Vote Leave Breaking the Law Won't Stop Us Leaving the EU

An edited version of this article was published on the National Student website on the 18th Jul 18

Leave may have broken the law. Specifically, electoral law. That’s not a good look for a campaign who were supposed to be all about the sovereignty of British democracy.

To get everyone caught up: the Electoral Commission has referred Vote Leave, the official Brexit campaign, to the police, for breaking their campaign spending limit to the tune of almost £500,000 over the £7m cap. They allegedly did this not through direct spending, but made a donation to another Leave group, BeLeave, which the Electoral Commission consider significant evidence of coordination, joint spending which goes over the spending cap. The Commission also levelled several fines against several people and organisations, including a £20,000 fine against Vote Leave for ‘failure to cooperate … because we found it so difficult to get Vote Leave to work with us in this investigation’ – that’s the Electoral Commission’s chief executive, Claire Bassett, speaking.

'Tau' - Film review

An edited version of this review was published on the National Student website on the 11th Jul 18

'Tau' is a surprising film of two halves – or rather an out-of-place-20%, if that’s a thing, but it’s a rewardingly intelligent film if you can get through the first 20 minutes without eye-rolling too hard.

The film establishes itself in such a strange way. Maybe it’s an intentional misdirect, but that would still make it intentionally derivative. It starts of as 'Ex Machina' meets 'Saw'. The opening nightclub and city scenes look like budget ‘San Junipero’, though the camera following Julia, our protagonist, home is quite creepy. Plus, in the baddy’s mansion (who naturally listens to classical piano), you get the obligatory minor jump-scare at something which shouldn’t actually be scary, namely, on seeing the other prisoners. 

Trains Over Planes: A cheaper, greener way to travel

An edited version of this article was published on the National Student website on the 9th Jul 18

Trains are greener than planes, they can also be cheaper, even affordable. This may be surprising to a British reader, but I’ve done the 200-mile journey from Florence to Milan in only an hour and a half, faster than any British train, for £18. To holiday train-travel is actually viable once you leave our island nation, in fact it’s often cleaner, comfier, faster, more punctual and crucially cheaper.

Unfortuately of course, trains practically reduce your range, probably to just western and central Europe. Plus, you’ve got to get to the continent first, which depending on where you live could mean an expensive (British) train journey to the coast, but the whole point of this train-over-plane method is that getting there is half the fun. I recommend getting a coach to the coast and then a ferry – the north-east and east coast can get you to Germany and Holland, and the south coast can get you to France. Thisismoney.co.uk recommend SeaFrance for getting you from Dover to Calais for £50. Don’t worry landlubbers, the crossing’s only 90 minutes.

Theatre review: 'SS Mendi Dancing the Death Drill' @ Nuffield Southampton Theatres 09/07/18

An edited version of this review was published on the National Student website on the 9th Jul 18

'SS Mendi Dancing the Death Drill' is the Isango Ensemble’s retelling of the negligent wrecking of the SS Mendi, a steam ship bringing black labourers from South Africa in 1917 to assist in the trench-building, latrine-digging and cooking of the Western Front. The play was commissioned by Now14-18, the national arts programme to commemorate the centenary of the First World War, to play at the Nuffield Southampton’s new downtown NST City. For NST, this show is also designed to coincide with their Now-Here theatre festival, supported by Black History Month South, which explores the theme of Southampton’s hidden of migrants and refugees (and accidently became an excellent pun on Theresa May’s “citizens of the world are citizens of Now-Here”).

Sam Hodges, artist director of NST, said that ‘For a story of this magnitude to have been whitewashed from the history books beggars belief’, and this is certainly true. I’m a local and I never learnt about this at school, and for the Southampton audience, the repetition of the phrase ‘12 miles off the Isle of Wight’ is a stark condemnation of the priorities of white, western, US-eurocentric historiography. The play’s paratext is vital in this regard, with a very informative programme and a supplementary booklet free to pick up from the Maritime Archeology Trust, a 43-page history of the ‘Black and Asian Seamen of the Forgotten Wrecks of the First World War’.

Unpack the secrets of your hometown on a microadventure

An edited version of this review was published on the National Student website on the 7th Jul 18

Popularity can have negative impacts on tourist honeypots, as one can see in Venice and other tourist honeypots fighting back against AirBnB’s hostile takeovers and resultant gentrification, and the ecological damage that overcrowding can cause sites of natural beauty. Instead of crowding into Florence, Ho Chi Mihn City, and New York, there is an alternative which is less damaging to tourist hotspots, your wallet, and the planet - especially the latter two when you don’t have to fly! I’m referring to micro-adventures, taking the time to explore your locale as if it were a holiday destination.

Now, I know that you can’t cloy the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a feast, and that’s not what this is about. However, it’s worth remembering that the people in the far-flung cities that we find so exciting are just people pottering about their day like people anywhere else (and a smattering of tourists of course, as you’ll know if you ever tried using a pavement in London), and with the right frame of mind you can make your own hometown feel far-flung.