Author: Nat Rachman

Image Credit: Wikipedia. Earlier this term, The Daily Mail published an article headlining ‘Bottom’s up! Oxford University students dance in the street as they party into the night for Freshers’ Week’. On first glance, this provided me with much amusement as I scrolled through the photographs looking to see if I anyone I knew had […]

Image Credit: (CC-BY-SA-4.0) It is often the case that Oxford students are shielded from events happening elsewhere in the world. We’re all guilty of becoming stuck in the ‘Oxford bubble’ to an extent, and in these turbulent times one is tempted to ignore Brexit as simply another thing to which we here in Oxford will […]

Image Credit: Tejvan Pettinger (CC-BY-2.0) What do newspapers think we do all day? If you got all your information about Oxford and Cambridge from mainstream UK media, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were shadowy, elite organisations in which the main things students do are attend balls in exquisite black tie, walk down streets in academic […]

‘You cannot pursue peace by a cycle of violence, the only way you can pursue peace is by a cycle of dialogue’. Wise words indeed, spoken by Jeremy Corbyn. To judge him by his own words, Corbyn’s record is one of abject failure. His management of Labour’s problem with anti-semitism has been shocking and wilfully […]

We are two undergraduate students studying at Hertford College, Oxford, both heavily involved in the Widening Participation sphere within and outside of the University. With one of us having been educated at a state comprehensive and the other coming from a BAME background, we were struck by the results of the Undergraduate Admissions Report and […]

The NHS is like a sick dog. The doctor has told you that it could be time to say goodbye, but you cannot bring yourself to accept it. You keep reminding yourself about all the wonderful memories you shared together, and you’re certain that need not come to an end. You insist that you can […]

October 2017 was a month that certainly took the world by storm. It was a month in which a popular social media tag revealed the full magnitude of a scandal that shook society to its core. In the aftermath of the New York Times’ illuminating investigation into widespread accusations against film producer Harvey Weinstein, few […]

My college, Somerville, was recently in the national press for our initial failure, and then (to use a favourite phrase!) U-turn on the matter of gender neutral toilets. So when I saw Gavin Grimm was speaking at the Union, I knew I had to go. Grimm made headlines in the US and beyond when he […]

Timid and cowering. Get in line or get out. A grave error. He has to go. When Philip Hammond voiced his hope that any changes in the UK’s relationship with the EU would be “very modest”, the reaction from the Conservative backbenches was anything but. The furious and wearisomely predictable responses to the Chancellor’s Davos […]

A short biography of George Bell, who had been Bishop of Chichester for 27 years when he died in 1958, begins by acknowledging a recurring pattern regarding the reputation of notable people. It points out that after such people die, their reputations are often reshaped and defamed by harsh criticism not voiced during their lifetimes […]

2018 has gotten off to a shaky start for the world’s tech giants. The major players in Silicon Valley have come under synchronised public scrutiny; for once, not about the quality of their products, but rather for their addictive nature. Last month, Apple’s biggest investors put pressure on the company to address increasing iPhone usage […]

I think it’s fair to say that we are no longer shocked. But we are definitely repulsed, outraged and, most of all, exhausted. How many stories of outright misogyny must we hear before something changes? This year’s annual President’s Club gala charity dinner was no different to the other thirty-three, except for the attendance of […]

Another week, another backbench revolt which threatens to topple Theresa May’s precarious minority government. At this point, it’s all a little stale; a month doesn’t go by without some kind of crisis befalling the current government, with Brexiteers in revolt over anything from the most minute policy differences to fundamental philosophical disagreements (this time sees […]

The start of 2018 was greeted by a scandal that quickly received international condemnation. Logan Paul, a former vine star turned YouTuber, had uploaded a video as part of his Japan tour exploring the infamous Aokigahara ‘suicide’ forest, in which he stumbles upon a recently deceased individual. Filming at close proximity to the corpse, he […]

UKIP has been having a hard time post-Brexit. Of course, there’s the ongoing crisis with current leader Henry Bolton and his racist girlfriend, who sent texts abusing Meghan Markle and the victims of Grenfell. Two steps back in leadership and we reach Paul Nuttall, a man who incompetently lied about having a non-existent PhD and […]

It is hard not to be sympathetic to the Democrats in their current congressional battle. They are fighting a Republican Party unwilling to grant the same rights to some American citizens as it does to others, solely because their parents entered the country illegally. Regardless of one’s views on immigration, we should all treat immigrants […]