Political sketch
The nation was in uproar this week when a plant was discovered growing in an East Anglian field. It is feared that the oilseed rape may contain traces of genetically modified material, and the government was coming under increasing pressure to ensure all possibility of contamination was eliminated. Agriculture minister Nick Brown said "now you've found out I suppose we'll have to look like we're doing something", adding "Tony's had a baby this week; why don't you write about that instead?"...
Columns: Smokers under fire
Not long to go until the vast majority of you who are members of the Union have the opportunity to decide whether or not smoking should be allowed in the Union bar. For as long as even the most long-toothed Oxonians can remember, the Union bar has been a murky and smoke-filled haven for the nicotine starved hacks of Oxford. Those fortune's wallet had not showered with coin could get their fix of tar and carcinogens for free by inhaling the heady atmosphere of smoke created by the countless roll-ups and cigars smoked within....
Columns: Postcard From The Edge (Of Europe)
The fateful letter arrived with my afternoon chocolate, delivered by the two Danish brothers. Things always arrive in two's in Belgium. I think it's something to do with a Belgium directive to make things more exciting. In case one of the things that arrived wasn't any fun, there was always a back up. These Belgians were very clever.
Columns: Getting Thrown Out Of... No.4 The Purple Turtle
Woody Allen once said that you should try everything once except for incest and folkdancing. However, wandering around the Purple Turtle the other day, I was struck by the thought that there were people out there whose parents had not only ignored this advice, but had somehow mastered the difficult trick of doing both evils at the same time. To get thrown out of here, it seemed, I would have to do something really outrageous. Before I could get thrown out, however, I had to try and get in. And this, I can assure you, is certainly not all that easy. The queuing system seems to have been specially designed for the Union by some of the leading theorists of experimental queue control at the Soviet School of Queue Management....
Columns: Unwise Words
The internet could be the tool of the single greatest social revolution in centuries. Free access to information could be the most effective social leveller yet conceived, and with the recent proliferation of free service providers, we could be on the cusp of a great and historically significant change in the way that valuable information is exchanged and cultural advantage gained from intellectual ownership. No longer will knowledge be the preserve of the educated, no longer will it be necessary for you to have an accurate understanding of libraries and indices in order to gain access to information. The intellectual emancipation of the masses could be at hand....
Columns: Dis-course
For the last couple of weeks I've been mucking around with conceptual food articles; the semiotics of food, food fashions, the domain of eating as it intersects with the domain of the symbolic. The connotations of Spam and sundried tomatoes. Food as signifier beyond the calorific signified. This place (bless it) is so fucking intellectual that everything gets rationalised like that in the end, even something which ought to have as uncomplicated and positive a set of primal pleasure and sociability-connotations as eating....