Posts Tagged ‘ Oxford University ’

Magdalen goes Harry Potter

+++ Apologies for the lack of blogging this month: there are busy times, there are less busy times, and I’ve had the former for the last few weeks +++ Yes, that’s right, my Oxford college‘s JCR has finished off the 2009 committee session with a set of light-hearted motions in the final General Meeting of [ READ MORE ]

John Bercow is the next Speaker

Epic Commons fail. He’s barely even a Conservative, seeing as he apparently tried to defect to Labour not so long ago… I reckon Sir George Young would have been a much better choice (and not because he went to Eton and did Philosophy, Politics & Economics at Christ Church), not least because Bercow is also [ READ MORE ]

How to deal with the BNP

It looks like the British National Party faithful have objected to Iain Dale and Donal Blaney‘s interview with BNP Deputy Leader Simon Darby yesterday – having just finished listening to it, I can’t actually understand what the BNP activists (or sympathisers, or whatever you want to call them) are so annoyed about. Even Mr Darby [ READ MORE ]

May Morning YouTube joy

  • May 1st, 2009
  • Posted in Oxford

For those unfamiliar with Oxford or its many bizarre traditions, there’s an event that takes place overnight from 30.iv to 1.v of every year called May Eve/May Morning. Essentially, it’s an excuse for students to stay up all night dressed in black tie or some ludicrous themed bop-/clubbing-outfit and party the night away, generally fully [ READ MORE ]

Branching out

I thought I might flag up a little the website I spent most of my Easter holidays working on: it’s for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, which is  part of the Oxford University Department of Politics and International Relations, and essentially acts as a base for visiting journalists to participate in its [ READ MORE ]

State or independent – it doesn’t matter…

I thought I should flag up the frankly bizarre conclusion to be drawn from a sequence of 3 Times articles I came across this morning. The first is here, where it is suggested that private schools start expanding class sizes to “keep fees down as the credit crisis bites”. In theory, I have no real [ READ MORE ]

Student relief?

Well I never. Will wonders never cease?! Universities Secretary John Denham has had the glimmers of what is almost unambiguously a good idea! Students who can’t find themselves a job after graduating because of the current problems (if not to say ‘cataclysm’) in the economy are going to get offered 3-month paid internships as a [ READ MORE ]

Is it because I is at Oxford?

I was just wondering this morning whether I could go up to uni this weekend without having to wrap up the holidays with an article about one of my political bugbears, but then this bombshell descended on me shortly after breakfast. The jist of the story is that the Education Commissars up at Whitehall have [ READ MORE ]

Day 74 (8.ix.08)

I did make it to breakfast this morning, which meant that by the time I’d finished my lunch – for which I went to a very good Mexican place called Qdoba, near the far end of Massachusetts Avenue – I was feeling absolutely stuffed. So stuffed, in fact, that I felt sure my centre of [ READ MORE ]

Day 69 (3.ix.08)

Shock announcement: I’m in a good mood!! And there are only three explanations why: the first is that I have (through my trusty brother-in-arms Dhan S) got a ticket to watch England at Wembley on 11.x. Yes, I know that’s the end of Freshers’ Week at Oxford, yes I know that I should be getting [ READ MORE ]

Day 67 (1.ix.08)

Boston. What a way to mark (just about) two months since I boarded the plane to Toronto all but clueless as to what awaited me on the other side. The city where the War of Independence kicked off with Paul Revere and the tea-party, guaranteeing it iconic status in the eyes of all later generations [ READ MORE ]

Day 65 (30.viii.08)

Last day in DC, since tomorrow I have to get up at some god-awful time to take the 7-hour train to Boston for the next stage of my trip. Orin the Israeli guy and Will F both left early this morning, so at the moment it’s just Tim (dozing in his bed at the moment), [ READ MORE ]

Will A-levels stand the test of time?

So. A-levels. Before I start ranting, it would be churlish of me to say the least if I didn’t offer my congratulations to the teachers and pupils who between them managed to produce top grades in their examinations in this year’s bout of exams – nowadays, top grades are A’s only, and the figures I’ve [ READ MORE ]

South Ossetia War 2008

Apparently doing politics and knowing some Russian qualifies me to throw in my 2 kopeks (which is quite a bit less than 2 cents), so here goes. The German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that (and I paraphrase) it is ‘unclear which side is the aggressor in this conflict’. Now he knows perfectly well that [ READ MORE ]

Day 46 (11.viii.08)

Well thank Christ that’s over – my right hand is still (and this is about four hours after the exam finished) suffering from Exam Hand Syndrome, the symptoms of which are remarkably similar to those experienced by victims of the thumbscrew in the Middle Ages. And I didn’t even stay the full three hours either, [ READ MORE ]

Day 43 (8.viii.08)

Half-way through my adventures on this side of the pond (I think). The BBC has of course blocked everything to do with the Olympics for anyone outside of the UK, so I’m reduced to following the “live action” updates on the Sport website. Turns out Beijing’s just about a day ahead of Toronto time, with [ READ MORE ]

Day 29 (25.vii.08)

Right, well I spent quite a lot of the day working out, with near-Napoleonic attention to detail, what my trip to Niagara Falls tomorrow is going to look like – I won’t outline it too closely in this entry, since I’d just be pre-empting what happens tomorrow, but my proposed plan looks something like this: [ READ MORE ]

Day 7 (3.vii.08)

Today was given the best start possible (even though I got shaken out of bed at the unholy hour of 07:30 by a text sending my mobile through the roof) by the news that I alone among the first-year PPEists at Magdalen achieved a first in my Prelims exams (which for those unfamiliar with the [ READ MORE ]

Day 3 (29.vi.08)

Yes, all right, most of today was spent moping over the football – or at least, that’s how it seems to me. As it happens, I got a fair bit of my admin for the next two months done before the match started, and after I’d rolled out of bed (I stayed up quite late [ READ MORE ]

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