Recently, one of the watchwords of union representation has been ‘self-definition’. The semantics of this phrase are fascinating. Apparently, self-definition is a device enabling someone to transcend social and biological definitions like “gender”. So does that make ‘self-definition’ the opposite of ‘definition’? Not exactly. This, as you will no doubt recognise, is a delicate problem.

So let me give you a light-hearted example. I am not a smoker. This is because I am a coward. I shrink from the prospect of a gruesome, sooty death. However, I have decided to self-define as a smoker. Some politically correct people will tell you otherwise, but cigarette smoke actually smells better than most perfumes, and tastes better than most food. It’s also fun: Can you blow rings with “Hugo Boss”? Does poached turbot give you a nicotine buzz?

My fellow smokers and I know that smoking is a labour-saving alternative to eating, as well as an efficacious laxative, and that it provides brief respite from hateful people who try to talk to you at house-parties. Smoking is also really cool. If its cachet could be communicated in a single image, it would be Bogart in a bar nursing a neat Scotch. Non-smoking, on the other hand, is a starchy, middle-aged schoolmistress kicking a Yorkshire terrier into a grain silo.

For all these reasons and more, I self-define as a smoker. I have every confidence, therefore, that Messrs Scott, Burton et al will welcome the opportunity to embrace real democracy, and immediately open nominations for a YUSU Smoking officer.

But why stop there? Looking to the future, I envision the wholesale unionisation of every imaginable social encumbrance. I don’t enjoy the taste of onion in sandwiches and sometimes find it difficult to make small talk with girls. I need representation and guidance in these matters. What are YUSU doing about it? Nothing!

If, like me, you have suddenly and unexpectedly become a third-year undergraduate, steeped to the balls in essay deadlines, thrashing about in mounting debt like a cormorant in an oil slick, and with one eye permanently tracking the job market, you may think you recognise in the J. Baker’s website that most familiar of friends: the embellished CV. Well, to understand is to forgive. But in any case, you’d be wrong. There is, admittedly, the occasional handful of dust – a purple paragraph of gagging praise that may not entirely represent the opinions of the review it was lifted from… possibly… but unlikely.

This is a dazzling CV. Jeff Baker was the first Leeds chef ever to hold a Michelin star. In 2005 he was named Yorkshire Chef of the Year, and both Jeff and his first solo project, J. Baker’s, score highly in UK gastro-polls. A cursory glance at the website will confirm all of the above, along with a veritable trophy cabinet of favourable ratings and positive local press reviews.
Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Quality – whether it’s a perfectly fried foie du canard or a lightly steamed university education – comes at a price. If you’re planning an evening meal, expect to pay no less than £35 a head for three courses, wine, tipping, etc. The ‘Grazing Plate’ or ‘Magnificent Seven’, as I have come to think of it, is a glorious pageant of seven courses: congenial comrades, but each one rivalling the next for ingenuity and panache.

Recently, the Grazing Plate has been better than ever. It begins with gunslinging wisehead Yul Brynner. This time he was disguised as a carpaccio of red mullet with sweet pepper accompaniment. He was succulent. Food of such genuine good quality could never fairly be accused of affectation, but the menu does, at times, go wildly astray over names and descriptions – a tendency that was exemplified by the course that followed: pumpkin ‘study’. This proved to be an aerated soup and was delicious. Nevertheless, the mind shrinks in terror from being imminently presented with ‘game bird sinfonia’, ‘prelude in endive’ or maybe ‘nocturne in muted sloe’.

Quickly succeeding the ‘study’ was a wispy cloud of pollock – an increasingly popular stand-in for cod on chip-shop menus. This came with a dollop of anchovy paté riding some sort of savoury, upmarket Dorito. A perfect, tender quail dish followed and, afterwards, a well-judged beef noisette with seared chicken liver and runny duck egg yolk sealed in a light filo parcel. My only complaint about the dessert – summer fruit buried in sorbet and lemon mousse – was that it was more than just a tasting portion. But that’s scarcely a complaint. The meal wound down with a stimulating epilogue of local and European cheeses – including a morsel of ‘Welsh smoked’.

I can think of few better ways to spend £35, but if you’re concerned about costs, consider the £10 lunch menu. J. Baker’s offers good food with personality and pride – a rare combination; rarer still is the presentation of simple ingredients with artistry and humility, often heralded by titles as unassuming as ‘sausage and beans’.

N.B. Jeff may be Michelin-rated, but he has feelings. Leftovers, I am told, are not received well in the kitchen.

It is quite possible I just don’t like Chinese food. I have had too many distressing encounters with lukewarm bowls of viscous compost; I am harrowed by apparitions of diced sludge; I have had surfeit of cashew nut. With so many appealing ethnic alternatives (Indian, Japanese, Thai), I had all but given up with this particular national cuisine.

And if Red Chilli might have changed my mind, it didn’t. Crispy Peking duck is the exception, and with a shiver of cucumber and a diminutive ladleful of Hoisin sauce, it is the stuff that dreams are made of (as opposed to all other Chinese specialities, which feature predominantly in nightmares). As two male non-homosexual restaurant critics on an effective ‘date’ to review the restaurant, Will and I were a little self-conscious. We had to bite down hard to order the two-person set menu entitled ‘Courtship’; all the menus were directed at various levels of diner intimacy (‘First date’, ‘True love’). I hardly need add that, as a result, Red Chilli may not be the most felicitous venue for couples at an awkward or ambiguous stage of the relationship, as it might be rather embarrassing if you choose the wrong menu.

Nevertheless, since I have already voiced a partiality towards Peking duck – and it was the most welcome visitor at this carnival of mixed-blessings – I will continue in ascending order of disappointment. The dish that preceded the duck was a starter of assorted breaded, sauced or skewered meats – a commonplace at many Chinese restaurants. These included morsels of prawn toast, chicken satay, dried seaweed, spare ribs and spring rolls. In charity, the first four were all very good. The spring rolls were excremental; and inasmuch as that concerns taste and odour, I mean it literally.

The main, which followed the Peking duck, was served hurriedly. The waiters, many of whom were, by this point, standing around distractedly in the middle of the emptying restaurant, were visibly irked by our protracted stay. The upside, of course, was that service became increasingly snappy and enthusiastic as the evening waned. We were brought sizzling spicy beef, a plate of mercilessly-chopped chicken pieces (replete with lashings of the dreaded cashew nut), a side of fried rice and a centrepiece of boiled tree. We tried, in earnest, to preserve our honour and the chef’s feelings, but had to admit defeat and watch the handsome platter be disassembled and removed.

The soup opener seemed eager to herald a level of disgust which, I am glad to say, was not realised. Tofu is the eighth deadly sin, and the decomposing, aqueous, frogspawn situation it found itself in on this occasion redeemed it not at all. Tofu floats, but just below the surface like a dead trout. I made a valiant assault but, in retrospect, am pleased to say I sent it back to the kitchen virtually untouched.

Red Chilli represents value measured in quantity, not quality. We left sated but not satisfied. On the way home, one of the waiters overtook us on a bicycle.

Italian restaurants are like Italian operas: there’s a lot of shouting and arm-waving, but the performance lacks subtlety. You could be forgiven for thinking this if your experience of Italian food depends on places like Pizza Express or Bella Italia – restaurants that employ thousands of waiters whose only duty, it seems, is to flirt with female diners through the suggestive medium of the comically-oversized peppermill.

But it is my experience, in both England and Italy, that the closer you get to an authentic osteria, the less “authentic” will be the behaviour of the waiting staff. Portions are smaller – sometimes distressingly so – but a two-course meal should guarantee repletion and satisfaction: plenty of ‘molto’ and just as much ‘gusto’.

L’Antica Locanda is such a place. Our starters, I cannot deny, were disappointing. A few flaccid slithers of grilled vegetable cost me the equivalent of three pints of mild bitter, and Helen’s mixed salad was as unremarkable as it was overpriced. Nil points.

I was ready to fold at the flop, but L’Antica’s chef had pocket aces. In the finest tradition of Mediterranean cuisine, seafood rose to the occasion. My Misto Mare was a recipe from the Adriatic coast – a busy circus of prawns, mussels and fish on a rice base, and swimming in a well-seasoned potage of its own infused flavours. Meanwhile, Helen ate an entire sea bass which was cooked lightly, perfectly, and came with a prawn and olive accompaniment. As good a pair of fish dishes as you are likely to find anywhere. Dix points.

The wine was good value – or rather, the extortionate mark-ups were no greater than you would expect. Overall, L’Antica just about justifies its high prices with a charming, simply-furnished interior and (if you can get a window seat) its historic location. I would say, “Don’t go here on a tight budget”, but that would be inconsistent with the financial planning instinct of most students, which holds that while £20 towards a meal is unthinkable, £30 on a sweaty evening in one of York’s unbearable nightclubs is money well spent.

So, d’ya know what! Go to L’Antica. Treat your other half. Have a liquid starter (I recommend the Chianti) and a delicious fishy main and return home sober without vomiting all over your the sleeping housemates. Just for once, pretend you’re not a revolting student.

Over to Helen, who doesn’t think you’re revolting:

Despite my fellow diner’s dim view of his contemporaries, I would say that at least half the restaurant was filled with fellow members of the campus population who I dimly recognised (no doubt, James would claim, from some drunken incident in the Ziggy’s queue) who were wining and dining with friends and partners.

The prices were, however, undoubtedly a little steep, and it’s worth saving this one for that ever-so-special occasion.

I’ve visited Pivo three times this week – an achievement which owes more to coincidence than enthusiasm. Nevertheless, this handsome continental café-bar has much to praise.

I have never been to a Bavarian beerhaus but, if my imagination serves me correctly, each one should have at least one long, knobbly, wooden bar-top carved from the bole of a great hornbeam, several hundred variety lagers flavoured with all manner of implausible fruit and veg and one winsome barmaid who is blonde and pigtailed, and built by the same company that did Munich cathedral.

Replace the barrel-chested lager mistress with a severe barman in a baroque earring, and Pivo is pretty much there. ‘What’s Ninkeberry?’ I asked, peering suspiciously at the inscrutable bar menu.

A charming bargirl replied: ‘It’s a mixed-fruit beer, but there’s a picture of a pomegranate on the label to indicate its primary flavour.’ Ninkeberry is very compelling, but avoid the draught Schneider Weisse which tastes of sweetcorn.

Pivo also serves paninis, which provoked an irritating conversation on the correct way to form the plural of a borrowed word. These looked good and seemed to be popular. Boys should make a trip to the loo, where the urinal is nothing less than the hellish, a gaping maw of a metal gargoyle. Enough said.

Postmodern drama poses a specific problem for the audience: nothing is ever the point. Dominic Allen sets his blackest of comedies in a dystopian near-future. I hesitate, conscious of indulging the critical cliché, to use the word Orwellian, but Morbid Curiosity is decorated by many of the fundamentals that the term connotes: a watchful civil service, a murderous police force, the transparently propagandist ‘happy minute’ and the idea of a united trans-Atlantic nationhood in which America plays a nebulous, almost mythical role in the minds of the ordinary people.

Differences exist between Orwell’s Oceania and Allen’s ‘British Colonies’. For a start, the dominant political structure has more in common with Neo-Fascism than Orwell’s IngSoc. But as intricate as Morbid Curiosity’s political climate is, it is not really ‘the point’. Nor is it really ‘the point’ that an amateur-sleuth narrative (the case of the missing livers) dogs the play from beginning to end. Although the play’s conclusion depends, to some extent, on the resolution of this mystery, you would not say Morbid Curiosity was a whodunit.

Other aspects of this play that are not the point include the love affair between the main character, Erasmus Hart (Matt Springett), and his colleague’s wife, only fleetingly explored, the marital psychosis of the government inspectors (Lucinda Farrett & Jamie Wilkes), a rich source of comedy throughout the performance, and the latent insanity of the chief mortician, Vincent Leach (Simon Maeder).

The play is, in fact, composed exclusively of subordinate plots. The only motif that received consistent attention throughout was the playwright’s apparently unshakeable conviction that violence is funny. In this enlightened era of GTA 4, I believe this is a conviction we all share.

Carol Ann Duffy, like Paul Muldoon before her, has a soft spot for audiences. She recognises that a person seated in an only-moderately comfortable upright chair for an extended period of time cannot and will not bear with equanimity even the most enthralling poetry recitation.

She is also realistic about long poems. She knows, perhaps from bitter experience, that the longer a poem is, the less likely an audience are to give it their full concentration. Duffy chose ‘The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High’ as the evening’s ‘longer poem’, but instead of reading the whole thing in one exhausting, nightmarish sprint, she started and stopped, revisiting it occasionally over the course of her performance.

This sympathy for her reading or listening public characterises her whole attitude. She owns no vestige of artistic self-regard, and was happy to read a few of her more anthologised, popular poems, including ‘Prayer’, the only poem ever to acknowledge the artistry of the shipping forecast, and ‘Anne Hathaway’, one of a number of poems written as part of a questionable endeavour to examine famous historical or mythical figures from their wives’ perspectives. Questionable because the boring domesticity of the wife’s situation was probably omitted from these stories for a reason; a better shout-out for the women that history ignored would be to imagine the women in their husband’s roles. But it’s all a bit of fun!

Though slightly hoarse, Duffy was relaxed and professional, and it was encouraging to see that she is as playful and unaffected in person as she is on paper.

If you like pickled eggs, you’ll like The Blue Bell. If you’re not fond of pickled eggs, but you like the idea of a pickled egg, or have a weakness for the sort of decorative imagery commonly associated with a jar of pickled eggs, then you’ll certainly be agreeable to a stint in The Blue Bell.

For a start, the draught bitters are numerous, charmingly regional and served at a good temperature which, contrary to popular opinion, should be chilled. With regards to its beers, then, and what might loosely be referred to as ‘crap on the walls’ (old pictures, faded photos, drinking memorabilia, etc), the Blue Bell plays host to the sort of variety you would expect from a pub that unflinchingly sells pickled eggs.

Nor were there raised eyebrows when, on entering, we lowered the average age by about a half-century. The other patrons were not, as you might expect, unfriendly and suspicious; they were harmless and, like all evening-time alcoholics, are sure to melt helplessly into the ambient furniture over the course of a few drinks.

Apart from the incongruous tapas menu, The Blue Bell succeeds at being itself in every detail, right down to the moderate brownness of my pickled egg – a brownness which, no doubt, hinted at my egg’s long-standing association with the pub.

I can’t vouch for the coffee at Coffee Culture: I ordered tea. But if it’s culture you want, look no further. Culture simply abounds at Coffee Culture. Not ‘kulchur’ of the vegetable sort, that slowly burgeons and mutates over thousands of years, the unconscious, sensible expression of human activity. But an artificial, sanitised alternative to culture – the sort which can just be ‘applied’ as ornament to the central piazzas of otherwise-culturally-dormant northern cities, in readiness for the two-thousand-and-umpth Most Cultured European City awards.

This was the sort of culture going on at Coffee Culture. I sat two floors up in a small, low-beamed Tudor loft with a number of very cultured wooden tables. There was a single lonely window overlooking the street. Bronte fans might speculate that if the Rochesters had moved to town, this would have been ‘that room’: perfect for the secretion of embarrassing, unwanted lunatic relatives.

Before long the proprietor arrived. He served my tea in a profoundly cultural grey earthenware teapot with the milk separate, which is ideal. He was evidently a man of culture: youngish, competent and cosmopolitan, wearing a sculpted baldness and some Islington facial hair.

There was also cultural media to contend with. The piped music was an extremely mixed bag. Much of what was played was very irritating: 80s rap, geeky noise and obscure indie rock songs that go on and on and have no point (you know that semi-articulate, socially-atrophic friend of yours who claims to be ‘into bands’ – those songs!). That said, I was pleased to hear Arthur Lee and Love, Johnny Cash and even Nico, minus The Velvet Underground.

Coffee Culture also serves food. At a glance of the menu this looked OK and not intolerably-priced, but I opted instead for a battered haddock and chips from just up the road. Proper kulchur.

William Blake is notable not only for the very questionable quality of his poetry, but also for his paintings and engravings; efforts which are, to say the least, regrettable: what unspeakable anatomical study, for example, could have provided the musculature for Blake’s Newton?

In the meantime, his poetry is massively overrated: rhymes are amateur, scansion is sloppy and the content is unintelligible, bordering on insane.

Now I’ve been a bit hard on him… But only because I think it’s important to knock back the bewildering reverence people have for him as a poet, an artist and a philosopher. It’s not all bad, of course: the first quatrain of ‘Auguries of Innocence’ is deservedly famous:

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

Some of the more insightful proverbs yield marvelous aphorisms, particularly if you are writing an essay about the French Revolution:

A dog starv’d at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.

At other times, Blake seems altogether to have lost the ability to rhyme faithfully:

He who respects the infant’s faith
Triumphs over hell and death.

…not to mention his control of the metre:

The child’s toys and the old man’s reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.

… and the capacity for rational thought:

He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be belov’d by men.

I’m fully aware that this is all rather unreasonable. Blake’s poetry has much to recommend it. I would advise newcomers to ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’, for example, to ignore the entire first section (sentimental rubbish) and make straight for the more dejected corners of ‘Experience’ – ‘London’, ‘A Poison Tree’, ‘The Garden of Love’. These passages are highly accomplished and not at all complex; each line has an evil, creeping intonation, as self-assured as the Old Testament and bristling with anti-industrial, anti-ecclesiastical fury.

But like all poetic projects that follow on from artistic theory (in this case, the idea that miserable humankind might drift into a state of prelapsarian bliss via the medium of infantile poetry), ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’ fails as a set piece. No-one who possesses the wherewithal to make a decent advance on a collection of poems could possibly be induced to read more than a few lines of the sort of insipid, emotionally-reductive trash that constitutes the ‘Songs of Innocence’ (‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy songs of happy cheer’). But, taken individually, a number of the ‘songs’ in Experience can be counted among the best, most masterful Romantic poetry…not a particularly competitive accolade – but that’s an argument for another day!

Saturday 26th January

This blog will be concerned, for the most part, with very bad poetry. But I have decided to inaugurate the series with a piece of good poetry, by the unrelenting Australian Les Murray:

Brutal policy,
Like inferior art, knows
Whose fault it all is.

Exploration of the Haiku is the most common misadventure in modern poetics – an offensively red herring, with botched pretensions of Eastern mysticism. Poets writing in English who make use of the Haiku seem to forget that the measure or pulse of English verse is accentual, whereas the Haiku is constructed around the idea of a fixed number of syllables. So a Haiku in English might almost be considered a contradiction in terms.

This blundering category error aside, the nice dimensions of Murray’s Haiku are very persuasive: art is not about taking sides, or as Ezra Pound put it, ‘Don’t be viewy.’ With this in mind, this week’s sample of extremely bad poetry comes in the form of Maya Angelou’s ‘State Package for Hillary Clinton’.

This exhausting panegyric turns out to be a rehash of her famously defiant civil rights poem, ‘Still I Rise’, collated with girthsome lumps of sycophantic partisan dross, and further shot through with ossified metaphor and boring rhetoric. Angelou is better than this, as she proved with ‘On the Pulse of the Morning’, written for Bill Clinton’s inauguration. Hillary should be less than flattered by the comparison between the two poems.

As a general rule, polemical poetry is stultifying, diseased from its inception. The design of poetry is fundamentally opposed to the use of rhetoric – just as a Constable landscape is to be looked at, not beaten over the head with. If Angelou cannot decide between poetry and politics, she should not attempt either. Harold Pinter’s poems are deeply awful but he, at least, has the common decency not to take sides. Like Dirty Harry, he hates everyone in equal measure:

There’s no escape.
The big pricks are out.
They’ll fuck everything in sight.
Watch your back.

It’s bad news for a writer when he finds his own work eclipsed by pastiche. Private Eye have always had it in for Pinter – I hazily recall their version of his response to the invasion of Iraq in 2003: ‘Piss, bombs, bollocks, and wank, / here comes that twat Bush in a tank’, or thereabouts. More recently their Poetry Corner was inspired to print ‘Lines Written To Commemorate The Award Of The Nobel Prize For Literature 2005 To Myself by Harold Pinter O.M.:

So. They have given me
The Nobel Prize
For Literature.
That’ll show that
Fucking bastard Bush
And his warmongering
Friend Blair.
Wankers.

Not many people realise it, but Eastenders is the most powerful corrupting influence in public media. Graphic films and violent computer games ordinarily bear the weight of responsibility for disfiguring the national psyche; they are, in fact, completely harmless. ‘Grand Theft Auto’, for example, is so manifestly uncivilised that it speaks honestly and says: I am by no means a viable way of life.

But soap operas are tricky and dishonest. They present a version of reality which seems valid, but isn’t. Consequently, people confuse soaps with reality. They think that the way characters behave in soaps is adult and acceptable. The logic of soaps is reductive and hyperbolic. Phil is not moderately angry, he is really angry. People don’t debate or discuss, they trade insults – or cut the verbiage altogether and beat the crap out of each other. When they do talk, their conversations are a mixture of emotional clichés and moral absolutes.

So we arrive at Gracegate, our sobriquet for the debacle that surrounded Grace Fletcher-Hackwood, Academic and Welfare Officer, Dan Taylor, a litigious malcontent, and an ensemble cast of soap opera-watching students who are much given to witch-hunts and unsightly public displays of morality.

Now we know all about democracy, that it is a virtuous process and that its mandate is final and unalterable. We also know that democracy doesn’t change the fact that we, the electorate, are often woefully misguided. It was easy for Dan Taylor to drum up support, but he needn’t have bothered: the soap opera-saturated students would have booted Grace anyway.

After all, we had already decided that Grace’s crime was capital; that if she fell, she had to fall hard (reduction and hyperbole). Her YUSU peers suggested that she be censured – the middle way; but the oh so pious students shouted “No! She must go!” (ethical absolute). Meanwhile, at the UGM, one speaker was heard to lament that Grace had “let her down” (emotional cliché).

Most disturbing were the frequent claims that Grace should go ‘on principle’. I don’t know what sort of principle this could be, that smiles with a turned thumb on every wounded public official, regardless of the particular circumstances of their offence; but I think that those who prize such principles above basic common sense would do well to examine what any reputable legal system history has to offer and take note of the recurrent emphasis on proportionate punishment.

Everyone loves a drama, naturally. But it would be comforting to think that this one – the appalling crucifixion of a benign individual for a trivial offence – will never be repeated. I hope that this year’s lynch-mob may in the future learn to assuage their animal bile, to think in real-life terms and – following the advice of WS Gilbert’s Mikado – to let the punishment fit the crime.

‘Numbers were never my strong suit,’ quipped silky-smooth Pierce Brosnan in Goldeneye. I sympathise. The ‘medium’ Sudoku I attempted during a particularly uneventful pub-shift the other day did not look very intimidating, but within fifteen minutes I was reduced to an effing and blinding wreck.

Statistics? A different matter entirely. Statistics are a suit that anyone can play. Disraeli was right to condemn them, not only in their capacity as a rhetorical smokescreen to disguise a bad argument, but because the person brandishing a tight set of statistics does not actually need an argument. Stats have a life of their own; they will, it is often claimed, speak for themselves.

Take, for example, the University of York Christian Union’s financial audit sheet for the years 2006 and 2007. It would be grossly unfair of me to appropriate the figures for the money spent on UYCU’s Minster Ball last January (£17,161 – £10K of which was in fairness, raised through ticket sales) and place them provocatively beside the figure afforded to a ‘homeless project’ (£45). Speaking as a compassionless atheist w­­ith a heart of unyield­­ing flint, I do not feel able to pass judgment on the actions of an independent, non-profitable and, for the most part, harmless organisation. Nevertheless the statistics look bad, do they not? Really bad.

On the other hand, my presentation of these ‘facts’ has been unforgivable. I have selected only those statistics that advance my argument and have marshalled them to the worst possible effect. My treatment of the issue has depended entirely on rhetorical sleight of hand and a complete refusal to see the bigger picture.

Here follows my redemption. The CU may be wealthy by the standards of most York societies, but it is not affiliated with YUSU, so there is no question of them being leant upon by the latter, with whom they try to cooperate unofficially. The CU are funded entirely by donations which they spend at their discretion.

Furthermore, they might very well argue that, as an evangelical institution, their first priority is the widespread articulation of God’s word. This explanation, which I would advise them to learn by heart and repeat to their detractors, justifies the CU’s three most expensive annual ventures: the Minster Ball, the ‘House Party’ – a gastronomic, Bible-oriented weekend sojourn in the country – and, finally, a £3,000 expense marked somewhat chillingly as ‘Freshers’.

The CU does not exist simply to funnel money from donors to receivers. Their aims, though often charitable, are not exclusively so. It is also worth considering that a lot of charitable work is voluntary and does not require financial support – working in a night-shelter, for example, would be done gratis. So a figure for how much was spent on a certain CU project does not necessarily denote the real scale of their input.

I am loath to defend the CU, an organisation which, I believe, is benighted and corrosive. Nevertheless, though I revile and mistrust them, I will not see them persecuted on financial grounds. Liberty, as always, is the last word on the subject. 

In the run-up to Christmas, Will and I decided that dinner at Nineteen was the way to go. We took the girls along to avoid looking too much like conspirators or a couple.

Now, I won’t deny we forked out for this one. If you cannot comprehend paying £15 for a main course and you think that the whole economic register of the restaurant business is just unreasonable (and you may be right), don’t punish yourself. On a student budget the price is very rarely right and if you think you’re being ripped off, naturally, you won’t enjoy your meal.

And there’s no shame in that. I would not enjoy, for example, being forced to flog lesser-known inner organs to stump up the funds for some laboured, ever-waning designer-label zip-top, replete with ‘hoodie’ and one of those bombastic numerical logos that looks like it’s been stitched on by a 4-year-old. For all these reasons and more, I never shop at Abercrombie and Fitch.

I prioritise food. If you, like me, invest frequently, heavily and unflinchingly in your appetite, you will find Nineteen delightful. All four of us went with the Christmas set menu – three courses for less than £20! Mine was the curried parsnip soup with croutons – iceberglike in their not-quite-total immersion – bobbing happily across the ample surface. It was unsurpassable and, I thought, typified the very inclusive nature of British food, not hesitating to ‘curry’ as High English a vegetable as the parsnip. 

For the main I had grilled salmon and “spinach crushed potato” in a chive butter sauce. The salmon was pink, sleek and delicious and the sauce complementary. We were for a long time entirely mystified by the spinach crushed potato; the complete absence of any punctuation on the menu had made it difficult to know what would be crushing what, and in what quantities. It turned out not to matter very much; however constructed, the standard template for potato accompaniments had been vastly improved upon.

I am reminded at this point of a lamb shank I ate once in Oxfordshire. The potatoes on that occasion (mashed, as it so happened) had been enlivened with squat gargoyles of black pudding; I remember them crouching darkly between waves of mash, seething…

Our companions ordered bloody steaks; I think they were trying to impress us. When they arrived I was startled to see that the steaks were actually rare – a rare thing to behold in North Yorkshire, where any meat that hasn’t been scalded to within an inch of the gates of Hell is commonly regarded with a mixture of suspicion and disgust.

A word about the ambience: once upon a time, 19 Grape Lane, a higgledy-piggledy, early Tudor affair, was a brothel. Grape Lane is apparently a corruption of ‘Grope Lane’ – but the incumbent proprietor and chef has gone some way to improving the restaurant’s image. The furniture, though powerfully modern, sits comfortably beneath the beamed ceiling; the plates are huge and white; we even had one of those pressure-sensitive table lamps which cycles through four different degrees of brightness when you touch the base – so the girls had something to play with when their attention started to drift from the conversation.

1 bag of spinach
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
2 medium onions
2 cloves of garlic
3 rashers of bacon
1/2 courgette

When we decided to try out this recipe, Will and I were still a bit the worse for wear from our restaurant review the previous night.
This pasta sauce with spinach and bacon, therefore, is commendably straightforward. It suits the inclinations of those who disdain the ready-meal, but whose culinary aptitude extends little further than being able to nudge a hot pan with a wooden spoon until the contents are vaguely discoloured.
“What do I do with these?” Will asked hysterically, waving a vague fist at the heap of wretchedly-chopped vegetables.
“God’s sake!” I gasped, “Just add them to the pan in the order that you would expect, and heat them until they’re cooked!”
So to clarify: Sweat the onions and garlic first, with a splash of vegetable oil; then bacon; next the courgettes, preferably diced; then come the tomatoes; finally, the spinach leaves, which will boil in the tomato sauce.
Back in the kitchen, relations between the two chefs had not improved.
“When do we start the pasta?” Will asked pathetically.
“Stop asking questions. Just shut up and listen. Do it when the other thing’s done with the thing,” I barked, cradling my forehead in my hand and frantically chewing a double aspirin.
Cooking is all about timing. Start boiling the pasta towards the end of the process and drain it as soon as it’s done – al dente, or otherwise – your choice.
“What about the sauce?”
“What about the sauce! Do I have to exhaust every little detail with tedious explanation? The sauce basically cooks itself.”
In a sense, I was right. If left for long enough in each others’ company, the bacon and vegetables will all mulch together to form a kind of cohesive stuff. Then season, and add mixed herbs if you have them.
The beauty of this recipe is its simplicity. Don’t do anything stupid. Follow these instructions closely and be attentive to common sense. Make as much mess as possible , and on no account do any washing up. A bottle of decent claret is an excellent complement. Chin-chin.

This will be the least opinionated comment I ever write. Why? Because we at Nouse desire, once again, to entertain the question of ethically-sourced clothing and, more specifically, the York University Students’ Union’s patronage of those companies who do not deal in it.

If you are new to York this year, it is possible you have not yet heard about YUSU’s failure to comply with its own standards for the purchase of ethically-sourced clothes. The debate came to a frothy head this summer when former AU President Tom Moore admitted, in a gesture of brazen defiance, from the shock of which York’s liberal consensus has yet to fully recover, that he did deliberately, and with malice of forethought, order sports gear from Fruit of the Loom, a clothing company whose use of labour is reckoned to be exploitative.

Desperate as I am to breathe new life into what many would say is an irredeemably tedious subject, I realise that an impassioned defence of sweat-shops is implausible and completely off-limits. But if the issue of ethical merchandise is as clear-cut as everyone imagines, why do we find the YUSU obstructive and the student body submissive?

The time has come to throw open the windows surrounding this entire contention. When asked to account for his actions by a Nouse reporter, the AU President questioned whether anyone really cared about ethical sourcing. A dubious rebuttal: callous, evasive and somewhat irrelevant – but don’t you think he might have had a point? If the groundswell of indignation wasn’t even sufficient to effect a plummet in sales of the T-shirts for the Viking Raid party (also provided by Fruit of the Loom) last winter term, let alone an organised boycott of the event, then what do we at Nouse think can be achieved by continuing loudly to censure YUSU’s conduct?

Well, obviously we hope that, by printing frequent and incendiary articles opposing the exploitation of labour, we will nag students to demand more from their elected representatives, which might in turn encourage the YUSU to adopt a more ethically-responsive posture. But in the meantime, it is widely believed that the subject of ethical merchandise has, for Nouse, become something of a monomania. By pursuing this sterile line of argument, virtuous as it may be, we run a real risk of boring our readership into disaffection.

So, a new angle! Clearly, there is little that has not already been said in condemnation of sweat-shops, and little that could ever credibly be said in their defence. But I have attempted to fill this need for the beginnings of a reappraisal of the whole debate with an extract from an article by philosopher and journalist-occasional Jamie Whyte (The Times, August 11 2007):

“You cannot help people by preventing them from engaging in voluntary transactions. If a Bangladeshi wants to work in a clothes factory for 20p an hour, then chances are that this represents a good deal for him. Those who lobby to prevent the import of the clothes that he is ‘exploited’ to make are not helping him. Giving him enough money to think it no longer worthwhile to work for 20p an hour would be an act of generosity. Running his employer out of business because cheap labour offends you is an act of selfishness.”

Maybe the whole panorama of your thinking on this subject has been suddenly and wonderfully refreshed. Or maybe it hasn’t. I certainly don’t have an opinion one way or the other. Something to think about, though – wouldn’t you agree?

Journalists are the lowest form of pond life. This is not an exercise in puritanical self-abasement: I absolutely mean what I say. We whinge, we pick holes, we are often inexcusably self-righteous. We have a tendency to ignore good news in favour of muck-raking. We are quick to pass judgement and slow to provide solutions which, when they are offered, have a habit of being simplistic and ill-conceived.

In spite of all that, the British political set-up has drawn a wide gulf between government and electorate. Were it not for the free press intervention, an MP would scarcely be accountable for his stint in office. Equally, the Fourth Estate has carved out a comfortable little niche for itself at York, ensuring the students remain well-informed and the University remains accountable for its actions.

Criticism, even in the absence of alternative solutions, has an important function. Student journalists who have inherited this role should perhaps be viewed as medical leeches: parasitical, but with practical application.

This academic year, Nouse has reported on a wide range of student affairs and developments. For the most part, the paper’s reporting has been accurate and responsible. Only two main stories stick in my mind as actively inviting criticism, and it is my intention here to suggest some areas where – with hindsight – I feel Nouse got it wrong.

On this subject, I may be a lone voice shouting into the storm: YUSU’s response to the perceived “porter crisis” spawned at its zenith a rainforest’s worth of bombastic green flyers, while Nouse lent its voice to the campaign with an open letter to the University authorities accompanied by a petition. At the time, there were accusations of ‘bad faith’ levelled at Messrs Cantor, Batten and Lilley. The crisis was short-lived and normality has now been restored, with the exception of Langwith College, where budget cuts have led to a reduced porter service.

Nevertheless, the University came good on its promises to address the staff shortage as soon as possible. It seems wrong that we started with the assumption that the University didn’t intend to keep its pledge.

The headline ‘Are we a racist university?’ was also met with some resentment. I found the suggestion was unwarranted. I thought the statistical evidence was sketchy and the examples of campus racism dubious. When a motorist launches an egg at a foreign student and the charge is student racism, two important questions have to be asked: Was the motorist a student? Was the incident necessarily racially motivated? There seems to be no evidence to suggest either. My verdict: not guilty. A driver of a BMW behaves in an intimidating manner towards a foreign student crossing the road. This was also cited as an example of student racism. A student… driving a BMW… really?

Some people suggested that, unlike the porter crisis which constituted a series of actual events, the ‘racist university’ leader was a non-story blown out of proportion by Nouse, as a clear response to a Vision article. This gave rise to some lively debate in the Nouse office. Personally, I have dwelt on those occasions this year when I think Nouse came up short of the mark. Significantly, I have mentioned only two stories. This is because I?believe the way in which those two stories were conducted marked them out as exceptions to the usual rule.
Nouse, as a rule, is of an exemplary standard in both journalism and production. As for the paper being ‘No-Use’, ‘politically correct’ and other cheap shots – some accusations just don’t merit a response.

Here’s another one for bleeding hearts: the tenant farmer forced to relinquish part of his leasehold because the landowners have decided to flog it to the University. Well, call me a steely capitalist warthog if you will, but I fail to see how the unfortunate but legitimate termination of a lease like this can be an argument to derail the entire building project.

It gets better. Apparently, the people of Heslington see their sense of community eroded by ‘studentification’: another gross neologism that sounds like the unhappy consequence of Hazel Blears making love to a filing cabinet. This word is a pejorative reference to the effect of students on local communities. Popularly viewed as a completely separate species, our numbers must be kept down.

“Studentification”: the term sounds like Hazel Blears making love to a filing cabinet

Allegedly, by extending the campus and increasing student population numbers, Heslington Parish Council will be prevented from achieving a ‘mixed and balanced community’ that they so desire.

It is specious drivel, all of it! York students do little to affect the community balance; the only real change they make to the neighborhood of Heslington is that they reduce the age average by a few years. As for the community, the University’s broad mixture of students (including dozens of international students) is more diverse than any of the villages surrounding us.

But the HPC is not after communal balance; this is just a delicate way of asking for fewer students around – preferably none. Only one main opposition to Heslington East remains, one to which most rational people, be they students or non-students, can rally: the environment.

After all, the economic arguments against expansion are weak, and we, as de facto customers, are in no position to wield them. To suggest that money should favour present students’ needs over long-term investment smacks of mean near-sightedness. Cheap snipes about Guardian League Tables and profiteering aside, York is a successful university and, nationally, the interest is in the growth of good universities rather than the preservation of Heslington’s farmland.

However, the contention over development on Green Belt land is understandable. The University refused alternative building sites in York, citing a preference to remain on a single campus. Certainly, any prospective business would prefer to waltz onto nearby lush, uncontested farmland than to fight tooth and nail for tracts of remote, urban land.
Nevertheless, there is something infuriating about the University’s total disregard for the hard-fought environmental campaign. There are promises of an environmentally sustainable Heslington East, but the feeling remains that going ahead with plans for a new campus is sweeping 70 years of Green Belt regulations into the bin.

The University will get its new campus and, with some new buildings being reserved for its spin-off companies, it will prosper. But we should not forgive its shameful trashing of the Green Belt code any time soon.

The recently disclosed disappearance of 42 international students from the York campus has provided a crucial insight into the stock method of apportioning blame in crises such as this. The pattern is increasingly familiar. First and foremost, students are immediately absolved of all blame for whatever went wrong. Accountability is dealt out in broad strokes, both to the government and the University authorities.

The University has limited PR capabilities and has so far wisely decided to hold its peace. But the government – in this case the local government and, more specifically, Cllr Ceredig Jamieson-Ball, recently returned to his Heslington ward with a significant majority – is quicker on the draw.

In this instance, Jamieson-Ball has deftly shifted all responsibility onto weaker shoulders, claiming it is ‘imperative’ that overseas students receive a proper level of support from the University. I do not want to paint the University authorities as helpless victims in this, but it must be obvious that it is not necessarily they who bear the entire responsiblity for the disappearance of these students.

All in all there seem to be three main problems. The first plays out like a detective drama: the students have gone AWOL, and no-one is quite sure where they are now. This is in fact an enormous red herring. Why exactly ought we to be concerned about their present whereabouts? Perhaps because their student visas do not permit them, having discontinued their studies at the University, to remain in the country? But then surely if they are breaking the law, that must be a Home Office matter, and not the University’s responsibility. Most likely (why not go with the simplest explanation – after all, ‘entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity’) is that they have all legally returned to their native countries.

If some or all of them have remained in the UK, we arrive at the second perceived problem: that the country is being overrun by an army of self-serving economic migrants! This is a little difficult to swallow when one considers the hefty fees incumbent on non-EU overseas students. If the students have coughed up these fees, voluntarily dropped out of education and then remained in the country (albeit in breach of immigration laws), there is still no reason to assume that they are not making a valid contribution to the economy by earning their keep elsewhere.

Problem number three: perhaps these students disappeared on account of their struggle successfully to integrate into the social life of the University. A problem, admittedly. Imperative, as Ceredig would say. But whose imperative is it to remedy this problem? Can anyone really deny that the University upholds its end of the bargain with a multitude of social provisions and welfare support staff?

The idea of a problem without blame must be difficult to fathom for some, but that is all this really amounts to. Britain offers residency to foreign students in exchange for increased fees and the obvious economic returns inherent in educating a foreign labour force. It’s the Government’s job to administrate immigration. It’s the University’s job to educate students, immigrant or otherwise. So far, help has arrived in the form of an intemperate blame-fest. History ought to have taught us that witch-hunts do not solve problems: they obfuscate the potential for real solutions, and instead create a menagerie of red herrings and scapegoats to make sure that finding them is all but impossible.

So let me be absolutely frank: there isn’t really a problem, and if there is, it can’t be taken to be the fault of any one party in particular. Most enrolled overseas students are still with us. If anyone feels like launching a vigilante action-wagon, such as hunting the missing students down and delivering them a hefty slap on the wrist for dropping out without notifying the proper authorities, you may do as you please. For my part, I plan to join the overwhelming majority of York students in failing to worry about international students using York as an unorthodox asylum loophole. Instead, I’ll be enjoying the warm weather and getting on with my life.