Oxford's biggest student newspaper, produced by and for members of the University of Oxford, since 1991.
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: Torso of a man studying intensely Everyone who studies history will know the universal reception to telling people about your degree: “So you’re never going to get a job then?” This sudden and unwanted interest in our future employment prospects is something all humanities students seem to deal with. And not only is […]
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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: Queen Victoria holds court at Belfast City Hall with Athena Nike (goddess of truth, justice, wisdom, and victory) looking over her shoulder A few months ago, Barbados became the latest country to officially announce plans to remove Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. In doing so, it will join Trinidad and […]
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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: Separate pictures of Trump and Biden show them holding out their hands emphatically as they speak. The respective photos of each is separated by a slim white gap. Trump 2016. Brexit 2016. Johnson 2019. And now, Trump will have outperformed all estimates in the 2020 election, even if he loses (as seems likely […]
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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: screen on truck reads “Holocaust deniers harboured by Labour”. Edited over the top is Jeremy Corbyn’s outline, over which is placed a prohibition symbol, as well as Boris Johnson’s outline, over which is placed a question mark. CW: discussion of anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic tropes Finally, Labour has begun to tackle the anti-Semitism rife […]
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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: Student on New Inn Hall Street with sticky notes reading: “send beer; corona is here”, “it’s his fault” (with an arrow pointing to the window above), and “patient zero” Recent news that students may face a two-week lockdown before being allowed to return home is typical of this government. It demonstrates a failure […]
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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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