Gair Rhydd

Out of the City, out of control

Sex and The City 2 is beyond awful - it gives Western women a bad name

You may be wondering why it has required two contributors to write an article condemning Sex and the City 2 as possibly the most racist, sexist and offensive piece of cinematic trash produced in the last decade. This has been necessary due to the fact that only one writer was able to sit through the whole film and did not feel she could fully convey her fury without the aid of another – one who had repeatedly left the film in disgust and napped intermittently for its duration.

We are both free-thinking, intelligent young women who went into Sex and the City with pretty low expectations; merely the desire for a couple of hours of escapism and over-the-top fashion. Neither of us are easily offended – in fact we tend to be fairly offensive ourselves. In fact, one of us cites Jeremy Clarkson, the most politically incorrect man on the planet, as her comedy idol. Yet Sex and the City 2 achieved such a high level of racial insensitivity and bigotry rarely witnessed in contemporary culture that even we were left squirming. Michael Patrick King, the film’s director, should be Clarkson’s new muse, so efficiently has he managed to offend both men and women from virtually every corner of the globe.

Times to start paying for news

Rupert Murdoch is right to start charging for The Times' online content

So Rupert Murdoch has finally begun his war on free online ,next month, The Times’ online content will be hidden away behind a controversial pay wall. Starting next week, if you want to read The Times on your laptop, phone or iPad, you will be charged £1 (or £2 for the whole week) for the privilege.

It hasn’t come as a surprise. Murdoch – perhaps the last great newspaper tycoon – has been opposed to distributing his news for free for years. The Times and The Sunday Times will be the first News International title to be hidden behind a pay wall – but if this pilot scheme proves successful, you can expect the other News International papers (which include The Daily Mail, The Sun, and The Daily Telegraph) to follow suit in some capacity.

More than meets the eye

The coverage of the Israeli flotilla debacle isn't what it seems

The aggressive Israeli interception of a Turkish naval flotilla heading towards Gaza this week, which has left at least nine activists dead, has been internationally condemned, and rightly so: it was highly disproportionate and reprehensible. It also handed Hamas a huge propaganda victory and served to further isolate Israel in the international community.

It would have been so very easy to hop aboard the ‘Let’s all slag off Israel’ bandwagon and go on a six-hundred-word Israeli-bashing rant for this article; Israel’s behaviour warrants plenty of criticism, and there has been enough coverage of this already. Much of the outrage in the aftermath of the incident has been, perhaps expectedly, anti-Israeli. But is this completely fair? Well no, not really. For, like so much in the myriad of complexity of the middle-east conflict, there is more to this incident than meets the eye, and much of this has been ignored by the mainstream media.

Getting shirty over patriotism

As England supporters prepare for the World Cup, we shouldn't let political correctness and xenophobia undermine our British pride

England has become awash with a sea of white and red; St. George’s crosses and replica shirts are out in force as the World Cup draws ever closer. But despite what the odd disgruntled Welsh or Scotsman will say, nobody really minds.

Just like every other nation going to the World Cup, England fans are gearing up to show their support to the team. However, this is not what the tabloid media would have you believe, with many curiously vague reports emerging which suggest that English flags are unwelcome in multicultural Britain. Once again we have the good aspects of national pride lumped in with the negatives of xenophobia for a World Cup year, and once again there was never really a problem in the first place.

It's just not banter

The rise of truelad.com isn't funny - it's just pathetic and immature

‘LAD’, ‘Waaaaaah!’ and ‘Banter’. Three words that strike fear into the hearts of women across the nation and are now synonymous with misogyny, drinking and football.

The emergence of the website truelad.com is proof of what most women have already known for years – that men are against us. The founder of truelad defines a ‘lad’ as a ‘beer chugging, football-loving, womanising man’ and the website has, worryingly, seemingly been adopted as a Bible by the majority of English-speaking men under the age of thirty. A quick scroll through the website is an exercise in completely obliterating what little faith one had in men and humanity in general.

Madness? This is Student Council!

I’ve got a sneaky suspicion that the proverbial shit is going to hit the fan following the anti-English Defence League protest in Cardiff on Saturday June 5. This morning, while I should have been revising, I instead watched a documentary on BBC iPlayer which followed the EDL around various demonstrations across the UK. It was compelling viewing and clearly, rightly or wrongly, painted the movement in a negative light.

However, I’m not writing this piece to tell you whether the English Defence League is racist or not. They say that they are not, but accept that, unfortunately, some football hooligan types come along to their protests and turn the atmosphere sour through the use of racial slurs and violence. What concerns me is that the Student Council of this Students’ Union has mandated the Union to help co-ordinate a protest against the proposed EDL demonstration.

Synthetic life? Oh my science!

The creation of synthetic life should not be marred with fears of playing God

Last week, scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Maryland, USA, announced the most amazing development: they had synthetically created life. Awesome. Real science fiction stuff. Man took another baby step forward in our never-ending quest to master our universe. To bend it to our will for the good of all, or at least to make some profit out of it, and all that jazz.

Now the team didn’t create artificial life, it was synthetic life – the seemingly slight difference is significant. The team took the genome of a simple bacterium, synthesized the gene sequences it needed and put them together. This synthetic genome was then put into another, empty bacterial cell and left to its own devices. Unsurprisingly, it flourished, and, lo and behold, man had replicated life. No ‘spiritual force’ was needed; there was no need for divine intervention to get the tiny cell going.

'Embrace your inner slaaaag'

Female. Red hair. Anyone else think all this fuss about Fitfinder is silly?

Fitfinder: a fun pastime for procrastination and, er, ‘romance’, or a force of evil that encourages bullying and wasted time during the crucial summer exam period? *

Anyone who is at university and hasn’t been living under a rock for the past few weeks will know that Fitfinder is a website that implores you to ‘Witness the Fitness’ and then post it online so that others will know where to find a fitty.

Osborne's first mistake

Our new Chancellor is already scaring off much-needed investment

It’s been a little over a week since the Lib Dem-Tory government took office and, as far as I can tell, our country hasn’t fallen apart. The hung parliament hasn’t led to a run on the pound, David Cameron hasn’t given all of the money earmarked ‘benefits’ to his Etonian friends, and the universe hasn’t folded in on itself in a state of shock after the Lib Dems managed to actually manoeuvre themselves into a position of power.

No, it’s all been rather positive. I’m still waiting to pick up a paper with the headline ‘Everything is fine’ plastered across the front page.

Guns don't kill people, games do

It is simply ridiculous the way the Government treats video games

Have you ever wanted to stab a man? Maybe you’re not a blade sort of fella; perhaps gunning down a group of helpless pedestrians on your nearest pavement just because you can, just to see quite what this murder lark is all about, before you hurtle your Ferrari, new car smell still lingering, into the nearest wall/river/yawning chasm is more your thing.

Probably not, though. Most of us would be horrified at the thought of such monstrous, inhuman behaviour. It just wouldn’t be polite, frankly. But more importantly, because we know there are consequences. That man had a wife and kids. He had dreams, ambitions. He was scared of bees. Similarly, that Ferrari took a group of underpaid Italians weeks to watch the automated machines to make, cog by cog. Wrecking it would be like licking the Mona Lisa clean – tragic, inexplicable and pointless.