Letters to the Editors
Election reminder
Dear Sirs,
I just wanted make sure that people who are registered to vote in Carfax Ward, which covers most of the west side of the City Centre, know that they are still entitled to vote even if they have moved out of that ward.
The short message to all students is: if you get a polling card in your college pigeon hole then you are allowed to vote, even if you no longer live at the address where you were registered.
It is unfortunate that the by-election following the untimely death of Mike Woodin was called before the new electoral roll comes into force in December as this means no first years will be able to vote.
It's really important that as many people as possible vote in elections so that the winning candidate knows that (s)he is representing the views of as many people as possible.
City Council issues do affect students quite heavily, and nowhere more so than in Carfax Ward.
Tony Brett
City Councillor, Holywell Ward
H Del Ponte criticised
Your article on Carla del Ponte, the Chief Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (Features, 6th October) raises the question of why we went to war with Yugoslavia.
To begin with, the Tribunal, in violation of international law and even its own rules, has now denied Milosevic the right to present his own defence.
On 26th July 2002 Milosevic cross-examined a witness, Rade Markovic, who admitted he was bribed and coerced to give perjured testimony against Milosevic.
On 30th August 2002, Milosevic cross-examined another witness, Pnishi, about a bombing in his village in which more than 80 Albanians were killed. Pnishi recalled: "Everyone said that it wasn't NATO but it was Serb planes." Milosevic: responded: "Even NATO has admitted to that bombing."
Initial wires from the Associated Press had blamed the aerial attack on Yugoslav planes. Two days later NATO admitted its mistake, an attack on Albanian refugees who were returning to their village.
On 25th July 2003, Milosevic cross-examined a witness of the prosecution, Stanko Erstic. When asked to provide evidence he had been mistreated as a prisoner of war, Erstic admitted he could provide no records of his physical injuries, although he had been examined by the International Red Cross.
Those three dates were the only ones I had a look at, but a patterrn emerges nonetheless, and I begin to wonder at the meaning of del Ponte's words: "The evidence we have presented."
Nick Angelopoulos
Postgraduate Student
Conclusions questioned
Dear Sirs,
I'd like to follow up on the points made in last week's piece on the current student funding system (News Investigation, October 6th).
Although much of it was excellent, I think it is wrong to conclude that there ought to be greater use of means-testing; everything we know about means-testing suggests that it does not deter those who should not be claiming, but instead those who need the money most.
For a start, my parent's income might make me "sufficiently middle class" for some, but would be nowhere near enough to allow me to survive without my loan.
To focus on the abuse of the loan by the very few is to ignore the far wider problems created by the current student funding situation. It allows the government to blame students for the lack of money, not their own wrong-headed policies.
John Blake
OUSU President
Leave Blair alone
Dear Sirs,
I was glad to see the Editors of The Oxford Student didn't stoop to the gutter-press levels of Cherwell last week, with its front page salacious delving into Nicholas Blair's life.
As ex-Editor of Cambridge University's Varsity, I am appalled that an editorial team could have such a lack of respect for a fresher who has done nothing more than enrol at a university.
What a pity they don't have the ability to seek out interesting and newsworthy stories, which are in abundance in Oxford.
Before I came up I was told Cherwell was the traditional and more professional of the papers in Oxford. Ha! Reading last week's paper no one could possibly be under the illusion that Cherwell is anything but a training ground for gutter-press hacks.
Laura-Jane Foley
Trinity College
The writer of Letter of the Week is Nick Angelopoulos, who wins two return tickets from Oxford to London
14th Oct 2004