Obviously, the answer is a taxi. But when you book a taxi, rarely does the car drive itself to the door of your college. Taxi drivers are essential for the party-loving population of our campus university. But how much fun is it to ferry us students on a night out? How could we make the taxi driver’s life a little bit easier? And when we do finally return to our beds, the first stomach-lurches of a hangover beginning to kick in, unsure if we’ve spent twenty pounds or an accidental one hundred and twenty pounds, how does the taxi driver stop from thinking of us as complete wasters?

“We understand you’re half cut when you get in and you ain’t got a lot of money left.” Ian, 45, a taxi driver from Streamline who has been doing day and night shifts for six years, says.

“We know its how you enjoy yourselves and there’s nowt wrong with it. As long as you have a banter and it’s nothing abusive, we’ll have a crack and play what ever you want on the radio. We got a driver who had a group of lasses in his car the other day, and he’s got an iplayer” – Ian obviously means an iPod or the driver he is talking about has a Pimp My Ride style taxi – “in his car, and they asked if he had a song on it, and he did, so they were like, ‘let’s get it blasted!’”

Did he get it blasted?

“Yeah, like anything in life – if you’re nice, we’ll be nice back. Come in with an attitude and -”

No music blasted?

“Yeah, exactly. We want you to have a good time, ‘cos then you’re in a better a mood.”

“Being on time is a big issue,” Ian says. “And I know customers feel the same about us drivers. If we’re coming up to Wentworth college and it’s booked for seven o’ clock at night, make sure you’re there for seven o’ clock. Because there is nowt worse than having to wait. If it’s the case, I’ve done ring back so you know I’m outside, I’ve waited for ten minutes, with no sign of you, and then I’ve got to drive off with an empty taxi. That’s going to leave you pretty pissed off at a student.”

Another sore subject that most drivers and students can relate to is the urge to eat your post-lash Subway as quickly as possible, and the understanding that you will certainly get booted from the taxi as soon as you spill chicken teriyaki down the seats.

“The thing on going home is that you students do like to get your takeaways,” Ian says. “Just don’t eat in the car. I know it sounds like we are talking down to you, but there’s nowt worse than finishing a job and finding half a donner kebab stuck between your back seats. I don’t even like a kebab, myself. And if you’re a student whose had a night out, and you got your best gear on, you don’t want to get kebab down it, do you?”

Mark, a driver from Station Taxis, is a little less forgiving. Mark has been doing night shifts for over seven years. Sitting in his taxi, Mark seems reluctant to talk and reads the paper as he answers my questions. When I ask about how students could treat drivers better, Mark perks up and puts the paper down.

“Right. Right. One thing is – we don’t do student discount. They are always asking. They go out drinking more times than the driver does. They’ll go out seven nights a week drinking if they got their own way. The driver will be lucky to go out one night a week. Another thing is if you get four of them in -”

Suddenly Mark realises he is coming across as a bit of a grumpy old man (he says he’s in his fifties), and he looks apologetic.

“Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind students. I don’t mind them at all. They’re never cheeky. They’re never violent.”

But?

“But if you get four of them in, and the fare is £6.80, they can’t figure out how to split the fare. They ain’t got a brain between them, basically. They’ll try to work it out in the car, and instead of sorting out later, they’ll want to work it out in the car. Just someone bite the bullet, go in, have cup of tea and argue about 10p divided by the lot of you inside! Oh, and they will always give me coppers. Apart from that, good customers.”

I have to judge what kind of mood you’re in. Obviously, when you got in the car now I knew you wanted to chat

Mark is quick to point out that he has never experienced, or heard of, a student being violent towards a taxi driver. He says this is something students should be proud of. Are the York locals really that bad in comparison?

“Local people can really kick off. Someone gets in your car, and they’re drunk, and maybe they’ve fallen out with the doorman, maybe they’ve had an argument with their girlfriend – you’re the last person they see. They don’t have to deal with the doorman at the end of the night. The taxi driver is the last person they see in a night. So if they want to have a fight, and they ain’t had one, the driver is the last option. Not going to lie – it’s usually chavs. Them sort of people. Having no fun on a night out unless they smack someone’s head in.”

For Ian, it’s local people running off that is the biggest problem. “That’s a really big pain in the arse. You’ve done your job and you’ve done it for nowt. Never had that with a student though.”

So you’ve managed to count exact change for the fare, your Subway has remained in it’s wrapping, you’re not in the mood for a fight, you’re too drunk to find the door handle let alone run off – should you attempt to have a decent conversation with the person driving you home? Or is it best if you keep your mouth shut and let the nice driver do their job?

“That’s a hard one,” Ian says. “I’m in the same boat. I’ve got to judge you when you get in the car; I have to judge what kind of mood you’re in. Obviously, when you got in the car now I knew you wanted to chat!”

Granted, the Dictaphone is a bit of a give-away.

“But I’ll chat away always. We go to Harrogate, I’ll chat the whole way. If I asked you something and got a one word answer, I’ll think maybe he don’t want to speak. As a rule, if you’re in a good mood when you jump in, most drivers will happily have a conversation.”

What about regulars?

“We get regulars and that makes things better. For example, there’s a lad I’ve picked up a few times whose a big Fulham fan. And you never know when you’ll get picked up by a driver you’ve had before, so if you get talking, chances are the driver might remember you if he picks you up again.”

Mark is of a similar philosophy regarding driver-student banter. “Basically, I can tell within thirty seconds whether someone wants to talk to me or not. I’ll have a go at making small talk, and if they continue the conversation, that’s up to them. If they don’t want to talk, I won’t pester them. But if you are going on a long journey, it does make it go a lot quicker to have a chat. If they want to talk, I will talk about anything they want. Any subject.”

Suddenly lost for a subject to talk about, and with the radio turned on with the volume low, I ask Mark what his favourite music to drive to is.

“I don’t know. I have a weird taste in music.”

Weird as in Marilyn Manson or ambient mood music for sensitive lovers?

“No! Nothing like that. Pink Floyd? The Doors?”

My opinion is that this is more good taste than weird taste, and Mark seems pleased to hear it. Talking to Ian about his children, he refers to the underage club nights in Gallery as “teenybopper nights,” which is exactly how my dad refers to the underage club nights in my hometown.

Since us students spend only short bursts inside a taxi, often thinking about the night ahead, it is easy to forget the driver may be in at the mid point of a long night shift, going back and forth, back and forth between campus and town picking up tipsy students.

“It gets very monotonous, very repetitive,” Mark says. “Which makes it easier to remember people when they do chat to you. Anyone who works knows being able to talk to people makes your work day go quicker.”

Ian agrees. “I’m working an eight hour shift today in this car. It’s a lonely job if no one talks to you.”

The upside is that it makes it easier to make an impression on the driver and easier to brighten their day (or dingy night shift).

“Picked up a fellah the other week who was drunk and had fallen asleep on his train,” Mark says. “He wanted to go to Hull. He was a great big bruising, scrapping kind of fellah. He asked me how much fare would be, I told him it’d be about £50, so he said he should smash my face in to charge him that much, but he had to go home. So he couldn’t smash my face in. By the time I dropped him off he wanted me to go in for a cup of tea and to meet his kids. He was pissed. But you got to know how to talk to people. I could have had my face smashed in. Or I could have got a free cuppa. No contest, really?”

I cringe slightly at this story, as I remember once insisting a taxi driver come in for a cup of tea with me and my friends as he seemed like a funny guy.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Mark says. “It’s often funny, and it’s a better story for the driver and you than a ten minute drive in silence.”

“Living a doll’s life seems to have become an aspiration for many young women, as they leave childhood behind only to embark on a project of grooming, dieting and shopping that aims to achieve the bleached, waxed and tinted look of a Bratz or Barbie doll,” Natasha argues in her second book, Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, released earlier this year. As well as her indignation at a literal “pole-dancing doll” toy, Natasha lists the York Pole Exercise Club as part of “our raunch culture,” which has manifested itself as ‘Playboy Nights’ at Loughborough University, York’s Goodricke College, and a Page 3 style photo shoot at Pembroke College, Oxford. These are merely milder forms of the increasingly prevalent “dollification” of society.

But the committee members of the Pole Exercise Club cannot see the sexual aspect of their routine. “I think all of us at the club want Pole to be seen as a sport that anyone can get involved in – male or female,” merchandise rep Catherine Cooper-White says. Beth Randall, a member of the club, agrees: “We don’t really do any dance moves … we weren’t doing anything in a sexy way.” Numerous members of the club took an interest as they likened it to certain acrobatic circus skills. As for the outfits – “if you think wearing vests and shorts is overly sexualised you probably shouldn’t leave your house on a hot day,” Catherine says.

Talking to Natasha, she expressed the need for a debate about where rights stop and raunch begins. “When I’ve been debating this issue, people have expressed the worry that I’m advocating quite a puritan view of sex and sexuality.” So the pole exercise club has a place in a equal society? Natasha is hesitant: “What we need is true liberation, which isn’t about censorship or shutting down choices. It’s about having a debate about which choices are good choices.” Natasha references an interview she conducted with one young woman who had become a lap dancer. The woman said, “Look, I made this choice. I wasn’t forced into this work. I wasn’t coerced. I wasn’t a victim. I made a choice. But it was a bad choice. It was a damaging choice.” According to Natasha, we need to talk in these terms – deciding on damaging choices.

But numerous commentators have seen the “raunch culture” issue less as a second wave feminist issue than about soft-core pornography, and more as an issue about equality. If good choices lay at the heart of Natasha’s gender-equal world, then those choices will be dependent on the chooser’s social background. As others – as well as Natasha – have pointed out, the life of a well paid glamour model may seem to trump a life stacking shelves at Superdrug. “There is this culture that says to young women the path to success and status is through flaunting their bodies,” Natasha says, “and this culture weighs very heavily on women with fewer options and narrower aspirations.”

It’s like the young, working-class guys who all want to be professional footballers – these are unlikely ambitions. The crucial difference is that the wannabe footballer isn’t judged by the size of his balls

Not that a WAG lifestyle after a quick topless shot is guaranteed. “It’s important to remember that many girls are lured into stripping for free,” Natasha says, before going on to reference the large number of girls posing half naked in the section of Nuts entitled ‘My Girls’ – a section that pays nothing to submitters.

As Phil Hilton, ex-editor of Nuts, says in the book, “in reality, if you’re a young working-class woman from the provinces who sends your picture into these magazines, you’re not likely to become incredibly successful. It’s like the young working-class guys who all want to be professional footballers – these are unlikely ambitions.” The crucial difference, for Natasha, is that the wannabe footballer isn’t judged by the size of his balls.

And it is not just working class girls that are affected by the “dollification” of society. “I tried to interview people from a wide range of backgrounds,” Natasha says. “Even the girls from elite private schools definitely felt the effects of this culture in terms of their own dissatisfactions with their bodies, and in terms of how they felt success for women is so often measured in terms of a narrow definition of sexual attractiveness.”

Despite its negative effects and its limited prospects for most wannabe models, raunch culture is continuing to make a comfortable profit. In 2009, Nuts still sold over 180,000 copies every week in the UK. And brand-conscious pop stars continue to rely on the adage that sex sells: according to a recent analysis of music videos, over 70% of women shown were not wearing many clothes or were dressed highly provocatively.

“Why do we let the market set our standards?” Natasha wants to know. “In the 1980s and 1990s we let the market set our moral standards for us, and we have come to see the limitations of that. So if we are to move away from that kind of culture it’s going to take a wider question of our values. We will also have to question why we let the market have that power.”

Occupying an increasingly complex place in the debate is Nuts’ overarching target audience: men. We are still seen as the consumers of raunch culture. Natasha highlights the comments left on prostitution review website Punter.net: one comment reviews a prostitute as a “tired old haggard whore … saggy tits … hairy minge … shite punt.” But she is also quick to point out some men’s awkwardness when confronted by some women’s ‘Sex in The City’/Girl With A One Track Mind mentality. As one of Natasha’s interviewees, Ruby, puts it, “it’s the boys who keep talking about love. They are so emotional and wimpy. It makes it difficult to run my sex life the way I want.” Natasha stresses the importance of being non-judgemental: “It isn’t that it is men all on one side of this and women on the other. It is really important to say that. A lot of times in the past women have spoken as if all women are the victims and all men are the perpetrators of the problem. Now I think you have a much more complicated situation.”

From fictional sex-addicts like Samantha to personas like Jordan who are essentially sexual brands, women who seem to be directing their own sexual promiscuity leave some men struggling to engage with the opposite sex. “A lot of the men and boys I interviewed for the book felt angry or frustrated by the way they felt this culture limits their own choices, in terms of conforming to a stereotype,” Natasha says. “Liberation and more equality will benefit men as well as women.”

The members of Pole Exercise were nonplussed about how men perceived their performance. Catherine says, “It does not really bother me – what can I do about it? The fact is that men find a lot of stange things sexy! Men really do not enter into the equation, and I cannot emphasize that enough.” Orsolya, Press and Publicity for Pole Exercise, agrees: “If you see someone on the top of a nine foot pole upside down, holding on only with her hands and all you can think is ‘STRIPPER!’, then there’s not much we can do about that.” But Beth is more concerned about how other women – like Natasha – will perceive the performance. “What does bother me are the people, mainly women, who assume that we’re doing it for those men,” Beth says, “they judge me and write derogatory things in public media where the stigma is reinforced.”

Undoubtedly, there is a debate to be had about the thin line between women’s degradation and liberation. But surely there are more pressing concerns than Tits-and-Ass shows? In 2007, women made up just 11% of high court judges, despite accounting for 49% of the lowest ranking judges. Women made up only 11% of FTSE 100 directors and 14% of national newspaper editors. After the election, there are only 143 female MPs, compared to 507 males in the Commons. And a recent article in this very paper has sparked a debate as to whether positive discrimination is needed in academia, with the philosophy department having just three female academics.

But Natasha acknowledges that there are issues bigger than the burning of a WonderBra. “You need to break down these stereotypes that say one subject is suited to men another is suited to women,” Natasha says. “We need to attack the problem in terms of positive actions rather than positive discrimination.”

“We need to outreach into schools to show girls why science or engineering or philosophy – traditionally male dominated subjects – are positive choices for girls, then we still need to break down the barriers with jobs in terms of maternity leave and equal pay.” Despite shying away from positive discrimination, Natasha would advocate it in one instance: “Politics. There is such a crying need for women in Westminster and the only way to kick start that is through quotas.” Natasha is also very aware of the plight of women around the world, having set up the organisation Women for Refugee Women in 2006. “Four years ago I met a woman called Angelique. She came to this country from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where she had been imprisoned and tortured because of the political activities of her father. She had been turned down for asylum and was destitute in London. So she walked the streets. She walked and walked, criss-crossing the capital, begging for food, even though she was heavily pregnant,” Natasha wrote in The Guardian last year, explaining her passion for organisation.
­­
This seems like a lot of doom and gloom. Where is the praise for Hilary Clinton’s work in politics? Or Hilary Mantel winning the Booker and Doris Lessing winning the Nobel prize? Or the commitment to human rights made by women like Aung San Suu Kyi and Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman and first Iranian to win the Nobel peace prize?

“I suppose there is space for positive books and inspiration,“ Natasha says. “We will have to see what women and men write about feminism in the next ten years – maybe we can get more space to have optimistic narratives as well.” So why not write about the achievements of Angela Merkel, Martha Lane Fox and Martha Nussbaum? “I thought Living Dolls’ was the right book to write at this time. It will be interesting to see where things go over the next decade.”

It seems there is plenty of material for the next great book on feminism. The question is: will it be subtitled ‘The End Of Sexism’?

But you’re leaning against a gleaming metal work surface, staring at a menu board that refuses to stop rotating and you’re trying to explain that you want an Al Funghi pizza without mushrooms.

Congratulations, you’ve become a stereotypical student. But how easy is it to stereotype our favourite post-lash haunt – the takeaway? And what do the sleep deprived men who have to shovel pizza after pizza think of us, the drunken rabble that we can be?

If you’re hearing the words “yes, boss”, you’re in Efes, the takeaway that‘s short on possessive apostrophes but literally giving away free cans of Pepsi.

If you were a student 15 years ago, you would have found a small pizza takeaway that closed well before York’s clubs. Then from the sunny climes of Istanbul in Turkey came Mr Efe Aktaf, his brother Naci, and their cousins Emre and Mete, the latter of whom now manages Efes. Mr Efe has worked in takeaways his entire life, and is now providing for himself, his wife and his two daughters, aged five and ten.

We try to close and people want to get in for food. They get angry, banging on the windows, shouting abuse

After 15 years of topping pizzas and wrapping kebabs together, Mete claims the family unit still get on perfectly fine, although Mr Efe admits it can be hard not seeing his children. “It’s difficult but I try to make time – wake up early or go to be bed later – so I can have an hour to just play and spend time with them.”

But Mr Efes is not immune from nagging: “Sometimes my wife gets annoyed at me – why are you working every day? Why are you working every day? I’m trying to run a business!”

Kaja of Chubbies

But what does Mete, manager of the self-proclaimed “number one student takeaway in York”, think of you when you sway towards his counter at three in the morning?

“We know students like to party, and we understand this. They go out, get drunk, enjoy themselves, get some food, then go home and go to bed”. Then be sick, miss lecture and panic-library-cram come essay or exam time, but I‘m not going to tell Mr Efes about that.

The mentioning of partying leads Mr Efes to ask, “Where is Brendon? I never see Brendon anymore,” – Brendon being a mutual friend who proudly displays an Efe’s polo-shirt on his wall.

The partying stamina of students is just one of the many abilities that impress Fatih and Mehmet of York’s Only Yummy Chicken.

“How do you do it?” Mehmet, Yummy Chicken’s manager, asks me. “How do you party, party, party and then work the next day?” If the student is like me, I say, they sometimes miss out on whole ‘next day’ thing.

“That makes sense. Students are the best part of our job,” Mehmet says.

We’re witty and charming at three in the morning? Really?

The gentlemen of Viking Kitchen

“Students are always very friendly. And they are educated. Some people don’t want to know anything about us, or anything, really.”

Educated we may be, but we can still be cheeky. “Cheeky, cheeky,” Fatih says as he takes several pizzas out of Yummy Chicken’s oven.

“Students are always looking for the cheap way,” Mehmet says. “Give it for free, give it for free! Any discount? Any discount?” Mehmet shrugs. “But we understand, and we like the students, because if there’s no students, there’s no business. They’re drunk, I can understand.”

Fatih finishes removing the pizzas and laughs: “One student came in and bought a can of Sprite and asked for student discount. They’re 70p! I told him no. He was just drunk and cheeky.”

At Efes, Mete agrees. “Students are fun people. We know people’s names, we know the jokers, we know who likes to have a laugh. People always want a t-shirt, they’re always begging, I’ll pay for it, I’ll pay for it! And we’re like, sure, it’s just a t-shirt.”

Unfortunately, some students arrive at Efes in no fit state for clothes shopping. “Some students order their food and then they forget,” Mete says. “Sometimes they just walk off. Sometimes they come in and order a burger. Then we will have a pizza cooked for someone else, and the burger guy will say, ‘yes that’s mine, thank you Mr Efe’.

Sometimes we say, ‘No, you ordered a burger, remember?’ Other times they get the pizza and the person who ordered the pizza gets very confused when we give him a burger. We try our best, but we can get very busy and students can be very drunk.”

Unfortunately, not everyone who visits York’s takeaways are so understanding of students or takeaway staff. Mehmet explains that locals often gripe about the student nights at Gallery. “If people come from Gallery, and we say, ‘Where you been guys?’, sometimes they say, ‘Gallery, but it was shit, it was full of students.’”

But Mehmet and Fatih have to bear the brunt of locals’ drunken anger as well. “One time, someone was looking at the board and we said, ‘What would you like?’ and he said he was okay, then five minutes later we asked him what he wanted, and he said he was okay but he was still looking at the board. Then ten minutes later he came up to us and said, ‘Where‘s my fucking food?!’”

Mehmet sighs and says, “Sometimes the local people don’t like us. They come in and have a go about foreign people, and we are foreign people!” Yet Mehmet and Fatih are proud of where they live. “We are York people too,” they tell me. Mr Efes has also worked hard to become a British citizen, and he has no interest in ever returning to Istanbul. “I have no life in Turkey,” he says, “I’d have to start from zero.”

Students are fun people. We know people’s names, we know the jokers…people always want a t-shirt. They’re always begging ‘I’ll pay for it, I’ll pay for it’

Casual racism is a subject that Mete has no time for. “We do get some really nasty calls,” Mete admits. But he doesn’t dwell on their content, just the type of character who calls up a takeaway to racially abuse the staff.

“It’s just people who are sad and have nothing to do. If one of the other guys here answer the phone, they like to wind the caller up. If I answer it, I just say, ‘Stop being sad and do something else with your life.’”

Are calls like this common? “Maybe once or twice a week,” Mete says in matter-of-fact tone.

Yet not every takeaway has to deal with nasty calls. Kaja, manager of Chubbies on Hull Road, says his takeaway hardly ever has any prank calls. Kaja puts this down to his reputation in the local area. “People know me, families know me,” he explains.

Kaja and partner

For over 20 years, Kaja has worked on a takeaway on Hull Road (his brothers for 15 years, then six years managing Chubbies), and now he works mostly alone. “Five days a week I work here alone. My daughter works here weekends, and my girlfriend helps out sometimes, but I can manage myself.” Rather than being lonely, Kaja enjoys talking to families that come to his restaurant, watching the kids muck about, the dads worrying they’ll spend too much or get the order wrong.

But why do they choose Kaja instead of the other takeaways on Hull Road? “People know me after 20 years,” Kaja says.

In a city with over 70 takeaways, reputation is everything. Yet in recent years, small takeaways and kebab shops have become synonymous with binge culture. More specifically, violent binge culture.

In 2007, The Independent labelled “the fight outside the kebab shop” a “minor British institution”. Councils seems to agree there is a correlation between kebab shops and fights, with most councils fining “violent takeaways” up to £20,000.

Kaja claims to have never seen any violence outside his takeaway. Mete finds the stereotype totally unfair: “With takeaways, we don’t sell alcohol, its about food. Families come here with their kids. Touch wood, we’ve never had any violence in here … another part of town maybe.” Mr Efes recalls one incident when a student was mugged and beaten with a hammer less than 20 metres from his shop.

Viking Kitchen

“We could hear some trouble and came out and brought the student into the shop to make sure he was okay.” But there has never been any violence with customers inside or just outside the shop, Mete is keen to point out.

But in another part of town, the Yummy Chicken’s staff are more resigned to the idea of takeaway violence. “Sometimes we talk and sort it out,” Mehmet says, “Sometimes we have to call the police, sometimes we do some fighting!”

He gives me a cheeky wink and laughs. Any scars? “Not yet,” Fatih says. “But we know what drunk people are like,” Mehmet says.­­­­ “We have people come back the next day and say sorry because their friend told them they did something bad or they said something nasty.”

Instead of loving binge culture, Mehmet hates it. He understands his business relies on his customers having a few drinks, but for him, it doesn’t matter if they leave a club at midnight or three. “A couple of years they changed the clubs’ opening hours,” he explains.

“Now sometimes they stay open when he have to close. We try to close and people want to get in for food. And we can’t let them in and they get angry, banging on the windows, shouting abuse. It’s bad for business.”

Adam at Viking Kitchen has another reason for hating clubs’ late closing times. “The long hours can kill you some nights. You have to be friendly to people, so they want to come back, but it can be really hard if you’re very tired.”

Considering how late most takeaways stay open, it is easy to understand why Adam thinks “there is nothing fun about working in a takeaway”. After hearing this, I don’t have the heart to tell him ‘Goodrick‘, ‘Alcuim’ and ‘Vanburg’ colleges exist only on his menu board.

But at the end of the night, whilst you’re still trying to decide if you want ham and pineapple, the takeaway just wants to see you leave happy.

During the summer, when we go home, Efes sometimes has to cut its losses and shut up shop.

Yet they’ll wind up back behind the same workbench, at one in the morning, still smiling, serving the same food to students too drunk to remember what they ordered.

Photo credits: Jason Lozier

Since 2003 Europe has used a similar model,the European Union Emission Trading Scheme, yet for a majority of Americans the entire concept remains something of a mystery. Rasmussen Reports, a public opinion pollster, asked a thousand Americans what they thought ‘Cap and Trade’ was. 30% thought it was related to Wall Street regulation, 17% suggested it was connected with healthcare reform and 30% couldn’t even hazard a guess. Only 24% thought it had something to do with environmental issues.

It is a worrying indication of ignorance, especially for a country with one of the highest CO2 emissions per capita in the world. It is also very embarrassing considering the amount of money spent on the lobbying, advertising and spin-doctoring swirling around the words ‘Cap and Trade’; “I’ve never seen this much media spending on a bill that is only in the subcommittee” says John Larsen of the World Resource Institute. Unfortunately, the overwhelming message being conveyed is sponsored by lobbyists arguing that the expensive transition to greener practices would cost the consumer dearly: “Turn on a radio in the blighted town in America’s rust belt, and a new advertisement paid for by a lobbying group claims that ordinary families could be worse off by thousands of dollars if Congress passes the draft global warming law” reports the Guardian. “Emissions Cap-and-Trade Aids the Corrupt, Hurts the Little Guy” argues US News. Clearly the crucial weapon in what Mr Larsen calls the “war of perception” is the wallet; the consumer does not want to pay for changes that will not directly improve the product they receive. As Warren Buffet, the multi-billionaire businessman, told CNBC: “Anything you put in that effectively taxes carbon emissions, somebody is going to bear the brunt of it. In the case of a regulated utility company, the utility customers are going to pay for it”.

So they may not understand it, but Mr and Mrs Average Joe are the ones who’ll be paying for ‘Cap and Trade’. It’s difficult to predict exactly how much will be taken from US pay cheques: $680 to $1,500 per year according to The Wall Street Journal; $3,100 per year according to some Republicans. You can hear cursings of Obama reverberating across the internet; “First you give American families a $400 to $1000 tax break, then you make companies like Shell (profits of $26 billion), Chevron ($23 billion) and ExxonMobil ($45 billion) take it!” The consumer inevitably bares the brunt of the millions and millions spent lobbying against the ‘Cap and Trade’ system.

The International Energy Agency has stressed that “the need to address climate change will require a massive switch to high-efficiency, low-carbon, energy technologies”. Scientists at the University of Bristol have proven that human pollution is turning the sea dangerously acidic, and the Kremlin recently predicted the growing struggle for the world’s energy resources could lead to military conflict in the Arctic. A recent report from University CollegeLondon and The Lancet described global warming as “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”. Yet these facts are not at the forefront of the ‘Cap and Trade’ debate; in what John Larsen calls this “war of perception”, hysteria surrounds the financial cost of action rather than the environmental cost of inaction and there is often still a slight ‘left-wing-hippie’ tag attached to those raising green issues. As Charlie Munger, the CEO billionaire, has said about rising sea and pollution levels, “I don’t think it’s an utter calamity for mankind…you’d have to be a pot-smoking journalism student to think that”.

Eye witness Ahmed Iz-Aldeen, 56, said the person who threw the grenade was not a boy, but a man in his twenties. Reuters reported Iraqi police statements that the boy, Omar Musa Salih, had not been involved in the grenade throwing. “A 12-year-old child was killed by U.S. soldiers’ random fire” was the line Iraqi news agency Aswat al-Iraq decided to publish; “The incident occurred in Ras al-Jadah area, western Mosul, when the U.S. military opened random fire at pedestrians”, a security source told the news agency.

Jumping on the US-miltary-bashing bandwagon is easy to do, but they are a highly trained organisation; surely their protocols must leave little room for such errors? Just two months ago, another 12-year-old was killed, this time a little girl shot by the warning trooper aiming at a car speeding towards a police station.Col. Gary Volesky was left to express “his condolences to the girl’s family for the unfortunate accident” at another manifestation of fatal flaws in the system.

The killing of civilians is not always accidental; sometimes, it’s part of the job. Three years ago, CommonDreams.org reported that soldiers were under pressure to use extreme force in nearly all situations – regardless of danger to civilians. Darrell Anderson, a US marine and winner of a Purple Heart, recalled an incident in which a car, countaining two children,a man and his wife, sped past the checkpoint he was manning. When Darrell defied pressure from his buddies to shoot at the car, he was reprimanded: “My superior came over and said, ‘What are you doing’, I said, ‘Look, there’s children in the back, it’s a family, I did the right thing, it’s wrong to fire in this situation’. My superior told me: ‘No, you did the wrong thing, You will fire next time, or you will be punished, those are our orders’”. Darrell continues; “At traffic stops we kill innocent people all the time. If you are fired on from the street, you are supposed to fire on everybody that is there. If I am in a market, I shoot people who are buying groceries”.

Such a testimony of civilian killing is just one of many and Captain Todd Brown, Company Commander of the 4th Infantry Division, says, “You have to understand the Arab mind. The only thing they understand is force – force, pride, and saving face”. Emphasis on force. As George W. Bush was fond of saying – we’re dealing with “evil folks”, and military officials are sure evil comes in child sizes: “Coalition forces fired on two of three individuals positively identified as involved in the attack, killing one,who they later discovered was a 12-year-old boy,” stated the email regarding Salih’s death. The boy was found carrying less than $9 dollars worth of Iraqi currency, which McClatchy argues proves he was part of a new trend for insurgents paying children to carry out attacks. The United Nations has repeatedly called attention to the trend of using child insurgents in the Iraq war. Humanitarian news agency IRIN talked to one child insurgent instructor, who said “very small children unable to carry the weight of a weapon are instead taught how to use hand grenades and how to distract US soldiers before attacks”.

The US has promised to conduct an investigation into Salih’s death, but whether some sort of consensus will emerge from conflicting accounts remains to be seen. Until then the Salih, and children like him, falls into the incompatible categories of child and insurgent.

Unfortunately not. “There are growing fears that Parliament Square, which is on the race route, could be once again blocked by protesters keen to keep the spotlight on the Sri Lankan government campaign against the Tamil Tigers separatist group which has caused the deaths of thousands of civilians”, Aislinn reported. Where these fears were growing from was not made entirely clear. In fact, it wasn’t made clear at all, as this was the only mentioning of these “growing fears”. There certainly were none amongst marathon organisers, with a spokesperson saying “the London Marathon team are in permanent contact with the Metropolitan Police but there are no official plans to re-route the race at present”. Even Boris Johnson said “the route will be the same length as normal. We will not be cutting the marathon and it will be the same route”. But a detour would a be a major, grade-A event in the history of the London Marathon, right? “There have been various disruptions to the course in recent years, including last year when there was a gas leak and we diverted the route at the last-minute”, Aislinn’s marathon organiser source said. All in all, a news story that amounted to a load of hot air.

Now, can anyone tell me the address of Telegraph pundit James Kirkup? James is the winner of The Laziest Comment Feature award, which he should have won a month ago but I couldn’t be arsed to sort out the paper work. Like Aislinn’s work, James piece represents a worrying Telegraph trend of the headline seeming to contradict the main copy. “In praise of the British Tamils’ Westminster protest” was the headlines; “Now, you can say a lot of bad things about (the early April Tamil protests outside Parliament). The police say it’s illegal, because it wasn’t authorised in advance. London travellers, me included, could complain about the traffic disruption caused on the first day when the Tamils blocked Westminster Bridge. And the few lonely souls here at the Commons during the recess might gripe about the noise”, was a significant part of James’s copy. But despite these numerous reasons to moan, the Tamil protesters had James’s “admiration simply for sticking it out”; “they’re an affable enough bunch: men, women and children, few if any of whom seem interested in confronting the police or doing anything violent”. Such praise even though James isn’t “quite sure what they want or what they think they’re going to achieve”. Of course, he couldn’t go down and ask the protesters what they want because this would be, you know – journalism.

Had James bothered to do some actual reporting, he might have found out that six “affable” protesters had been arrested the day before his comment piece went live on the Telegraph site. Or that many of the protester’s were waving red Tamil Tiger flags – worrying since the Tiger’s are an internationally recognised terrorist group; this is the same Tamil Tigers who are notorious for using child soldiers – the UN recording over 6,000 cases of child recruitment since 2003. This is the same Tamil Tigers which have launched countless suicide bombings against civilian targets.

All a bit too complicated unless framed in the context of an annual charity run it seems.

In the days leading up to the protest, some editors pushed “pointless protest” goading through letter pages and opinion columns. Mostly, it was name calling that even an eight year old would call childish. Expected and seen at the protest were “soap dodgers”, a “rent-a-mob” (surely the most redundant name for an anti-capitalist protest), “thugs”, “do-gooders” (which begs the question since when was doing good an insult?), “idiots”, a “bunch of thickos“, “wasters”, a “need-a-job-brigade” (because anyone not at work on a Wednesday must be unemployed) “dreadlocked trust fund kids” (again, is having dreadlocks an insult?) “wannabes” (they wannabe… what?), “a rabble of lost ex-public school kids and university drop-outs”, “alcoholics, drug addicts and derelicts”. A big thank you to readers and journalists of the London Paper, The Times, The Mail, The Sun, The Telegraph and my student newspaper for all those constructive labels.

After the protests, the activists’ serious PR problem increased .“We’re not all like them, Mr President”, the Sun declared with its front page pictures of smiling Obama and a male rioter kicking an RBS window. “We’re not all like him” would have been a more accurate headline. “To sum up their contradictory message, one ‘anti-capitalist’ campaigner was SELLING whistles for a pound a go” – a sentence from The Sun which sums up the ‘pointless protest’ bandwagon. Its Us, versus Them, that all-inclusive pronoun that turns roughly four thousand individuals into something with a hive-mind. We weren’t even capable of walking properly – “packs of protesters lurch through the city”, was another line from The Sun. Even the activist friendly paper The Guardian was unhappy with the protest, which made “it easy” to be cynical, easy to have all protesters “marked stupid hippies”. A stupid hippy being… a rather vague label.

What of the police? Do we believe The Guardian’s “Riot police clash with protesters” or The Daily Mail’s “mobs turn on the police”? “Police repression” (The Guardian) or “patient policemen” (The Sun)? The “kettle”, or “cordon”, or “coral”, has become a point of contention. Four thousand people were kept fixed in a cramped open area on a hot day. Despite a multimillion pound security operation, no ambulances were on hand within the cordon and there was no way of getting anything to eat or drink. There was room to move about and to sit down, but the police declared the area sealed by an “absolute cordon”. No press, no bystanders and no activists allowed in or out.

But the real money shots, the real juice of the story, was to be had with the day’s violence. Despite what seemed like a ratio of four journalists for every one activists, the media has become reliant on about six photos to illustrate the “violence”. All of the four broken windows of the Royal Bank of Scotland have now become famous, as has one unlucky red headed man who took a baton to the noggin. The day’s worst casualty was the protester who died from a heart attack. According to The Sun, “at least one police officer was left covered in blood, while another was coated in red powder” – the horror, the horror! The Daily Mail was keen to blame “the anarchist mob… at [the] heart of the violence”. For the Guardian, two journalists “hold the police responsible for the violence”. The Economist couldn’t understand the fuss; “from (media) headlines and descriptions, you would think full-scale riots had broken out”. Confused yet? I am, and I was there.

For the 3,900 odd people not taking part in the thin line of aggression between the police and anarchists, the day was mostly enjoyable. There was music and a carnival atmosphere with a serious message of dissatisfaction with the banking system. Thousands of people had chosen to express their anger the old fashioned way, not through Facebook or blogging but by actually expressing it in person! How quaint! Multicoloured slogans, from “Drop Books Not Bombs” to “Feed The Poor”, added some colour to the grey face of the City. I even saw children blowing bubbles. Bubbles? Not the same selling power as blood, unfortunately.

No, said scientists in Copenhagen last week. The world is far from saved. There was unanimous agreement that, if things carry on as they are, by 2100 the world’s oceans will rise by roughly one metre. On their own island of academia, the scientists are calling out: “it’s a major change and it actually calls for action”, said Professor Konrad Steffen of the University of Colorado; “we are going to be living in a very different world”, said Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Hadley Centre; “its now clear that there are going to be massive flooding disasters around the globe”, Dr David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey. “The huge response from scientists comes from a sense of urgency, but also a sense of frustration”, said Katherine Richardson, head of the Danish governments commission on climate change. The frustration comes from being marooned on an island – the realm of reason – out of earshot of our leaders’ resort.

Those on more precarious isles are more prone to listen. The sea’s rise of a metre, small it may seem, will potentially leave 600 million people underwater. Burma, Bangladesh and Egypt should all be listening intently. Bangladesh knows what a bit of water can do – 1995 a flood left 500,000 homeless. A metre of sea water will submerge 17% of Bangladesh. The Maldives – home to 385,000 people – would become a series of reefs. “If the world can’t save the Maldives today”, Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed wrote in The Observer, “it might be too late to save London, New York or Hong Kong tomorrow”. For this reason, Nasheed refuses to play “a reckless game of chicken with Mother Nature”, to “deal with the carbon devil”; Nasheed has hopes to turn the entire of the Maldives carbon neutral within a decade. Electric cars, 155 large wind turbines, half a square kilometre of rooftop solar panels, and biomass planting burning coconut husks is the plan. For a country that has £$316 million in debt and significant portions of population living on little more than a dollar a day, a green revolution will be a costly enterprise. “I admit installing solar panels and wind turbines doesn’t come cheap”, Nasheed wrote, “but when I read those science reports from Copenhagen, I know there is only one choice”.

Apparently, Brown and co can’t hear that choice on their island. Already Brown has pushed Obama over and is telling Mugabe to clear off – our man has a plan. He’s drawing a blueprint in the sand – a means to get off the sinking island. What is it? Pere guesses it’s an airport and Abbas says it’s a stupid guess. Obama confidently – but humbly – offers that is not an airport but a third runway, and brand new coal power station to power it. Brown’s now too busy holding back the tide to nod.

Unfortunately for those who have experienced it, the “flying carpet” is not a premium amusement ride at Syria’s number one theme park. It involves tying a detainee to a rectangular wooden plank and stepping on the detainee’s legs, hands and stomach. To get the proper “flying” sensation you need to be the one doing the standing and not the one being “flown”. If you get air sick, you can try the dulab, the “tire”. A common form of torture, the tire involves placing a car tire around a detainees legs, ensuring the bottom of the detainee’s feet are exposed. This allows for something old fashioned falqa – beatings on the soles of the feet.

This Al-Assad approved treatment was described in a recent Human Rights Watch report which called for the dissolution of the Syrian State Security Court. The Court is responsible for such acts of torture as the tire and the flying carpet, along with less ingenious forms, like beatings and electrocutions. Thanks to a forty year old state of emergency, the Court is afforded extraordinary powers; it can also prosecute should you insult the president. The HRW report refers to over eight defendants who were imprisoned for insulting the Syrian president. Sixty seven year old Muhamad Walid al-Hussenini made the mistake of insulting al-Assad whilst sitting at a café in Damascus. State Security Forces overheard. Al-Husenini is now serving a three year prison sentence. It seems al-Assad is a thin-skinned soul.

Putting your criticisms of al-Assad into print spares you little. Over a 100 websites that discuss political, social and economic issues are currently blocked in Syria. Google and Facebook have been censored in the past. Ahmed Khalif, a Damascus-based lawyer, recently asked: “What kind of free media institutions do we have if they can be blocked with one stroke of a pen without clear reasons?”. The answer seems grim. The Security Court does not discriminate against either bedroom bloggers or professional journalists; both are equally prone to human right violations. Twenty-three year-old blogger Tarek Biasi is currently serving a three-year sentence because he “insulted security services” online; sixty one year old Habib Saleh is currently imprisoned for writing articles that “weakened national feeling”. Reporters Without Borders has labelled Syria as one of the most repressive attitude towards online journalists. Of course, censorship means the issue of repression is shoved in a tire or flies away on a magic carpet, allowing al-Assad to get away with such a remarks as “we do not have such things as political prisoners”.

To his credit, al-Assad admits “we do not say we are perfect”. He is a humble kind of guy really. Just a bit misunderstood – John Kerry likes him, why can‘t everyone else? He likes Dolly Parton and Will Smith, remember? He just wants you to like him – even if it takes a little bit of tough love.

So with the MILF fighting for it’s ARM and the government preferring constitutionally sound violence to unconstitutional peace, over 500,000 are left to deal with shellshock and swindlers. During the height of MILF/Government fighting ,The Children’s Rehabilitation Centre reported that an increasing number of women and children were suffering from “psychological trauma” . Those who remain in the area are living in a tropical paradise where, in the words of one member of the Asian Human Rights Commission; “deaths are normal occurrences and have become a way of life”. For the farmers of the island “being awakened by gunshots and loud explosions in the middle of the night is comparable to an alarm activated in a clock”.

Those who have left the area face a different kind of threat. Conditions in the Mindanao’s evacuation centre are cramped and often ill-policed, with some families finding themselves drifting from centre to centre. Islanders who move further away are at risk of being tricked into lowly paid work in situations where migrant labour laws occupy a “grey area”. Unfortunately for the those trapped in the “grey area”, Mindanao faces more than just the MILF to restore peace. The militant communist group the New People’s Army and the militant Islamic group Abu Sayyaf are carving out their own insurgencies. It’s little wonder the director of a Philippine tank worries the island “might end up becoming the Darfur of South East Asia”.

Ironically, last week representatives from Sudan visited the area to facilitate talks between the Philippine government and MILF. Diplomats and peace advisers who took part in the Northern Island peace process have also visited the Philippines to discuss negotiations with the countries warring insurgencies. Is MILF love far off? The people of Mindanao can only hope.

So what’s a world leader to do? Last week, The World Health Organisation (WHO) suggested that an annual, compulsory mass-testing scheme should be set up in the hardest hit areas, like the sub-Sahara. The WHO scientists who raised the proposition also suggested compulsory and immediate antiretroviral treatment for all people found to have HIV. They claim in Sub-Saharan Africa this scheme would mean “the proportion of people with HIV would run to under 1% in less than 50 years”. The Indonesian government is set to go a step further. Next month, an Indonesian parliament will vote on a scheme that proposes to tag, using microchips, “sexually aggressive” people with HIV. “The health situation is extraordinary, so we have to take extraordinary action”, one MP claimed.

The health situation regarding HIV is indeed extraordinary. Across the world over 30 million suffer from AIDS, the disease caused by HIV. Yet even more extraordinary is the stigma and ignorance that surrounds these 30 million people, a global under-class vulnerable to fear and prejudice. In 2005, a UN report found that in India nearly 20% of surveyed pregnant women suffering from HIV were effectively bullied into having an abortion. In Somalia, you risk your own life just by diagnosing HIV; ”If we tell someone that they are HIV positive, they might take revenge,” Josef Prior Tio, general coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, told The Boston Globe last year. Revenge is common, it is reported.

Even government intervention can lead to stigma, rather than eliminate it. The same UN report states “The legal framework of the English-speaking Caribbean actually perpetuates stigma and discrimination against some high risk groups”. In Vietnam, “human skulls, bleeding syringes, coffins…and sickly faces” is how HIV is portrayed by the government and the media. 58 countries worldwide have laws that criminalize HIV or use existing laws to prosecute people for transmitting the virus. Another 33 countries are considering similar legislation. In Benin, simply exposing others to HIV is a crime, even if transmission doesn’t occur.

There is no way of predicting how mandatory tests and treatment will diminish stigma. Even in Brazil, where antiretroviral therapy is universally available, many HIV-positive children and youths still face significant stigma. How would mandatory testing and treatment be enforced in some of the world’s poorest countries? How can the WHO temper fear and stigma when it resorts to methods that are “extremely radical”, according to Imperial College London? As for microchipping, “it will increase stigma and promote a feeling of complacency”, according to the associate director of The International HIV/Aids Alliance. The WHO could be seen as stern but fair nurse to AIDS sufferers, tying them to apron strings for their own good; it could also be seen as a mad doctor with a bloody syringe in one hand and a pair of shackles in the other. Totalitarianism or benign control, either way human rights are to be buried in a coffin branded with H – I – V.

Grown out of frustration at insipid advertising and the cost of living advertised lifestyles, Buy Nothing Day was started in 1992 by artist Ted Dave. Fight Club put the frustration into words; “You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis”. With the popularity of Naomi Klien’s anti-consumerist polemic “No Logo”, Kalle Lasn’s Adbusters magazine and the “green” agenda, the idea began to spread from Canada to over 65 countries around the world. The simple idea of not buying anything grew as an idea as well. Adbusters’ 1996 press release declared it “isn’t just about changing your habits for one day” but “about starting a lasting lifestyle commitment to consuming less and producing less waste”. Adbusters even risks some hyperbole; “ There’s only one way to avoid the collapse of this human experiment of ours on Planet Earth: we have to consume less”. For journalist Neil Boorman, who wrote a book detailing his attempt to live an unbranded life and who has made a spoof advert for the day featuring yours truly, the day is a time of reflection; “Buy Nothing Day gives us all the opportunity to take a break from consumerism. Not spending any money for 24 hours, you start to realise just how reliant we have become on the shops, how entrenched consumerism has become in our culture. But it doesn’t have to be an ordeal – it can be a release. You’re not stopping shopping – you’re starting living”.

Although you don’t have to do anything for Buy Nothing Day, there is plenty to get involved with. A tradition of mass demonstrations has been established: in 1999, thousands of activists took over Times Square for a dance party; several years ago adbusting group Space Hi-Jackers walked around department stores in London wearing t-shirts emblazoned with “Everything Is Half Price”; this year, Space Hi-Jackers is co-ordinating a “swap shop” event outside Top Shop. Adbusters recommends a mass credit-card cut up in public or a “Whirl Mart” – a long, inexplicable conga line of shopping trolleys. There is even a free Buy Nothing Day album, a compilation of songs submitted to Ted Dave.

Some people are happy to just preach the message in a more direct fashion. Heralding the forthcoming “shopocalypse” , Revered Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping regularly take to the streets to ask “What would Jesus buy?”. This year they have suggested a week of events ranging from petition signing to fair-trade recipes to keep people busy. Neil Boorman’s spoof-advert for the day is a public service video for the “good consumer. It shows two typical people being instructed how to be “good consumers“, spending instead of saving, buying instead of sharing, replacing instead of repairing.

This idea of “citizens” being seen more as “consumers” extends beyond one day’s worth of reflection. This worrying prospect has led to Paul Kingsnorth and magazine editor Dan Kieran to declare us “Consumers of England” instead of “Citizens of England”. “When we’re not working we should be shopping. It’s our patriotic duty…” Kieran reminds us. “Politicians only ever refer to us as consumers nowadays, as if this is our primary role in life“, Neil says. It has given rise to, as Kieran calls it, “Asda towns“; “where is nothing else to do except spend money and get bored”. For Kingsnorth, the ubiquitous clustering of Starbucks and the Big Box mentality of Tesco’s and Asda has turned us into “citizens of nowhere”. The recent opening of the Sheppard’s Bush Westfield Shopping Centre and Liverpool’s Liverpool One Project – both multi billion pound, 40 plus acres of mall created to “revitalise” the area – helps to reinforce the point.

It is not just the stereotypical radical activist that is concerned about our shopping culture. Amanda Ford, author of Retail Therapy: Life Lessons Learned While Shopping, notes “when we spend money on things that we do not need, or for that matter, really even want, we are contributing to a system that negatively impacts our physical environment, our political and social landscapes, and – most importantly, I would argue – our spiritual development”. As Andrew Simms, policy director of think-tank The New Economics Foundation, puts it, “financially and ecologically, we are overextended. We have taken for granted, and abused, our underlying operating systems – the biosphere and our social fabric – by privileging finance and over-consumption”. A recent front page of The Independent showed how our abuse of the social fabric by a reliance on consumption has lead to the “The Domino Effect”; we are introduced to “Richard Green , 40, a newsagent in Solihull. Hit by falling sales, he decided not to repair his windows.

Thousands of other people did likewise. So Chemix, a chemical company in Stockport that supplies the building trade, went out of business”. Our abuse of the biosphere is much simpler picture to paint; “1,600 million apples, 1,030 million tomatoes, 2,570 million bread slices and 484 million unopened yoghurt tubs are discarded annually by households in the UK” a Nouse feature declared last issue. Aside from our biodegradable food waste, there is our unfortunately titled WEEE – Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment. The Eden Project represents the average person’s lifetime WEEE with a 7 foot, 3.3 tonne ‘WEEE Man, which contains 4 keyboards, 7 PC screens, 8 CPU’s and 23 keyboard mice – helping to represent 2 million working Pcs dumped into UK landfills every year. Despite the rise of “green” shopping to combat our WEEE, hardcore anti-consumerists like Neil are sceptical of .the green agenda. “The best kind of green shopping is not shopping at all. Of course, we’ll always need to consume things to fulfil our basic needs, but mobile phone upgrades and cheap throwaway clothes are not essential,” Neil says.

“Not essential” – this is the problem. Our economy is built on the consumption of non-essential knick knacks. Consumption for consumptions sake. But our shopping habits have far reaching implications – the outdated PSP corroding in some landfill, the box of Kitkats, never sold, representing a newsagent’s “falling sales”. The irony is that Buy Nothing Day seems like an unimportant essential choice in a world of important non-essential choices. So why not try it out this year? All you have to buy is the idea.

There are no symptoms and the consequences of it’s invisible presence aren’t that detrimental to my health; even the nurse who treated me said it was unlikely for me to go infertile. Nevertheless, it does take two to tango. I would be a pretty heartless bastard not to care about my girlfriend – who stands a much, much higher chance of becoming infertile due to our newfound bond.

So why am I so blasé? Having an STI implies a wanton Russell-Brand-On-Viagra-And-Speed attitude to sex, doesn’t it? I’m not the sort of boy you’d introduce to your grandmother over tea and HobNobs, surely? In my defence, my bed post is not covered in notches. I have only ever slept with one girl, who is my long term girlfriend. I know before our relationship began she had slept with other guys. Not too many mind. Nevertheless, we haven’t been as safe as we could have been. We hadn’t even thought about STIs before Nouse asked me to get tested. It was too embarrassing. Even on the day of my test, we could only joke about how funny it would be if the results were positive. It seems the joke was on us.

Mention STIs to class room of students and most will giggle, some will become embarrassed and a few will ask if it’s a CSI spin off. We find STIs embarrassing so we don’t talk about them; we don’t talk about STIs so we find them embarrassing. Our thinking is leading us into an absurd vicious cycle. There’s no problem putting ‘Zack and Miri Make A Porno’ on a bus, but to say your going to a GUM clinic causes embarrassment? The more open we are about the being tested, the more controllable the problem becomes. Talking about it has convinced everyone on my floor to get tested. Statistically one other person on my floor has an STI. If there is something, it can be dealt with. If there is nothing there, at least the person will know. The test is literally as easy as peeing in a pot (if you go for the swab it’s barely a pin brick’s worth of pain) and most STIs are easily treatable. STIs aren’t anything to be proud of, but they are nothing to be ashamed of in themselves.

Discussion about STIs needs to adopt a strange tone: serious enough to have urgency, but not so serious to be alarmist; jovial enough to ease embarrassment but not so jovial we become flippant. Why should talking about Chlamydia be the worst part of the disease?

The Mayfair squat was started in October after its current residents had patiently watched the building for six months. When I arrive to ‘squat’ for the night at 18 Grosvenor Street, a £6.25 million grade ii listed townhouse, I am unsure what to expect. Even more intriguing than its location, the townhouse’s new anarchistic flag has been raised by an art collective of students and ‘young people’. The youth of the new energy that has swept through the building betrays itself in places; Beyonce lyrics in the kitchen instruct residents to put “everything you own to the left, to the left” of the sink. As I arrive, someone bashes out a rendition of Madness’s It Must Be Love on one of three broken pianos that stand in the entrance hall.

Called the Da! Collective, The Guardian labelled the new residents a “a raggle taggle group of teenagers”. Drinking tea out of a sugar bowl and sitting on a DIY chair, Stephanie Smith, one of the original members of the collective, expresses concern over the title. “It’s true most of us our under 25”, she says, “but when the Guardian came there was only two teenagers here, and they don’t live here. The average age is 21. Most of us art students or ex-art students. We have one guy studying for an MA in Philosophy. We have a lot of older people come and use the space – we have a established artist using some of the space upstairs”. Tom, another original member, agrees; “Some people see this as alternative to getting any old dead end job”.

The building plays various roles; for four people it is an alternative home, to some it is an alternative art studio, to most it is an unconventional place to hang out. “There are only a couple of us who really have nowhere to go”, Tom tells me, “other people are renting elsewhere, but they find this environment much more exciting to work in and hang out in. Some people work full time and enjoy coming here, some people are full time students and like coming here as communal place to work. That’s been really encouraging. Everyone sees this as only temporary. So were just trying to enjoy it whilst it lasts and to make the most of our time here.”

How to ‘make the most of’ the time is slightly ambiguous. “It’s all about using unused urban space and the environment to live and work in,” Tom says, “It’s more of an experiment in different ways of living. A lot of it is geared around anti-consumerism and radical politics but its mostly about art.”

The six storey building, consisting of several bathrooms, conference rooms, ornate chandeliers and a grand central staircase, is full of half finished art products. To get into the main dining hall, I have to duck under a half built Trojan horse that forms the door way between two rooms. It’s head disappears at the ceiling and reappears the next floor up. “Its kind of symbolic” Steph explains, “its supposed to represent our presence in the house”. The plan is to have a megaphone attached to the mouth – so residents can receive house news straight from the horses mouth. Upstairs, a fire place has a giant paper Mache whale’s tale protruding from it’s hearth. The balcony may not be adorned with a golden eagle, but it does have a collection of ceramic parrots with tinsel feathers.

Despite the Beyonce lyrics and other tell-tale signs of immaturity, conversation in the house focuses more on art and politics than celebrities and partying. Some aspects of the house border on the pretentious; there is a discussion on whether destruction can be art and countless books on anarchism and socialism fill the bookcases. I find a copy of Nostradamus’ predictions in a toilet. In such a free form environment, composed of radical young people, I suspected Big Brother style tantrums would be rife. “As long people are respectful of other people’s use of the space there isn’t a problem”, Tom say.

The lack of hierarchy or structure does create some problems. The basement of the house remains unused and some rooms are still without electric power. How the use of power is paid for has not being properly discussed. Food preparation and cleaning up is improvised when the need arises. For dinner, I’m treated to a free vegan feast, leftovers from a restaurant were one of the residents works. Desert is a surprise; many of the people who visit the building practise freeganism (making meals from perfectly edible food that has been thrown away ) and someone has managed to find a undamaged birthday cake, still in it’s box, in a skip. It’s unbelievable, but the finders swear they found it. “Lots of people that come here try skipping or reclaimed food”, Tom explains, “there are some people that enjoy doing that, some don’t, but there has never been any trouble with food or anything like that. There has been this ethos of group building and communal help but you are as involved as you want to be. Maybe its because of the amount of people that use the space, but there has never been any argument about the washing up or tidying up.”

The house may seem hippie, but a poster on the wall tries to impose some order: “This House Operates A No Drugs Policy and No Smoking Inside”, it reads – the second command being rather more tongue in cheek than the first. “We don’t tolerate drug use, because in these sorts of circumstance it could get really out of hand”, Steph explains.

This attitude of not letting activities cross such boundaries has been – for the most part – warmly received by neighbours. The house enjoys wi-fi provided by the house’s next door neighbours and people are free to come and go as they please. The house could confidently declare itself the busiest and most inclusive building in Mayfair. “None of us actually like living in Mayfair. It sounds stupid but its not that great for us. Its stuffy, its ossified, there’s no culture here, no night life. There is no community. Half of these places are owned by people who have other residences”, Tom tells me. Walking around the area, where tour groups and exclusive bars form the closest thing to a community, you can understand what Tom means.

T he Da! House hopes to follow in the tradition of ‘social centres’ that have stimulated radical communities across London. The 491 Gallery in Leytonstone, east London, managed to secure a seven year lease for their gallery after making significant improvements to the abandoned Transport for London building. The RampART community space in Whitechapel offers workshops on radical politics and regularly hosts talks on current political issues. One of the most successfu community centres turned sqauts is The Spike in Peckham. The Spike was originally a ‘doss house’ – a state centre for unemployed and homeless people. Legend has it that George Orwell stayed in the building. In the 1980s it was abandoned and was frequently used for fly-tipping. The current occupants arrived 10 years ago, cleared the building out and have been developing it ever since. Now the building features a bread oven, a wood work centre, a spacious gig venue, a recording studio and a video editing suite. Murals and graffiti adorn the area. The Spike has also recently begun to produce bio-fuel to sell to local businesses.

There are countless other smaller social centres dotted around the country, and there could feasibly be one in every community. The EmptyHomes Agency, which campaigns for abandoned properties to be used for and by local communities, estimates there are 840,0000 unused sites across the country. “I’m sure you could have something like this – a free and open space where people can try to have a community – in every town. Young people might think what we are doing is wishy-washy but if actually come here they see its not what they may think it is. If there were places like this in every neighbourhood, young people would understand it’s more about having a space for themselves – like a youth club”, Tom says.

It seems that young people are not the only ones who see the work of squatted social centres as “wishy-washy”. RampART, The Spike and The Da! House all face eviction by local councils. Squatting is a civil matter that becomes illegal only if the squat develops into a source of crime or if the owner of the squatted property decides to evict the squatters. In the case of The Spike, the local council owns the land and want to make a tidy profit from it – The Spike needs to raise £450,000 if they are to keep the land. The Spike claims no one from the council has visited the site, and an independent valuation of the property placed it’s worth at £375,000 – significantly less than the £500,000 the council originally asked for. As for the Mayfair house, media coverage has caused the owners – a firm registered in the British Virgin Island – to request the council evict the squatters. Their court appearance is due the 25th November. “We can buy some time with technicalities. But really we wont have a leg to stand on”, Tom says, with little optimism in his voice.

Considering the councils seem to be enforcing public sentiment, Tom is right to be apprehensive about the Mayfair house’s prospects. The Sun’s report on the Da! Is headed “Dossers trash 6 million mansion” – even though The Da! Is compiling a list of repairs it has made to the house. Public comments on The Daily Mail’s report declare them “free loading parasites”; “kick them out and let them get a job… fed up with keeping these layabouts.. that think its there right to sponge of other people”, one user writes. “Its not like we are trying to jump the housing queue or anything”, Tom says in the Da!’s defence, “this place wasn’t being used, and we’re using it. We’re not seeing this as a housing option”.

Interestingly, no cynicism has been directed towards the company that left the listed building derelict. Nor is there any anger at the council for ignoring the building for so long. It seems the preference is to let the building remain empty, or sell it to a profit-driven developer. In an ideal world, Jack Keuro, John Steinbeck, and Jimi Hendrix would move in to the Mayfair squat. The artistic vibes may have gone to my head, but surely something is better than nothing.

Mohammed Nasheed secured the presidency of the Maldives last month, overthrowing the country’s despot ruler of 30 years with a peaceful, democratic election. Nasheed, who was educated at Liverpool University, has been arrested over ten times during his political career and walks with a limp after being tortured by the Maldives’ former ruling party. He faces far harder challenges than Obama; the Maldives is being consumed by the sea, is dependent on tourism during a period of economic downturn and has half its population living below the poverty line. As President Nasheed’s career ascends, ex-president of South Africa Thabo Mbeki’s career appears to be in free fall.

Mbeki was removed from the position of President of South Africa after he was accused of unfairly influencing a court trail brought against his political rival Jacob Zuma.

Aid’s workers rejoiced; Mbeki had denied the link between Aids and HIV, and one leading activist has accused him of causing the deaths of 300,000 through his Aids policies. Mbeki’s legacy outside of South Africa – the peace deal in Zimbabwe – is also looking to be on shaky ground. For while Nasheed is moving in, and Mbeki is moving out, Morgan Tsvangirai is still unsure about his future position of Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.

Despite being intimidated, arrested and beaten by Mugabe’s lackeys, Tsvangirai has continued to negotiate with Zimbabwe’s ruler of 28 years, Robert Gabriel Mugabe. On the 15th September Tsvangirai shook hands with Mugabe and signed a historic power sharing deal; since then Tsvangirai has threatened to pull out of the deal unless Mugabe restructures Zimbabwe’s cabinet in a fairer manner. Mbeki has visited the country to support the deal, but Tsvangirai has stuck by his convictions; “We respect Mbeki but quiet diplomacy has its limits if it leads to quiet approval of wrong things”, Tsvangirai has stated.

It seems quite democracy goes unheard when there is a loud election being broadcast.