Oxford's biggest student newspaper, produced by and for members of the University of Oxford, since 1991.
Image description: The Whitehall sign, which reads: ‘Whitehall, SW1, City of Westminster’. Dominic Cummings left 10 Downing Street as he entered it — through the front door, with the nation’s cameras watching. A special advisor, he enjoyed unusual influence in a PM’s team, and a higher public profile than many senior frontbenchers. We should all be […]
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Image description: A view from the back of Jeremy Corbyn giving an address. A few weeks ago, Jeremy Corbyn was suspended from the Labour Party. Then, he was reinstated. The disappointment was crushing. And then this morning I woke up to the joyous news that he would not receive the Labour whip. That makes him […]
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Image description: The text ‘Perikatan Nasional’ in white, on a blue background, with a rip going through the middle of the picture. Political paradigms and narratives represent the different forms of worldview within any particular society. These are the underlying assumptions that permeate political discourse and guide political action, consciously or otherwise. Much of the […]
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Image description: A phone camera, cast in a red light. Cw: Sexual abuse Let’s begin with a story. Not from the last decade, but from last week. A woman in Italy was fired from her job as a school teacher when her ex-partner circulated her private sexual photos which eventually reached students’ parents, despite the […]
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Image description: The flag of the United States on the left, and the Union Flag on the right with a black and white handshake in the foreground The shadow on Boris Johnson’s congratulatory tweet to Joe Biden reflected the reality that the 2020 US presidential election has been close, and bitterly-fought to the last ballot. […]
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Image description: an old car with “Tories Out” painted on the bonnet. Whenever I see someone wearing a “Never kissed a Tory” badge/T-shirt, or carrying a bag with that slogan emblazoned on one side, I think: “meh, join the queue”. There are a lot (some might even say the vast majority) of people who wouldn’t […]
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Image description: the painting Applications for Admission to a Casual Ward, a Victorian painting by Sir Luke Fildes. Impoverished men, women and children line up outside a police station to prove their eligibility to spend a night in a workhouse. Read Matteo’s last column: https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2020/10/24/the-scarcity-of-politics/ In my last column, I argued that we rarely acknowledge […]
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Image description: An aerial view of Oxford, including the Radcliffe Camera and other college buildings. ‘Oxford’s 38 colleges and six permanent private halls are both an integral part of the collegiate University and also independent, self-governing academic communities. Diverse in age, size and scope, all contribute significantly to the core activities of the University: learning […]
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Image description: a dark hospital room. Morality has played a key role in the coronavirus crisis. Doctors were forced to choose who to save, public health officials were forced to weigh freedom against safety, whole societies were put on halt. All in the name of morality. After all, it would be criminal to stand aside […]
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Image description: flag of the United States of America against a blue sky. Jamie Slagel: a clear win for Biden It’s not a take I want to air publicly for fear of jinxing it, but my prediction is simple: Biden is going to wipe the floor with Trump. I know, it’s hardly a popular belief. […]
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Image description: Explosion cloud of a nuclear weapons test in Nevada, 1951 “Building new bombers and submarines is not restocking a shelf at Tesco” Paul Janiczek, formerly of the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, the US Department of State, speaking exclusively to The Oxford Student A new nuclear treaty on the cards […]
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Image description: the storefront of Boots. Boots, the high street pharmacy, has announced that it will launch a private test providing results within twelve minutes by November to 50 stores across the UK. This is by far the fastest test result currently available and significantly overshadows the NHS test result wait time. Twelve minutes is […]
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Image description: excerpt from map showing Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Nagorno-Karabakh, with areas of clash in September coloured red. When the World Health Organisation declared Covid-19 a pandemic on 11th March, many commentators predicted a decrease in war as challenging times changed priorities. Certain surveys have supported this. The ACLED (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data) […]
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Image description: two men wearing masks, walking along a street Read Maddy’s column from last week: https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2020/10/16/what-about-the-fish/ At the beginning of the first lockdown (do you remember that? How wonderfully naïve we all were), I was added to a Facebook group for Lockdown Sceptics. Their posts were a little wacky, often linking COVID-19 to 5G […]
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Read Matteo’s column from last week HERE Image description: Old drawing of British House of Commons engulfed by flames in the fire of 1834 In a 1993 lecture on the differences between political and economic decision making, the libertarian American economist Thomas Sowell famously quipped: “Scarcity is the first lesson of economics. The first lesson […]
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Image description: two students looking at some papers. Oxford’s yearly admissions statistics have recently been released, and on examination there are certainly things to celebrate: 68.4% of new undergraduates are from state schools. The ratio between students from the parts of the UK most likely to advance to higher education and those least likely has […]
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Image description: A grey circle on a yellow background, with the words ‘Never acceptable’ in white in the middle of the circle. The word ‘Never’ is scribbled out in red. Trigger Warning: rape, sexual assault, coercive control. Amid the headlines about Miss Rona’s reign of terror, another compelling tale of poor political decision-making took centre […]
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Image description: An aerial view of the Radcliffe Camera. October 2020 marks the centenary of female students being allowed to matriculate and graduate from the University of Oxford for the first time. The occasion calls for commemoration of all that has changed in that time, as well as reflection on what still needs to be […]
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Image Description: the British Parliament, lit, at night Athena Kam: a blow to the rule of law ‘Participation in criminal conduct is an essential and inescapable feature’, states the British Government about their Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS) Bill, introduced on Thursday 24 September. The Bill permits otherwise illegal activities by MI5 and other public […]
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