Gair Rhydd

Success is overrated

You might notice – or might have already – that lately this column has become more focused on the world outside of Cardiff student life. This is probably because writers tend to focus on what they know, and as a final year, the mind tends to dwell on the big question mark that is next year. It also might be because this week I’m not even in Cardiff at all.

Nope, I’m perched on a sofa in fairly central London – the sofa that is to be my bed for the coming weeks, while I’m here in the big smoke on work experience. And though my bereaved wallet and I desperately miss Cardiff, there is something gloriously eye-opening about leaving the cocoon of Cathays and facing real life.

iHave no life and neither do you

Before we get into this, I have some admissions to make. And trust me, a lot of you aren’t going to like it, but it’s the truth, and I’m not ashamed.

Okay, here goes. I have an iPod. Perhaps not a big thing, you might say. After all, according to Apple a quarter of a billion people do too. But there is more, much more. I am typing this on a Macbook. A Mac? You might be saying. What kind of pretentious artsy twat is this guy? For fuck’s sake, I’m a journalist. I take black and white photos, write a blog and spend my student loan going to jazz nights or Mr Smith’s. The phrase ‘pretentious twat’ was actually coined to describe me. But it’s worse, much worse. You see, I also… own an iPhone.

Who to vote for when they’re all dreadful?

So, it seems that the General Election will be on Thursday May 6 (confidently predicted on this very page in issue 902, not bragging or anything).

At these times there always seems to be a question that everyone is asking. Last time round people wondered “Why would anyone bother voting for Michael Howard the vampire? We’ve already got the New Labour bloodsuckers, after all”. And the one that many people are asking this year is, “Which of these putrid piles of excrement will be marginally less revolting than the other?” Perhaps that’s how the campaign and ballot papers should be phrased; it could well increase turn-out or at the very least get more of a debate going.

TIm Well Spent

CH: a melting pot of emotion

A new decade, a new dawn but some things just never change. Tony Blair’s insistence that his decision to invade Iraq is justified, John Terry is in the papers for the wrong reasons and Jedward just don’t seem to go away.

It is very much a case of déjà vu as is the fact I’m still ill. If any of you read the Christmas issue you may recall me lamenting about migraines and how I wanted a new body. That has not changed either but since then I have bizarrely developed a hatred for two letters of the alphabet. They are C and H. On face value and individually they are innocent but combine them and they become a formidable duo that has caused constant torment in my life.

This sh*t just got serious

I hope you had a good Christmas. I hope that your exams and coursework went well. But most of all, I hope you enjoyed last term, because – excuse my coarseness – this shit’s about to get serious.

Let me clarify that for a moment. I, like many of you, am a third year student; and unless you do a non-humanities degree (read: anything actually valuable to society) that tends to mean the big one. Final year. The end of an era. Insert cliché here.

Copenhagen won’t change climate policy

Seventeen years after the signing of the UN convention on climate change in Rio, 12 years after the signing of the Kyoto protoco, two years after the decision in Bali to agree a new climate policy, one year after Barack Obama’s election. Today marks the start of the Copenhagen conference and after all this time, all this talking we are yet to have a global plan on this impending catastrophe.

Although it has not been at the top of the political agenda for the last…well forever, it will soon force itself to the front of everyone’s minds. The terrible flooding in Cockermouth is a prime example of how climate change is starting to affect us. It was the fourth major flooding emergency in the UK in the last ten years and they are only going to become more frequent and more damaging.

Tim Well Spent

All I want for Christmas is a new body

My God, hasn’t Christmas come around quickly this year? It doesn’t feel like 11 weeks ago when term started. Freshers’ Week, Halloween, Bonfire Night, the Autumn Tests. So much has happened and the time has flown by but Christmas has crept up on me almost as if I’ve been asleep for the last couple of weeks. Oh wait, that’s because I have.

Please believe me it’s not alcohol induced or any other substance for that matter. I have been horizontal, in bed suffering with migraines (pause for sympathy). They are a fucking pain.In actual fact, they are several pains. They give you a massive headache, make you sick, stiff and mean you mope around in your dressing gown all day long, or is that just me?

The end of the beginning

As hard as it is to believe, by the time you read this, the end of this appalling titled decade, ‘the Noughties’ will be but mere weeks away.

It is impossible for any writer to fully sum up a decade of human existence in a few short words as I have to work with. All I can do is skim the surface, and even then only lightly, as it is a surface so vast and multi-faceted it puts our rising oceans to shame.

The withdrawal method

Gordon Brown announced last week that we might start discussions about possibly withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Yet another profound and decisive statement made by our unelected, hapless leader. What makes it even less significant is the final decision will come from Washington. Britain’s influence over America’s Afghan policy is like Woody Allen punching Mike Tyson in the stomach.

It makes no difference what Britain says or does, America are in control and this has been the status quo for the last eight years. The same was true in Iraq. Ever since Tony Blair kowtowed to George Bush in 2002, Britain has been the dim-witted ally in Washington’s wars of ideological empire.

Democracy is dead.

This week, as you probably know, was the twentieth anniversary of one of the most important moments of the twentieth century: the fall of the Berlin wall. As iconic as D-Day, the photos of thousands of Berliners chipping away at the wall before surging through to unite with their estranged brothers, hugging perfect strangers: it is a beautiful image. A real symbol of hope.

I wonder what the people who were there on that momentous day must think of the world now, given what else has dominated the headlines in the past fortnight. It must be a really crushing thought. Perhaps this fortnight will be remembered someday, as the moment democracy died.