber seemed determined to make a change.
He posted a video on Fa-cebook in January apolo-gising for his arrogant behaviour, and explained that he wanted to turn things around.
Was it a publicity stunt? It certainly didn’t con-vince me. But not long after the singles started
rolling out - Where Are Ü Now in February, What Do You Mean? in August, and Sorry in October.
Each one became a mas-sive hit.
It seemed that he was really keeping to his word, and reaping the results of his new attitude.
Not only now was he re-trieving the fans that he had lost, but was creating another entirely new fan-base.
With Bieber’s new music has also come a change in his image.
He’s not a teenager any more: the new Bieber is older and edgier, and his music reflects this.
This has opened up his music to a whole new group of listeners.
His music is being played in shops and clubs; it’s be-ing streamed and heard by casual listeners, rather than the obsessed fangirl.
Photo:www.rollingstone.com
The fall and rise of Justin BieberAmy BeveridgeComment Editor
In defence of the reality of wrestlingAndrew
Henderson
Pr o f e s s i o n a l wrestling. To most of us, that means WWE.
Many of us will have had some interest in it at some point in our lives, and to a lot of us it will be some-thing we watched during childhood, but grew out of fairly quickly.
To others though, it re-mains weekly viewing.
It has actually become something of a laughing stock down at the very dregs of the entertain-ment industry.
Wrestling is made fun of in general society, it is proclaimed to be childish, cartoonish – and most often of all that horrible word: fake.
I honestly cannot refute that suggestion enough.
It is predetermined, ab-solutely. To an extent it is choreographed too.
Crucially, no wrestling company has claimed that what you see is real sporting competition in decades.
But to me, that does not equate to being fake.
To me, in many ways, professional wrestling is one of the most real things on TV today.
The knocks that the wrestlers take, all the slams and falls, are real.
They learn a certain style of landing, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.
There is no way to fake a 15 foot fall, which happens more than the wrestlers would probably like.
Chairs are real, ladders are real, even with every precaution you can take there is no way to make them painless.
Just a couple of weeks ago, one wrestler dislo-cated his shoulder on live TV, and still finished his match.
Yet the athleticism on display is off the charts.
These guys do things that no other athletes can do.
They are often built like bodybuilders, can have the agility of gymnasts, and act like mixed martial arts fighters.
Wrestlers risk lives on a nightly basis, doing it 300 days a year.
That WWE doesn’t have
broken necks galore is ei-ther a testament to how good the wrestlers are at what they do, or a minor miracle.
Even if you look at it purely as a TV show WWE sets the bar high.
It produces 6-10 hours of new programming on any given week, for the most part live in front of millions of people world-wide.
Considering they aren’t seasonal like most other shows, and produce that content 52 weeks of the year, creatively that is ex-tremely impressive.
The acting isn’t always good, but wrestlers are working in far tougher
conditions than most ac-tors.
They are working not only in front of tens of thousands of people live in the arena, not only in front of millions watch-ing via TV, but they often won’t have their script un-til a couple of hours – if that - before they have to deliver.
They don’t have days or weeks to learn lines and rehearse, they don’t have as many takes as they want, and they don’t have stunt doubles when things get physical.
And they have to con-tend with frankly stupid levels of interactivity.
If people don’t like what
a wrestler is doing, either on a mic or in the ring, thousands of people will audibly chant “boring” on live TV.
Or worse, if there is very obviously a mistake, wres-tlers could be met with the dreaded chant of “you f***ed up”.
Then after a show they will be met with thou-sands of tweets aimed at them – full of praise, sym-pathy or abuse.
For me, wrestling is a wonderful crossover type of TV show.
You can support and an-alyse individual wrestlers like sports teams, and the athleticism on display re-
Photo: www.thesportster.com
His 2016 tour seems just as likely to be attended by twenty-somethings as tweens.
Myself, I’m torn between his catchy tunes of now, and his past reputation.
This new following, new music and new style have certainly contributed to Bieber’s recent success.
But I’m not convinced that it can last.
In the same week that Bieber became the first artist in the UK to have singles at 1,2 and 3 in the charts, he was also criti-cised for climbing on an-cient Mayan ruins.
I believe that he will have to keep his immaturity in check to be respected be-yond his musical talents.
It must be have been dif-ficult for Bieber to grow up and have his ‘rebellious stage’ in the public eye.
But only time will tell if he will put his career above his controversies in the year ahead.
ally is incredible. But at the same time,
everything you see in wrestling is character driven, and storylines play an integral part.
At the end of the day, WWE tells a story.
It is in the same market as Game of Thrones, Doc-tor Who or The X Factor.
But those who call it fake are misguided, because it is way more real than re-ality TV, and indeed more real than most of what else can be seen on our screens.
It’s about time wrestling got what it deserves from society – a bit of respect.
24 Brig | January 2016 Sport
Sporting snapshots
The national champions have had to a mag-nificent start to
the 2015/16 season, fin-ishing the first half of the campaign with a 5-0 win/loss record. Despite being unbeaten, it was certainly not a walk in the park, but through the Clansmen’s grit and determination they have managed to find themselves at top of the Northern Division and number one seed for the playoffs.
The first victory of the season was a very tightly fought battle at home to the Derby Braves where the Clansmen clinched a 21-20 win to ensure a positive start. Running back Thomas Campbell was the man of the match, gaining lots of yards on the ground and even fill-ing in on defense to make a game winning sack.
The following week saw Stirling make the long trip down to face the Lough-borough Students, where the team triumphed 26-7. A defensive score, a pick six from recruited line-backer Jens Ijdema, and a man of the match perfor-mance from wide receiver Felix Klei got Stirling their first away victory.
The next two weeks saw consecutive home victo-ries against fierce rivals, Durham Saints, and a comfortable win against the newly promoted Shef-field Hallam Warriors.
The victory at home to the Saints was definitely
the match of the season for the Clansmen so far, where they showed true character to overturn a 22-0 deficit at halftime, to eventually emerge victori-ous by a score of 30-28. This was a solid team per-formance in which both the offence and defence showed how strong they can be, however Ashley Hopkinson was given man of the match for his game winning play at the death of the match.
The following week pro-duced another great team performance, this time the match was nowhere near as close however with the Clansmen winning 41-12 against the Warriors. Great plays were made on both sides of the ball. The offense moved the ball well by rushing plays and through passing plays. On defense all the units per-
formed their roles effec-tively meaning that Shef-field struggled to move the ball.
The final match before the break was against the Saints away from home, the team the Clansmen had defeated only two weeks before. The Clans-men came out strong, however, to lead by three scores at half time and the domination from Stirling continued into the sec-ond half. However, a po-tentially serious injury to one of the Saints’ safeties at the start of the fourth quarter saw both teams agree to end the match early at 32-10 in favour of the Clansmen. We have, however, been told that the injury is not as bad as initially thought and wish him all the best with his recovery.
After a very impressive
2015, a year in which the Clansmen won all their matches to claim a sec-ond successive champion-ship, 2016 is looking like it could be equally as im-pressive.
With three regular sea-son matches left, away from home against the Warriors and the Braves as well as at home to the Loughborough, Stirling will be aiming to confirm the number one seed for the playoffs.
This is a scary team to face at the moment. The offence has been able to effectively move the ball on the ground and in the air; no defense has held the team to less than three touchdowns so far this season. The defence has also had a fantastic season so far, with nine forced turnovers from fumble re-coveries or interceptions, and the defensive line has had a magnificent season. Defensive end Bence Ko-vacs is now the sack leader after a season high of five sacks in his last outing.
Now that the new re-cruits having built chem-istry and with the team having found momentum, the Clansmen will be a very difficult team to beat.
If the team win two of their next three matches then they will confirm their top seeding for the Northern Division, mean-ing home field advantage in the playoffs. They know that, if they perform to their best, they could be on their way to a third successive national cham-pionship.
Photo Credit - Jimmy Thomson
Boxing in Great Brit-ain is stronger than ever. A fantastic 2015 sees 12 British boxers hold world title belts, and 2016 is set to be a huge year for Brit-ish boxing.
There are exciting fights lined up across all of the weight-divisions. Carl Frampton and Scott Quigg will put their titles on the line in the super-bantam-weight division on Febru-ary 27th, in a fight that is too close to call.
In the featherweight division, prospect Josh Warrington (who featured in the last edition of Brig in the “5 Ones to Watch for 2016” article) could face champion Lee Selby. The boxer from Leeds is close to a world title fight, and this would be the next logical step.
Kell Brook, IBF Welter-weight champion, defends his title against mandatory challenger Kevin Bizier on 20th February, and if he comes through that, there are rumours that he will face Amir Khan in a fight that will get every boxing fan in Britain talking.
Brook has gone 35 fights without defeat, whilst Khan hasn’t fought in nearly a year. However, the man from Bolton has a great record over his career, beating 9 former world champions, and achieving a 31-3 record.
British boxing has had a lot of success in the Su-per Middleweight divi-sion, through boxers such as Joe Calzaghe and Carl Froch. James DeGale is
the latest Briton to win a world title in that divi-sion, after he beat Andre Dirrell in Boston. A man-datory rematch against Jose Uzcategui awaits, but all the talk is about a rematch against George Groves. Groves, who had a huge fight against Carl Froch at Wembley Stadi-um in 2014, is eager for a rematch. Groves inflicted DeGale’s only career de-feat back in May 2011, and a rematch would certainly be interesting.
Tyson Fury headlines a heavyweight division packed with British talent, and one that will make for interesting viewing in 2016. David Haye, for-mer World Champion, is making a comeback, and has already stated his intention to fight one of the hottest properties in boxing, Anthony Joshua. Joshua is undefeated in 15 fights, but his most re-cent fight against Dillian Whyte highlighted a few weaknesses in his game. Joshua himself has said that he is still a work in progress, but if he contin-ues demolishing fighters in such a brutal fashion, then a world title shot is surely imminent.
All these potential fights, therefore, will make 2016 a great year for British boxing.
Clansmen on course for more success?Harry
McArthur
With the team having found momentum, the Clansmen will be a very difficult team to beat“ ”
Britain’s big hittersAndrew Baxter
25 Brig | January 2016 Sport
De c e m b e r marked the 20th anni-versary of
the Bosman ruling that changed European foot-ball forever. Part of its lasting effect is that play-ers with less than six months left on their cur-rent contracts can negoti-ate with other clubs and sign pre-contract agree-ments – something that has become commonplace in Scottish football. Here we take a look at some of the top Scottish Bosmans from years gone by…
Charlie Mulgrew - Aberdeen to Celtic
In 2010 Neil Lennon took a punt on a player that, though he had be-come an important part of Aberdeen’s side, there were serious doubts over. Mulgrew had been at Celt-ic as a schoolboy but ques-tions were asked about the defender who seemingly couldn’t defend. Con-verted from a full back to a midfielder, Mulgrew has silenced his critics, becoming an integral part of Celtic’s league winning sides in recent years, and
even breaking into the Scottish national team in 2012. Injury blighted his 2015, but he remains a key man when he’s fit.
Paul Hartley - St Johnstone to Hearts
Hartley played a talis-manic role in the success-ful Hearts side of the mid-2000s. You could even say that he formed a holy trin-ity alongside Craig Gor-don and Steven Pressley (himself a contender for this list) through the cen-tre of the park. Never shy of a goal against Hearts’ arch rivals Hibs, including a hat-trick against them in a Scottish Cup Semi-final, Hartley’s time at Tynecas-tle saw the Edinburgh out-fit lift the Scottish Cup and split the Old Firm in the league in 2006, securing Champions League foot-ball for Hearts.
Arild Stavrum - Helsingborgs to
Aberdeen
Stavrum was a rare posi-tive in a miserable 1999-2000 season that saw the north east outfit only avoid relegation due to the league’s expansion. However, Aberdeen did make it to the League Cup
final, as well as the Scot-tish Cup final, with the Norwegian international scoring crucial goals in the semi-finals of each com-petition to get them there. Stavrum then finished second top scorer in the league the following sea-son with 17 goals, guiding Aberdeen to a comfortable seventh place finish.
Gennaro Gattuso - Perugia to Rangers
Two time Champions League and World Cup winner Gennaro Gattuso went on to become a leg-end of both AC Milan and Italian football, but Rangers fans will be left wondering what could have been after his spell at Ibrox in 1997. Arriv-ing in Glasgow at just 19 years old Gattuso couldn’t prevent the first trophy-less season for Rangers in 12 years. Then he fell out of favour after Dick Advocaat arrived at the club, and was played out of position at right back. He lasted only a matter of months under the Dutch-man, and returned to Italy in October 1998. The next summer, AC Milan forked out €8 million for him, and the rest as they say, is history.
A look at bosman deals in Scotland
Andrew HendersonAt the time of
writing, Leices-ter City have just been pushed
into second place in the Barclays Premier League, by Arsenal, following months at the top of Eng-lish football.
Such an achievement for a club the size of Leicester (with all due respect) is no mean feat and something to be applauded.
As Leicester look to con-solidate their r e m a r k a b l e season thus far and push on into 2016, their biggest threat comes not from Ar-senal, Man-chester City or Tottenham, but the January transfer market and the predomi-nant variable determining the outcome of the Pre-mier League these days; money.
January transfer mar-kets have been known to dramatically change sea-sons as clubs look to make crucial additions that could steer them away from relegation or help them mount a serious title challenge.
Year in year out the sea-son is split into two halves, with early season form counting for little after a reshaping of each club’s squad in January. This may never be more ap-parent in this particularly
unpredictable Premier League season, as clubs have been able to throw money at new marquee signings due increased TV revenue.
Indeed, while for some this period - introduced to a reformatted Premier League in the early 2000s - has been a lifeline when
an extra boost is required to achieve season long goals, for others it has proved to be farcical and exemplifies panic buying in an ever more commer-cialised division.
The January transfer market of 2011 was an infamous one. My club, West Ham, seriously threatened by relegation from the Premier League for the first time in 8 years, acted swiftly, splashing ridiculous money out on a number of overpaid and over-rated merce-nary players from Wayne Bridge to Lars Jacobson and everyone in between. Our plan was to risk spending big and hope we
wouldn’t have to face up to the consequences if the unthinkable relegation happened. Which it did.
In the upper echelons of the Premier League, Chel-sea were planning the big-gest January swoop ever as they spent £50 million on Fernando Torres, with Liverpool panic-buying
their way to make Andy Carroll the (then) most e x p e n s i v e Englishman of all time. Need I say more?
Perhaps it is time to do away with panic-buy-ing and sea-son-chang-ing deals.
W h i l s t the Janu-
ary transfer window has provided some entertain-ment for fans, this period has proved to be more of a Black Friday type scram-ble than a chance to pick up a bargain in the Janu-ary sales.
So why not reward hard work and good manage-ment? Why not stop this ridiculous spending which is helping to destroy the Premier League? It’s time to put an end to the January transfer market so that the next Leicester City or Claudio Ranieri can reap the rewards of doing a good job without buying success.
Time to end January madness?Mark Johnson on ending the transfer window
26 Brig | January 2016 SportStirling Sword returns to Gannochy
Sporting snapshots A selection of the month’s best university sports photos. Photos courtesy of Hannah McNicol
Today, the com-petition is a major draw for fencers from
across the UK and Europe. Dybeck is anticipating an influx of entries in the fortnight leading up to the event, and also hopes that the university club’s new-est members are able to take advantage of having such a competition within their grasp.
“We currently have 18 entries, with people com-ing from Glasgow, Edin-burgh, other parts of the UK and France, but we’re expecting more entries to come nearer to the com-petition date. Last year we had 69 people enter-ing the Stirling Sword and we expect about the same number this year as well. We have a bunch of Stirling fencers entered so far but we’re hoping for as many as possible to enter - especially freshers, as it would be a great chance for them to compete for their first time.
“I think our fencers will perform really well. It would be amazing if our fencers achieved a medal, but the competition is so tough, with many fencers carrying many years of experience. I think some will definitely do better than they thought they
would. The main thing is that they enjoy fencing on the piste, get to know other fencers and learn from them - one of the best ways to improve is to fence someone who’s bet-ter than yourself.”
However, perhaps the most amazing thing about the tournament is the sheer speed of its growth. Despite having only been established four years ago, the Stirling Sword is fast becoming one of the biggest fencing events in Scotland.
The 2015 edition of the tournament saw more competitors register to compete in advance of the competition than the Scot-tish Open, a truly incred-ible statistic for an event run by a university club. The ethos of the tourna-ment hasn’t changed how-ever, with Dybeck quick to acknowledge the efforts of the fencing commu-nity when discussing the event’s success.
“We are the biggest mixed gender fencing competi-tion in Scotland and the biggest friendly fencing competition in Scotland, and we are growing each year. For being a student run competition, the Stir-ling Sword is pretty big compared to other fenc-ing competitions, and we
get the impression that the University is just starting to realise how big the Stirling Sword actually is.
“We get a lot of positive feedback from the fencing community and many of them who compete in the competition tend to come back. We also get a lot of help from members in-volved in fencing, coaches and other student fencers by providing us with ma-terials and with refereeing matches. Without them the Stirling Sword would much harder to run.”
It’s perhaps the friendly atmosphere amongst the competitors that has been
the biggest factor behind such exponential growth.
As Dybeck explains, whilst the competition is undoubtedly impor-tant, the social side of the event is a key aspect when attracting partici-pants back to Stirling.
“The Stirling Sword competitions always tend to have a friendly atmosphere. There are no ranking points given out and fencers get to compete against people they normally wouldn’t compete against, since we mix gender and age groups together. Includ-ing the social, you get to
meet many new people and catch up with fenc-ers you’ve met in previous years.
“We think this is one of the reasons why many of the competitors come back every year - apart from the legendary free toasties of course! For example, France have en-tered eight teams this year meaning it’s their fourth time in a row coming to Stirling specifically for this competition, so we must be doing something right.”
Away from the compe-tition side of things, the club is always looking to
attract new members. Some people may feel that they don’t have the necessary experience in the sport to be confident enough to take part, but Dybeck disagrees:
“Anyone who is inter-ested in learning to fence can turn up to one of our training sessions and we will introduce you to the sport and provide kit. Many people who come to us seem worried at first that they haven’t fenced before, but the majority of our members started fenc-ing in our club and that is the kind of experience we expect.
“The thing about fenc-ing is that you can start at any age and still do really well. Some of our mem-bers who started fencing here have achieved great results in competitions and even won medals in Opens. If you’re just want-ing to fence for fun and hang out in the pub, then we do a lot of that too!”
The 2016 Stirling Sword takes place on 30-31 January at the Gannochy Sports Centre. If you’d like to try fencing for yourself, the club trains in the Gannochy Sport Hall on Wednesdays 8pm – 10pm, Fridays 8pm – 10pm and Sundays 6pm – 8pm.
sports editor craig wright gets the lowdown on one of the university’s fastest growing events
Photos courtesy of Hannah McNicol
27 Brig | January 2016 Sport
Stirling men’s rugby are en-tering the New Year with an un-
interrupted run of seven victories stretching back to their second game of the season.
The side have put them-selves under great pres-sure to go one step further after they were denied promotion to the first di-vision of the Scottish Uni-versities Conference last year.
In an all-or-nothing tus-sle with Heriot-Watt, the boys from Stirling lost their last game meaning they missed out on pro-motion.
However, the final de-feat had an unforeseen benefit. Scrum-half and club chairman Ruairidh Bottomley stated that the loss “helped the boys knuckle down over sum-mer and coming into this season the intensity and focus of everything we’ve been doing has really gone up a gear.”
The opening defeat to Robert Gordon’s only served to stoke the teams burning desire for vic-tory. But since then they have convincingly fought past Edinburgh 2nd and Abertay, both away from home, to secure a real
shot at promotion this season.
Besides being competi-tive in the BUCS league, Stirling has also been fo-cusing on making a good run in their cup competi-tions. In the Scottish Uni-versities Cup they have reached the quarter finals, and got revenge against Robert Gordon’s along the way, as well as beating Dundee 2nd.
They are also compet-ing in the Stirling regional cup, and have made it into
the semi-finals. In the lat-ter competition they are particularly thirsty for glory after a bitter loss in the 2015 final against Al-loa RFC by a single try.
Such a run of good form has come through years of hard graft by a team with a large proportion of fourth year students. With three years of experience play-ing together the fourth year players want to make this year’s campaign count after years of disap-
A selection of the month’s best university sports photos. Photos courtesy of Hannah McNicol
BUCS fixtures
saturday 23rd januaryMen’s Badminton 1s v Strathclyde 1s
sunday 24th januaryMixed Golf 1s v Strathclyde 1s
monday 25th JanuaryWomen’s Water Polo 1s v RGU 1s
Wednesday 27th januaryWomen’s Tennis 1s v Durham 1s
Men’s Tennis 2s v Durham 2sMen’s Football 1s v RGU 1s
Women’s Basketball 1s v QMU 1sMen’s Rugby 1s v Edinburgh Napier 1s
Women’s Hockey 1s v GCU 1sMen’s Ultimate 1s v Aberdeen 1s
Men’s Lacrosse 1s v St Andrews 1s
saturday 30th JanuaryMen’s Gaelic Football 1s v Dundee 1s
Sunday 31st januaryAmerican Football v Sheffield Hallam
wednesday 3rd februaryMen’s Fencing 1s v Manchester 1s
Women’s Football 1s v Edinburgh 1sMen’s Football 2s v Abertay 1s
Women’s Rugby 1s v Glasgow 1sMen’s Ultimate 1s v St Andrews 1s
Women’s Lacrosse 1s v St Andrews 1sMen’s Rugby 2s v Dundee 2s
Jack MallonSports Editor
pointment. Because of the constant
competition for places in the 1st team, each mem-ber has had to prove themselves week in, week out, in order to start for the next game.
So with three competi-tions, and three prizes in their sights, 2016 prom-ises to be a memorable year for Stirling Univer-sity RFC.
Men’s rugby on unbeaten streak
Everything we've been doing has really gone up a gear“ ”
Photo: Hannah McNicol
Here at the U n i v e r s i t y of Stirling, we’re lucky
enough to have a number of successful sports teams plying their trade right on our doorstep. However, this month sees the return of one of the biggest sport-
ing events to take place on campus, as competitors descend on the Gannochy Sports Centre to take part in the 2016 Stirling Sword competition. The event - run annually by the university’s fencing club – may have escaped your notice until now, though,
despite its growing stature amongst the fencing com-munity. Club president Agnes Dybeck explains how the competition came into being:
“The Stirling Sword was created in 2012 by Alistair Miller, who was president of the club at the time. The
aim was to have a friendly competition, with the fo-cus on having a relaxed and fun atmosphere at a low cost, and includes a mixed gender team and individual competition.
“Apart from the general rules that every fencing competition has, we don’t
really have any additional strict rules. Fencers of any gender, from any country, regardless of experience, and that are over the min-imum age requirement of 13 are allowed to enter.”
CONTINUED ON PAGE 20
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Craig WrightJack Mallon
Craig Wright speaks to Stir-ling’s fencers about the up-
coming Stirling Sword.
University fencing club a cut above the rest
Email [email protected]
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