Paul Powell-Blake takes a straightforward, direct and no-holds-barred look at how the internet has affected the gay scene…

From coming out of the closet through to cruising gay websites for local sexual encounters, there is no denying that the internet has not only revolutionised the way the world as a whole connects, but has revolutionised and perhaps re-invented the queer world. For any…

Chris Wright tackles the latest round in the BNP-DUS debacle…

Facebook groups have proliferated, emails have been sent – I feel somehow compelled to contribute to these keyboard recriminations on the subject of the second DUS cancelled invitation to the BNP.
The stirring sound of ‘Rule Britannia’ blaring from a BNP truck outside the library the other day reminded me of the phone-call I made to a local BNP activist a couple of years ago: he had…

Tom Walker on how the recent Togo assault is just another reminder of an ongoing saga…

The machine gun attack on the Togo football team bus, killing three and wounding two, is the latest miserable day to record in the heavily blemished diary of world sport. Hostility has frequently found its way into the newspapers via sporting events and the genuine possibility that Emmanuel Adebayor, a Premiership…

James Dunn looks forward to turkey, trimming and potential unemployment…

Students across the country have been heading home this week through the snow, filling the trains and buses with black bin bags full of laundry. We may look to be full of Yuletide joy, but the outlook for students this Christmas, and for 2010, is as bleak as the inevitable sprouts on Christmas Day.

With unemployment..

Michael Ashby left Durham six months ago with a First Class Honours and imparts some knowledge to this years finalists…

After years of expensive education, a car full of books and anticipation, I’m an expert on Shakespeare and that’s a hell of a lot, but the world don’t need scholars as much as I thought”. Jamie Cullum.
He may not be the world’s greatest singer but he does make a good point. Jamie Cullum released his Twentysomething in October 2003. Three years later in 2006, with the last few A-Level Hamlet quotations slipping from my mind, I made the terrifying, exciting journey to University. Even then Cullum’s lyrics rang true, so much so that they even made it on to…

Tom Walker implores you to run from The Hills…

“In order to create an apple pie from scratch,” Carl Sagan memorably remarks in his breathtaking Cosmos series, “one must first create a universe.” If time since the big bang was compressed into a year, I learned from the same programme, Homo sapiens wasn’t even conceived of until 23:54 on 31st December. On and on, a young me sat amazed, learning the incomprehensibility of a googolplex, what atoms consist of…

Stevie Martin reads about a recent technological advancement and panics slightly.

Forget the glaring headlines, it’s much more interesting to focus on the tiny paragraph-long mini stories found in the Times. Some are less illuminating than others (Man is enraged when Paper Maché Sculpture is Accidentally Destroyed by Landlord) but the other day, sandwiched between something about car theft, and knife crime (probably) there was a piece which definitely deserved a higher word count….

It’s all very well having an iPhone, but Sam Eagers wishes you’d stop going on about it…

Since 2007 a device has been released into the general population that is starting to affect its users. The Apple iPhone is the name of this new threat, and it is much more deadly than swine flu. All of you will have heard of this hellish creation, but many will not fully understand the impact..

George Twigg disagrees with the recent handling of Nick Griffin on Question Time…

Any television station that will broadcast two-and-a-half hours of Strictly Come Dancing at a time whilst leaving The Wire in the graveyard slot deserves more than its fair share of criticism. However, regarding the controversial appearance of Nick Griffin on Question Time last week, I will happily defend the Corporation. Inviting the fascist BNP onto…

Sophie Camp is annoyed not only at the crap weather, but at the way in which Durham students tend to ignore said crap weather.

This week, as the mornings turn from crisp sunny hours to a sludgy, grey mass of frigid air, you start to realise that the winter is coming in. Slowly but surely we’ll be slipping on patches of frost, wearing mittens to bed, and ditching 9am lectures for remaining snuggly in bed. Thoughts will now be turning to…

New regular columnist Sophie Camp is certainly not apathetic.

Fellow Durham students, whether you are bright-eyed fresherlings or the most cynical fourth year of them all, we are all going to be witness to an historical event in the recent years of the Durham Student Union. The sound of….

Lulu Trask , member of the Durham University Cheerleading Squad rails against the vacuous Cheerleader stereotype..

When I googled ‘cheerleading’, each result defined cheerleading as a sport. Even Wikipedia, the lecturers nightmare and the students best friend defines it as such, whilst at the same time stating that “Cheerleading has not yet been recognised as a sport in the UK”. So why is it that something requiring not only athletic talent…

Stevie Martin decides if S.A.D. is a medical term, or an excuse to blag a free Light Box

S.A.D has undoubtedly become a more frequent topic of conversation. A decade ago, those three letters could have stood for anything, whereas currently it isn’t too much to ask that people realise I am not referring to Sexual Arousal Disorder, Sagittal Abdominal Diameter and neither do I mean everyone’s favourite electronic component, the good old Silicon Avalanche Diode, but Seasonal Affective Disorder. Suddenly

Olivia Amos looks at those who live above the law..

“Be you ever so high that the law is above you.” -

This famous quote from the late judge Lord Denning, a pioneer in the legal world who consistently challenged the status quo to secure ‘justice’ for all, is a well established doctrine stating how no one is immune to the laws of the land. Yet recent cases suggest that there is one group to whom that rule does not apply. That of the ‘celebrity’. As I watched…

Olivia Amos refuses to jump on the Harman Hating Bandwagon..

While the Prime Minister used a week of his precious Summer holidays to undergo some Community work in ‘sunny’ Kirkcaldy (I really admire Sarah Brown’s patience), Deputy Leader Harriet Harman recently occupied the Number 10 hot seat. Yet, rather than act merely as caretaker and keep business ticking over, she marked her time in Downing Street with some controversial comments about the banking crisis. Harman mused that…