gairMonday April 22nd 2013 | freeword - Est. 1972 | Issue 1003

rhydd

Opinion ask: how private are ourprivate lives?

In this week’s Team Talk, Sport chat toC-PLANp10

Cardiff University are given £1.2 million to battle cyber-crime p18 p30

Cardiff Students’ Union refuses to open the Great Hall and release more tickets for the sold out Varsity After Party, leaving hundreds of students disappointed p4 >>

SOLDOUT

2 / Editor’s Note

GAIR RHYDD AND QUENCH MAGAZINE ARE PUBLISHED BY UNIVERSITY UNION

REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER AT THE POST

EXPRESSED ARE NOT NECESSARILY THOSE -

TEN, DESIGNED, TYPESET AND OUTPUT BY STUDENTS OF CARDIFF UNIVERSITY

gr

Proofreaders wanted!

Got a keen eye for grammar?

Or just enjoy free pizza on Thursday

nights?

Come up to the office every Thursday

for free pizza and proofing.

News 4–7Opinion 9–12

Politics 14–15Science 16–17

Societies 20Taf-Od 22–23

Puzzles 24Listings 25

Sport 28–32

gair rhydd would like to thank the following for their articles and help in making this issue:

ContributorsElouise Hobbs, Georgia Hamer,Bartholomew Archer, Sam Lloyd, Arthur Russell, Max Eshraghi, Meyron Roderick, Lauren Boyd, Ashley Bebbington, Chris McSweeney, Hugo Bristol,James Cheeseman, Rhys Jones,

Angharad Hywel, Sophie Howells,Michael O’Connell-Davidson, John Peterson, Kirtey Verma, Alex Papadovassilakis,Kirsty Hatcher,Brenna McInerney,Rhys Annett,Jacob Dirnhuber

ProofreadersJacob Dirnhuber,Emilia Frasobliwa,Anne Porter,Sum Tze Sum,Michael O’Connell-Davidson

EDITORChris Williams

CO-ORDINATORElaine Morgan

CREATIVE DIRECTORLuke Slade

SUB-EDITORTom Parry-Jones

NEWSKendal ArcherTom EdenAnna HickmanBethan Jones

OPINIONAlice BriggsNick EvansAlex Greig

COLUMNISTKatie Bennett-Davies

POLITICSThom HollickRachel Lewis

SCIENCERhiannon DaviesAlexey Underwood

SOCIETIESBeth Lyons

LISTINGSBeth Gregory

TAF-ODTomos Lewis

SPORTRoss MartinovicJames Shapland

Hello and wel-come to this week’s paper. Unfortunately, Chris has not been able to be

here this week, so I have stepped into his shoes for this issue. I therefore feel under a lot of pres-sure to make sure this paper is up to its usual high standard with minimal mistakes, although Chris can probably still be blamed for any of these, due to his absence.

Speaking of Chris, he deserves huge congratulations for being elected as the Chair of the newly formed Student Publication As-sociation last weekend.

Another special mention goes to Michael O’Connell Davidson, next year’s Quench editor, who won the award for Best Feature, for his incredible piece entitled ‘Falling Through the Net’. If you didn’t read it when it came out, then please go onto our newly re-designed student media website ( www.cardiffstudentmedia.co.uk ) and have a read. You will not be disappointed.

Unfortunately, Michael was disappointed when I left his trophy and certificate in South-ampton for the SPA’s inaugural national conference. Hopefully this paper will go to print without any such mistakes. The national conference - delightfully acro-nym ‘SPANC’ – was a superb few days. We got to know people from across the UK, from Glasgow to Portsmouth, who are also in the privileged position to be making newspapers and magazines for students.

This is the busiest time of year for most of us, with dissertations, essays and exams draining time and fun like a parasite. Fear not, the Arts and Social Sciences Li-brary is going to be open 24 hours! You can now procrastinate into the early hours in a whole new environment. No longer will you be confined to the Julian Hodge building with the ever-present smell of oriental food from the café. One of our editors described this news as a “game changer.” In his sleep deprived state, caused by dissertation woes, he said, “They have taken the game, eject-ed the game, taken another game

and replaced the game with this new game. The game has been changed.” This is great news, but thanks to him, I have just lost the game.

However, this time of year is also filled with some incredible things. Varsity is just a few days away (come on Cardiff!) and promises to be another fantas-tic day of sport, culminating at the Millennium Stadium. If you haven’t got your ticket yet, I can-not recommend it highly enough. Even if you’re not a rugby fan and don’t know how rugby works, the atmosphere of thousands of stu-dents packed into the stadium cheering for Cardiff or Swansea is a unique one and quite rightly makes Varsity the highlight of most peoples’ year.

One of the biggest events from the last week, was Cardiff stu-dents’ overwhelming decision to remain with the NUS. In contrast to Chris, I am thrilled by this de-cision. As a sabbatical officer next year, I’m scheduled to do several NUS-run training sessions that, speaking to current sabbs, will hugely help both the Union and myself. Furthermore, the repre-sentation given on both a nation-al and local level far outweighs what we can do alone. One of the key arguments of the ‘No2NUS’

campaign, was that our elected officers were a better alternative to represent Cardiff students than the NUS. As far as I’m aware, no one from their team asked any of next year’s team their thoughts on this matter. Obviously we will work as hard as we can to listen to, act for and represent students. There can be no doubt about this, but I do not feel our voice will be heard as loudly on a national level if we were to leave the NUS. So Cardiff students, thank you for voting in such high numbers, and guiding the future decision on the NUS in a way that will benefit us all.

Before I sign off until next year, there is one final massive apology I would like to issue on behalf of gair rhydd. In our last issue (1002) Taf-od, our Welsh language sec-tion, was omitted from the pa-per. I cannot apologise enough to those who wrote for it last week, and especially to Tom Lewis, the section editor. All the content that was meant to go in last week, is in this paper and, as always, it looks fantastic (and probably reads well too…).

I hope you enjoy this week’s paper, including Taf-od, and have a great week.

Tom Eden

As we move into the last term with exams, essay deadlines and dissertations, we’ll still be printing gair rhydd and need people to write articles for us! If you’d like to get involved, come to one of our meetings below or send a message to editor@gairrhydd.com.

April 22nd, 5:10pm, SU fourth floorApril 29th, 5:10pm, SU fourth floor

May 7th, 5:10pm, SU fourth floorMay 13th, 5:10pm, SU fourth floor

Want to help make the paper?

A note from the editor (elect)...

Opinion weigh up the pros and cons of goal-line technology

p11

Politics examine the changes to benefits in the UK p14

Science report on Cardiff researchers receiving a £1.2m grant to fight cybercrime p16

Athletics Club travel to Madrid for half-marathonp29

Cardiff votes to stay in the NUSp4

In this week’s issue...

3Monday April 22nd 2013 | @mediacsu

Thatcher’s funeral takes place

Thousands of people attended the funeral of former Prime Minister Margret Thatcher, which took place last week. The incumbent Prime Minister, David Cameron, described the event as ‘a fitting tribute’. Four thousand police officers were stationed on duty in anticipation of mass anti-Thatcherite demonstrations, but no arrests were made.

Man survives encounter with ‘huge bell’:

A man in China has narrowly avoided death after what has been described as a ‘huge bell’ fell on him at the Guan Zhong memorial in Eastern China. The two-tonne bronze bell came loose and fell on the man, unnamed, but he miraculously escaped de-spite being trapped for two hours.

News in brief Words by Jacob Dirnhuber

Football fan punches horse:A 43-year old man has been arrested on public disorder charges after being seen punching a police horse on Sky Sports in the after-math of the Tyne-Wear derby. Barry Rogerson, from Morpeth, has claimed to be ‘disgusted’ by his actions. The horse, named Bud, was unharmed in the attack.

Three dead in Boston terror attack: A double bombing at the Boston mara-thon has killed three and injured over 170. Two remotely detonated devices are thought to have caused the devastation. US president Barack Obama has pledged that the perpetrators will “feel the full weight of justice”. Reports suggest that two suspects have been identified but are yet to be arrested or formally charged.

DPRK threaten LSE students:Several LSE students who allowed a BBC documentary team to join them on a tour of North Korea claimed to have been threatened by the notoriously secretive government over email. The BBC has been criticised for putting students at risk after dispatching three reporters to join the 8-person tour in order to film an episode of Panorama.

4 / News

Students kick-off about Varsity After PartyHundreds of students will be left disappointed this year as the Union refuses to open the Great Hall for the Varsity After Party.

Varsity is one of the largest sporting events in the University calendar and is the last big party before the onset of exams. Welsh Varsity is one of the oldest and the second largest Varsities in the country, so months of plan-ning go into the event. After the Rugby, everyone looks forward to the Union’s After Party, but this year will be very different.

Solus boasts that it is the offi-cial After Party for the event, yet for the first time, they will not be opening the Great Hall. This means that many people have been disappointed because they will now have to go elsewhere to celebrate

Many students are not an-noyed because the Great Hall is closed, but because when tickets initially went on sale there was no indication that a reduction in capacity was likely. As there was no warning, many second and third year students felt no rush to buy tickets and have consequent-ly now missed out.

Furthermore, major sports teams such as Basketball and Athletics have not been able to gain tickets for the After Party.

This seems unreasonable; with-out these sports teams, there would be no Varsity and because they have not been able to get tickets they cannot celebrate in a way which has become tradition. This has led to a sugges-tion that more tickets should have been put aside for the AU.

Through so-cial media, it has become clear that the students are not happy. In 15 hours over 100 people joined a F a c e b o o k c a m p a i g n entitled ‘Re-lease more Varsity Lash tickets’, show-ing that there is demand for more.

However, this page was only set up on Tuesday night, a mere eight days before the actual event. The Varsity After Party Facebook page is being used not for promoting the event but as a forum for buying and selling tickets. With some people selling tickets for double their value, it

begs the question how much this event is really worth, with the Great Hall closed it seems the same as any other Wednesday at the Lash.

Solus Nightclub have released a statement as to why

they are dramati-cally reducing

the capacity for their After

Party. It sug-gests that a review e a r l i e r this year s h o w e d that if the w h o l e S t u d e n t U n i o n b u i l d -ing was

o p e n e d there would

be a net loss profit. This is due to high p r o d u c t i o n costs and op-erational is-sues, having

to hire double security to en-sure student safety on the night.

Solus also argues that when they open up the whole build-ing, many students want to be in Solus anyway so the extra space is wasted. They have assured students that the situation will be reviewed for future events, but reiterated that for this Var-sity the tickets are sold out and no more are going to be released.

The Union has apologised for any inconvenience or frustration caused and the final message is one of regret. The main prob-lems seem to have arisen from unpredictable buying patterns of the students. This year people are waiting to purchase tick-ets until closer to the event. On Tuesday 16th, over 50 students brought group tickets but all

were unable to buy After Party tickets because they had sold out.

Harry Newman, the Students’ Union President, has released this statement, stating: “I wish we had planned to open the Great Hall from the start! Tick-ets were on sale for three months and it wasn’t until just one week

before the event that demand re-ally outstripped supply. The mes-sage now is: buy early. The same goes for the Summer Ball. It will sell out!”

Elouise HobbsNews Writer

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Jack Di FrancescoBiology Student1st year

“I’m upset that the Great Hall won’t be open but I think town will be better anyway as you have more of a choice about where to go.”

Niamh KellyAncient History Student1st year

“Cardiff has one of the best Unions in the country and this is one of the biggest sporting events of the year so it would be nice if everyone could celebrate together.”

Annalise GrieveMathematics Student1st year

“As a first year I was really excited about celebrating with my friends at the Union but I’m really disappointed because I couldn’t get tickets.”

Hannah McCannPsychology Student1st year

“I’m looking forward to town as I think there will be more of an atmosphere with other Universities there and it will also be less cramped as people have more of a selection of place to go to.”

Students’ reactions to the sold out Varsity After Party

but reiterated that for this Var-sity the tickets are sold out and no more are going to be released.

any inconvenience or frustration caused and the final message is caused and the final message is one of regret. The main prob-lems seem to have arisen from unpredictable buying patterns of the students. This year people

caused and the final message is

of the students. This year people are waiting to purchase tick-ets until closer to the event. On Tuesday 16th, over 50 students brought group tickets but all

Cardiff votesCardiff students overwhelmingly voted to remain with the NUS in a referendum last week, but the turnout didn’t reach the thresh-old required to make the result binding.

1121 voted to stay, with 338 vot-ing against and 12 abstaining over the course of the three days. Be-cause the total number of vot-ers didn’t reach the 2,775 (10 per cent of the student population) required by the union for the motion to be passed it will now be discussed and decided by the Board of Trustees.

President Harry Newman, who sits on the Board of Trust-ees, said of the vote, “Although it’s not binding by our own rules, it gives a really clear steer to the trustee board when they meet to discuss the way forward.” He confirmed that the issue would be discussed at the next meeting on the 18th June.

The referendum took place because of a motion submitted to the Ministry of Change saying, ‘We strongly believe that Car-diff University students should have an opportunity to choose whether we affiliate with the Na-tional Union of Students (NUS) for the next academic year.’ This motion was passed unanimously and the issue subsequently went to a vote.

The arguments from the two sides, comprehensively detailed in last week’s gair rhydd (issue 1002), revolved around the finan-cial and representational merits of the NUS. A debate was held in the Great Hall on Tuesday eve-ning.

Jonathan Breeze and Ryan Hunter, two students represent-ing the ‘No2NUS’ campaign in fa-vour of leaving the NUS, argued that the £52,000 affiliation fee was money that could be spent elsewhere in the Union and that the elected officer team could represent students better on both

a local and national level.Samantha Reid, a current post-

graduate student, and Ollie Wan-nell, the VP Education elect rep-resented the Yes2NUS campaign. They suggested that the financial benefits of the NUS – thanks to their buying consortium NUSSL – vastly outweigh the fee for membership. A figure of £130,000 in benefits was quoted by the yes campaign, which includes £40,000 of cost price alcohol giv-en to our union for free.

Wannell elicited laughter from those in attendance for his anal-ogy of how the NUS has more to offer than just money, saying, “To say that the benefit of member-ship to the NUS is a financial one is much like a child saying that the benefit of having parents is pocket money.”

Both sides disagreed with the level and quality of representa-tion provided by the NUS. Those opposed to the NUS criticised it for its left-of-centre political leaning, with a party-political agenda. Furthermore, they sug-gested it dictated to our union, with examples such as the at-tempt to close our pole dancing society mentioned in the debate. This was refuted, and the mem-bers from the yes campaign ar-gued that without the NUS we would be a lone and quiet voice in comparison to the 95 per cent of students represented by the NUS.

There is also the issue of the training the NUS provides. This was a point raised by Wannell in his speech, saying, “As VP Edu-cation next year, I will need the training and support provided by the NUS.” This directly op-posed the point made by the no team that our elected officers were a suitable alternative to the NUS and were able to represent students to the same level as the NUS both locally and nationally.

Following the debate between the two sides, Liam Burns and Stephanie Lloyd – the NUS Presi-dent and NUS Wales President respectively - took to the stage for a question and answer ses-sion. Many of the crowd were im-pressed by their performances, with Edore Evuarhehe comment-ing that, “Liam Burns and Stepha-

nie Lloyd offered clear and con-cise arguments for why it is so important for the University to remain in the NUS. They did this while also acknowledging their past failings. To me this showed that the NUS is willing and able to improve itself and it’s support Cardiff students”

Harry Newman, speaking to the gair rhydd after the results were announced, paid tribute to all those who took part in the ref-erendum, saying, “I would like to

thank all the students who voted, campaigned and engaged with the democratic process. I would also like to say a huge thank you to Stephanie Lloyd and Liam Burns and their team for giving up their teams for giving up their time to come and campaign so positively to our students.”

On the outcome of the vote, he added, “It was the right result and turnout was higher than I had expected at 5% of the student population.”

To say that the benefit of membership to the NUS is a financial one is much like a child saying that the benefit of having parents is pocket money

“

”

of students

voted

Twitter

Although it’s not bninding by our own rules, it gives a really clear steer to the the trustee board when they meet to discuss the way forward

“

”

5Monday April 22th 2013 | @gairrhyddnews

News4–7

Tom EdenNews Editor

The Student Publication Asso-ciation (SPA) has been launched in order to support student pub-lications across the country. Our current Head of Student Media, Christopher Williams, was voted in as Chairperson of the organ-isation.

The decision was made by student journalists from over a dozen universities at a national conference held at Southampton

University, and took place be-tween 11th and 13th April.

The conference also saw Car-diff University Student Media’s very own Michael O’Connell Davidson win the award for Best Feature for his article, ‘Slipping Through the Net.’

The conference, which took place at Southampton University Students’ Union (SUSU), saw the creation of the SPA in order to offer student journalists the op-portunity to discuss the best way to support student publications.

It is hoped it will be considered the print and digital equivalent of other student media associations such as the National Student Television Association (NaSTA) and Student Radio Association (SRA).

The event, organised by David Gilani, one of SUSU’s sabbatical officers, hosted workshops on how to overcome the issues faced by independent and student pub-lications, and speeches from hu-man rights journalist Elizabeth Mistry and The National Student founder, James Thornhill.

The culmination of the of the weekend saw the first Student Publication Association awards dinner, with over 100 people in attendance.

Michael O’Connell Davidson, future Editor of Quench, current Video Games Editor and first year journalism student, won the award for Best Student Feature for his piece entitled ‘Slipping Through the Net.’ He said of the award, 'I'm incredibly humbled to receive this award. I'd like to thank the Student Publication Association and those who or-ganised this year’s conference for their recognition, as well as Quench’ s excellent features team for allowing me the oppor-tunity to write for them.

“Cardiff Student Media rep-resents a huge number of very talented students, and I look forward to seeing what we can achieve in the future.”

The weekend also saw the SPA’s first AGM, where the asso-ciation elected its first executive committee with Cardiff ’s Chris Williams elected as chair. Chris said of the conference: “There are so many passionate people from around the country who love getting involved in their publications. It's brilliant to be the chair of an association who will help to facilitate that.

“There’s still lots to do to get the SPA off the ground, so the exec will be working tirelessly to make sure that publications get the support and help they need. I can't wait to continue being in-volved in student journalism for the year ahead!”

In recognition of Gilani’s ef-forts to kick-start the association,

he was unanimously voted in as a life member at the AGM. Speak-ing of the event, Gilani said: “I'll always be immensely grateful for the dozens of students who took the time, money and effort to come down and make this con-ference what it was; not to men-tion the hundreds who submitted awards online.”

“Everybody has been so sup-portive of this idea, and it’s that support which has made me con-fident that the SPA will continue to grow and thrive, until it can truly support all student publica-tions.”

The SPA committee is expect-ed to formalise the association’s structure in the coming months.

6 / News

Success for Cardiff at Student Publication Association

Anna HickmanNews Editor

Last minute 2,000 word change for EUROP studentsWith less than a month left un-til the deadline, EUROP students have been informed that there has been a change to the word limit for their dissertation.

An email was sent out on Mon-day 15th April informing students that dissertations of either 8,000 or 10,000 length will be accepted.

The responsibility to inform students was left to Peri Roberts, Chair of the Politics Exam Board 2013. Responsibility also lay with and one of the two module conve-nors for the dissertation module, in charge of running the module in the second half of the aca-demic year, after returning from sabbatical leave. The second con-venor is Hugh Compston, who

was convenor for the term until Christmas.

The problem arose as, during the course of the year, different students had been told different information regarding the length of the dissertation from their various dissertation supervisors, of which there are roughly 15 – 20 for the year.

In the last academic year, 2011-12, and in many previous years, the dissertation module had been worth 30 credits, and the word length was 10,000. However, for this academic year, 2012-13, the revised version of the Third Year Politics Module Guide stated that the dissertation would now con-stitute a 20-credit module and, as such, the word limit would be reduced to 8,000 to reflect this credit reduction.

It is thought that there were

some problems regarding the up-dating of course literature, which started initial confusion over the word length. In response to stu-dents questions regarding the word limit, it is thought that dif-ferent supervisors gave different information.

However, on October 11th 2012, the module convenor for the first half of the year, Hugh Compston, sent out an email clearly stating that the maximum word limit was 8,000. All students were therefore informed of the word limit.

Despite this, and as a result of poor communication, some stu-dents still believe the word limit to be 10,000.

The email received on April 15th stated that: “In order to en-sure that no student is disadvan-taged by this situation the Poli-

tics Department has taken the following decision: As some stu-dents have been unambiguously told that the limit is 10,000 words no student will be penalised for going up to that mark.

“However, if a student has ed-ited their dissertation to 8,000 words, as the module description requires, the Exam Board will en-sure that they are assessed in this context.”

This seems like a fair decision, and under the circumstances is probably the best that could have been made.

However, as some Politics stu-dents have noted, it is the am-biguity surrounding the word limit that now makes satisfactory completion of the module more difficult. As, for students who had been planning for a 10,000 word limit all along, the decision

is a good one. For some students, it is un-

clear how to proceed if they had not been told that the word limit was 10,000 from the beginning of the year. They also now face the problem of whether to change the length of their essay; it could prove more advantageous to have an extra 2,000 words.

Equally, however, choosing to extend the essay would create more work and might not even pay off. Either way, 2,000 words would constitute a significant chunk of the dissertation, ac-counting for twenty or twenty five per cent.

Overall, the problem appears to be lack of communication and a problem with updating course literature. Students have been left in confusion and are worried about this last minute update.

Kendal ArcherNews Editor

7Monday March 22nd 2013 | @gairrhyddnews

News4–7

Last week, Kent’s newly ap-pointed Youth Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) was forced to resign following criticism of messages she posted on Twitter, highlighting the dangers of social networking.

Paris Brown, Britain’s first Youth Crime Commissioner, quit just days after her appointment, following the launch of a police inquiry into a string of offensive posts on her Twitter account, which were deemed to be racist and homophobic.

Similar stories have hit head-lines time and time again in re-cent years, often concerning those in the public eye. Metro-politan Police, Officer Police Ser-geant Jeremy Scott, was forced to resign following a tweet concern-ing the recent death of Margaret Thatcher, in which he stated that he hoped her death was “painful and degrading.”

Ill-advised posts may not just risk your career, but can also lead to legal action. Alongside nu-merous trials concerning online abuse, the case of Paul Cham-bers demonstrated just how easy it is for posts to be taken out of context, resulting in serious con-sequences. In 2010, Chambers

landed a criminal record, after he was found guilty of sending a menacing tweet and fined a stag-gering £1,000.

The allegation followed a tweet he made expressing his distress at the closure of Robin Hood airport in South Yorkshire, in which he stated he was going to “blow the airport sky high”, a comment he merely intended as a “silly joke”, which swiftly lead to his arrest. Chambers later ap-pealed against the conviction and eventually won his case after a two year battle.

In today’s technology orien-tated society, we document much of our lives on social media and it can be all too easy to forget how accessible this information is to the public. What is perhaps most alarming about the case concern-ing youth PCC Paris Brown is the fact the tweets, which were subject to investigation by Kent Police, were written when she was between the age of 14 and 16, a prime example of how your online history can come back to haunt you even years down the line.

Ann Barnes, the police and crime commissioner for Kent, admitted the tweets of her Chief Youth Officer had not been pre-viously vetted but was quick to defend her appointment of the role stating: “I think it would have been absolutely impossible to have found a young person who had not made a silly, foolish or even perhaps deeply offensive comment during their short life-

time.”Granted, if we were to look at

the social networking pages of students it is likely that a large number of us would be guilty of posts, which in hindsight, could be deemed inappropriate. This begs the question: do we need to be more careful with what we post online?

Adam Clymo, a student at Car-diff University, stated: “I do think it’s important to monitor what you’re publishing on the inter-net, particularly as you begin to enter the workplace. Although, in the case of Paris Brown I feel it was unfair for her to be judged on comments made so far in the past, as these aren’t necessarily true representations of her views. You see these kind of posts on-line all the time, we’re all young and stupid once but our attitudes change.”

Toby Seabright added: “Whether or not it’s a true rep-resentation of yourself, employ-ers might assume that things on your social networking still apply many years down the line, and

therefore won’t think twice about employing you.”

With an increasing number of employers running mandatory checks of Facebook pages dur-ing their recruitment processes, you may wish to reconsider con-troversial posts or incriminating

images.Student Rhys Thomas admit-

ted, like many, it was not some-thing he had previously con-sidered, adding: “I’d rather an

employer didn’t check my so-cial networking sites, I doubt it would do much to boost my fu-ture career.”

Natasha Adams opposed to the use of online sources as a way of vetting potential candidates stat-ing: “What I do outside of work does not necessarily affect my performance at work.”

Whether or not it provides a fair representation of people’s ability to work is questionably. Recent reports have shown that over half of employers are now using Facebook as a tool to judge potential candidates, often re-jecting those with drunken posts on the grounds that they are more likely to skip work due to a hangover; news which is likely to spell disaster for a great number of students upon graduation.

Could Twitter cost you your career?

News writer Georgia Hamer investigates

Ill-advised posts may not just risk your career, but can also lead to legal action

We document much of our lives on social media and it can be all too easy to forget how accessible this information is to the public

Over half of employers are now using Facebook as a tool to judge potential candidates

While you fulfil life’s true potential, we’ll make sure your property does too.

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So people will now be able to pay more for wider seats on some aeroplanes. First things first, this is not a ‘pay-as-you-weigh’

scheme, but is based on seat width. This is great news if you want to be able to spread out a little more – I’m certainly looking forward to a bit more room. Peo-ple of a larger disposition are not so enamoured by this choice, but all in all, I think it’s a good thing.

There’s a number of reasons this is the case. One: my friend once suffered an eight-hour journey sandwiched between two overweight gentlemen – his seat width heavily reduced due to the expansion of their waist-lines. This will no longer happen, which is nice to know. Everyone will be able to enjoy their jour-ney in comfort, regardless of their weight, in the size of seat they pay for.

Furthermore, we are in what I can only think to describe as an obesity epidemic. While the plane seats may not totally al-ter the state of things, I imagine it will help larger people to re-alise the fact that they are over-weight, and this revelation could well spur them on to get healthy. I have very little sympathy with the extremely overweight, for the sheer knowledge that, as hard as it may be to lose weight, it’s not a definitive state of existence. I feel that anything with the abil-ity to potentially help people to

better health should be given a chance.

Another reason this is a good thing: Here is person A. Person A weighs 20 stone and their bag 25kg. Person B weighs 10 stone and their bag 26kg. Because of this extra 1kg on their bag, person B has to pay extra money, even though their total weight is less than person B. This is something which has often confused me. Sa-moa Air has become the first air-line to charge passengers based on their weight, and I agree this is too far, but it is very annoy-ing being told that you have to pay a huge fee because your bag is a mere kilogram heavier than someone else’s, when that person is vastly heavier than yourself.

Larger people may complain that this is a tax on the fat, but this is not necessarily the case. This merely gives them the op-tion of being more comfortable. Given that people, big and small, have been complaining for years about the size of seats on aero-planes, it seems contradictory to complain about seats now getting bigger - and of course the bigger seats are going to cost more - oth-erwise people would complain that it was unfair that you could end up with a smaller seat for the same price of a more comfortable experience.

Finally, not every aeroplane is going to be like this, so if people are averse to it, they still have the option to fly in a regularly pro-portioned plane. JP

A slightly turbulent topic, the new scheme to widen some seats being introduced by air-lines has, naturally,

divided most people. The leading aircraft manufacturer, Airbus, cur-rently argues that, instead of pay-ing for any seat, you should pay a fixed price depending on the width of your seat.

It seems to me that this scheme not only encourages the kind of unfair discrimination that we should be avoiding, it also marks a huge invasion of privacy, as you would be required to put your per-sonal details online when booking as well. Some airlines also think that you should be weighed on scales when you get to the airport as well, almost as if they don’t trust that you’ve supplied the correct details. What if, by the time you’ve reached the airport, you’ve put on a few extra pounds and you sud-denly don’t qualify for the smaller seats? After all, the stress of flying, alone, is enough to make you grab that sugary donut. You would be weighed in public and be guided to a larger seat, separated from your family or friends who have booked their tickets with you. Frankly, it’s more than a bit humiliating.

Of course, the backlash over this new scheme doesn’t even stop at the suggestion of wider seats. By widening seat size for passengers with a heavier frame, other seats would need to be trimmed down and be given to slimmer passen-

gers and consequently, they would have less room. Anyone who has travelled by plane before knows how uncomfortable it is, even with a regular seat, so to be told that you have less room will definitely not fly. Surely the aim of the airline should be to deliver exceptional customer service in order to in-crease customer loyalty, therefore increasing profits and the prospect of the customer flying with the air-line again? If this were the case, ev-eryone would be a winner.

Arguably, there is too much focus on body image in society these days anyway and this sug-gestion by Airbus is yet another thing that will add to an already image-oriented society. If every-thing becomes size-oriented, then it doesn’t say much for society or its future. This idea will only suc-ceed in making curvy people and those who are trying to lose weight feel ashamed of their body. If this scheme were to follow through, Airbus would have its pound of flesh at the cost of equality.

Nonetheless, if you are an obese passenger and the airline has no place to seat you, then it is a problem and, understandably, you should pay extra. However, should this scheme really extend to peo-ple who are just over the weight boundary for a smaller seat? Some-how, I don’t think this scheme will take off in the way airline bosses expect. KV

9

For & Against

Opinion writers John Peterson and Kirtey Verma look at Airbus’ plans to make wider seats and charge more for them, and the implications this could have for the overweight population

“Given that people, big and small, have been complaining for years about the size of seats on aeroplanes, it seems contradictory to complain about seats now getting bigger

Opinion 9–12

Monday April 22nd 2013 | @gairrhyddop

For Against

Weigh more, pay more?

The Big Brother so-ciety is creeping ever closer. Or-well’s predictions of an overrid-ing authoritarian

state have become a more potent reality in the last few years and we are the ones helping it along. Every uploaded photo, every ranting status and every profani-ty-laden comment is a potentially incriminating piece of evidence to be used by the all-knowing employer.

Well, that’s what we’ve been warned, especially those in their final years entering the world of work. All too often employers are scouring social networking sites looking for indications that their prospective employee is unsuit-able for the job. But how pri-vate should our online lives be? Where should the line be drawn?

A survey last year by Harris Interactive found that 37% of employers use social media to vet potential employees while a further 11% said they intend to pre-screen in future. In ten years time there’s no reason to suggest that percentage increases expo-

nentially.

According to the report, 34% of hiring managers had come across something which caused them not to hire a candidate. This was more often than not a status ref-erencing drug or alcohol use or a provocative photo. Thinking back to my own facebook pro-file, I can’t count the number of times these have cropped up on my news feed.

There have been an increas-ing number of high profile me-dia cases of dismissals via social network evidence. Kelly Doherty, 26, skipped work only to have her boss see her Facebook pictures, who fired her shortly afterwards. Kimberely Swann, 16, was shown the door after posting that her job at Ivell Marketing & Logis-

tics was ‘boring’ on her Facebook page. Marks & Spencer staff were caught branding customers ‘idi-ots’ and ‘cheap little b******s’ on Facebook. Last November, Brit-ish Airways staff caused uproar by calling passengers ‘smelly and annoying’ and Virgin Atlan-tic sacked 13 crew for describing passengers as ‘chavs’.

But it’s not these more ex-treme examples of clearly NSFW statuses and comments that are worrying. It’s the mundane ones. The everyday complaints that can be made by the smartest stu-dents. The BBC quoted recently a seventeen year old boy who didn’t want to be identified who claimed he lost out on a job af-ter joking about a cafe chain on

Twitter. “It’s frustrating I have to be very careful now and can’t always say what I really feel,” he said. This is the real worry. When our thoughts and feelings independent from our work en-vironment undergo forced cen-sorship. Did his thoughts on an unrelated café chain really affect his employability that much? It’s frightening to think employers may think so.

Many of the employers sur-veyed purportedly used these searches to see if the applicant ‘presents him or herself profes-sionally’. But this seems like an unfair demand when the re-source used to judge the appli-cant is a site designed for your personal rather than professional life. There have also been em-ployers who professed they re-jected a candidate based on the

grammar and writing skills of his social network profile.

The absurdity of this state-ment is enough to boycott that employer’s company altogether. If they believe there’s a correla-tion between grammatical accu-racy and social network entries they are totally detached from reality. This is certainly not the place to establish how compe-tently they can deliver an office report.

The Recruitment Society and The Chartered Institute of Per-sonnel and Development (CIPD) has the final word on the matter, delivering a series of useful yet ominous warnings. Monitor what your friends post about you, change your privacy settings and don’t risk your job for the sake of controversy or provocativeness seem to be the overriding mes-sages. Quite a strict set of rules for what is supposed to be your own personal space. But we’re in the 21st century now and our per-sonal life is only as private as the settings we set for them.

10 / Opinion

How private are our private lives?The popularity of social media sites has made our online profiles accessible to everyone. Max Eshraghi discusses the implications this can have on our employability

A few months back, the NUS did something which I don’t think I can ever forgive them for. On two occa-

sions the NUS attacked a student newspaper – be it formally or one or two of their exec – and told them to retract articles and stifle their freedom of speech.

The problem with this was firstly, that the NUS was work-ing entirely outside of its remit - at no point could or should the NUS tell a Union what to do – and secondly, the NUS was try-ing to stifle a fundamental free-dom: freedom of speech.

In my role as Head of Student Media I have to deal with the idea of freedom of speech every day. It’s something which, as a British citizen, I’m actually very proud of. No newspaper or broadcaster should be subject to arbitrary rules which shut out certain views from a debate just because those views are less than savoury. The NUS think otherwise.

Yet, while it may appear that this is the only reason that the gair rhydd editor may hold a

view (and that’s important – the newspaper has not and will not take a stance on this, or any other referenda issue) there are more reasons than just that.

Last July I suffered through one day of conference and I swore I’d never go back.

Within the first few moments of Steph Lloyd’s speech I swore the word ‘comrade’ would come out. It was militant, as if the stu-dent movement had been made illegal – forced to go under-ground and needed someone to rile up the troops before the coup was made on the Senedd.

I’m a politics student and I went into this with an entirely open mind, I had no opinion of

the NUS until my first contact with them at this conference, but I left the room with a group of people whom I saw as entirely out of touch with the average student and, more worryingly, entirely out of touch with Cardiff students.

Asking one of the representa-tives of the NUS what the ben-efits of the NUS are, it became apparent that the only sensible response I’d get would be about alcohol.

In fact, when I asked “what are the main benefits of the NUS?”, I expected to hear a response about representation, changing the student movement for the better or perhaps the benefit of

being part of a larger group of Union’s to get your voice heard. In reality, the reply was simply “NUSSL”.

So, we spend £50,000 a year for NUSSL – the buying consortium which is owned by the NUS – and that’s the biggest benefit that our membership fee gives us.

Now, I don’t doubt that as a large number of Universities there is buying power. But that sort of buying power will only truly benefit the smaller Unions.

We are by no means a small union. We have buying power on our own and without the NUS we aren’t constrained in what we can buy.

So, if the only good thing about

the NUS is the buying power on products we sell, I’d rather the freedom to choose what we want to buy from wherever we want to buy it.

On top of that, is the simple fact that £50,000 is the first charge the NUS levy on a Union. Each conference we attend costs money on top of the £50,000 af-filiation fee, the NUS national conference, for example, cost the Union around £300 each.

Here’s another problem: the National Union of Students rep-resents students. That is, they represent all students, not just those who are part of the NUS. So, if the government cave to a demand of the NUS on tuition fees for example then all stu-dents will benefit: not just those students whose union’s are affili-ated to the NUS.

Of course, as I write this ar-ticle, we are just a few hours into the campaigning for the Yes and No team – the result still hangs in the balance and I just don’t know how it will go – but I severely hope that the No campaign wins.

[Ed: They lost...severely.]

The NUS referendumHead of Student Media Chris Williams looks at the arguments for and against Cardiff remaining in the NUS, and outlines why he thinks we should leave

37% of employers use social media to vet potential employees while a further 11% said they intend to pre-screen in future

We’re in the 21st century now and our personal life is only as private as the settings we set for them

Opinion9–12

11Monday April 22nd 2013 | @gairrhyddop

Top flight clubs have voted to in-troduce goal-line technology into the Premier League from August onwards. The much-debated top-ic has finally been recognised as a viable option for the footballing elite world. FIFA president Sepp Blatter recently swallowed his pride by committing to using technology at next year’s World Cup Finals, and the Premier League has followed suit.

British-based company Hawk-Eye has been chosen to provide the system, a decision that even Jonathan Creek would struggle to find fault in. Hawk-Eye appears flawless in theory, using seven cameras to judge whether or not the ball has crossed the line. The company claim that their system is “millimetre-accurate”, to help prevent both gross injustices from refereeing decisions and other sources disproving their verdicts.

Inventor Paul Hawkins be-lieves its influence will not harm the game’s free-flowing nature, saying: “It will not slow the game down – it is not going to become like rugby”, referring to rugby’s stop-start nature. His statement seems plausible, given that the system can provide the informa-tion to watch within “under a second”.

While ensuring correct deci-sions, the replies will add to the already intense drama, just like it does at Wimbledon. Consequent-ly, this could help to preserve the

view of Premier League as one of the most entertaining spectacles in world football. Goal-line tech-nology will surely aid referees, who, let’s be honest, can’t always

keep up to speed with everything in a full 90 minutes.

Football is already a global business, with a colossal amount of finances invested by clubs and

fans alike, surely they both de-serve a justified decision. The ‘wrong’ result of a decision could have a monumental impact on a club’s finances and thus should

be dressed accordingly. Given such technology has

already been introduced and ex-celled in other sports, perhaps its introduction into football is long

overdue. Goal-line technology is poised to take the game into the 21st century and perhaps just the beginning for technological in-fluence on the beautiful game.

There are reasons as to why football has been so slow in em-bracing goal-line technology. There is a clear opportunity cost involved – couldn’t the money spent on implementing and maintaining the system be spent on a more widespread cause, such as grassroots football? Some feel the money should be invest-ed into developing greater tech-nology that could help referees with more endemic problems, where there is more ambiguity, such as the offside rule, penalty decisions or diving. Another consideration is the prevalence of such goal-line controversies; how often do they really happen?

From a fan’s perspective, if it means I don’t have to helplessly endure the pain of watching in-cidents such as Frank Lampard’s ‘ghost’ goal against Germany at the 2010 World Cup – and, rather more impartial to me, the denial of a clear Ukrainian goal against my beloved side at Euro 2012 – I’m in favour of using it.

Hawk-Eye has revolutionised the way both cricket and ten-nis are played, albeit limited to elite level. But could it not do the same for football? Goal-line tech-nology could well lay the founda-tions to help technology further address other disputes in the sport. Its introduction to the Pre-mier League is just a start, there could well be more to come.

Goal-line technology gets green light for Premier LeagueArthur RussellOpinion Writer

The other day I went on a bus. The bus was full of old people and s c a r y - l o o k i n g people. Basically,

the only teeth on the bus were mine.

The bus is not the place to be, man. Everyone’s got to go some-where, but no one likes getting the bus. It’s uncool. Even trains are better for you than buses, and I once saw a man on a train try and start a fight with his own can of Carling.

It seems, though, that the gov-ernment minister people have decided that buses are uncool officially, so what they done is they made bus fares cheaper for us 17-year-olds, to try and get us

to use it. Now fair play, it ain’t a bad move. If I use the bus, it could mean more money for McDonalds, and they’ve got that Monopoly thing going on at the moment, so it means definitely getting rich. Therefore, this pol-icy could make me rich, like.

The main problem, though, is that making it cheaper might not make us want to use the buses, it might do the opposite. Since when has anything cheap been cool? Does Barack Obama shop at Matalan? No. He should though, they got some nice things.

My point is, I don’t like taking the bus, and I don’t think it being cheaper is going to change that. It’s a shame, though, because I really want to win that Monopoly thing.

Varsity events between local uni-versities occur up and down the country, and there’s a wide con-sensus of opinion about them. Many appreciate and really get into the sporting side of the day’s events, supporting their univer-sity, while others just see it as an-other excuse for people to binge drink all day, regardless of the sporting competitions. Of course, there are also those who appreci-ate the drinking.

What must be appreciated about the Welsh Varsity, though, is it’s unrivalled grand scale. There are no other universi-ties that participate in a Varsity event, other than Oxford and Cambridge, who can boast a venue as prestigious as the Mil-lennium Stadium. International rugby players from all over the world, including New Zealand’s Dan Carter, recognise it as prob-ably the best rugby stadium to play in in the world, for its unas-sailable atmosphere, making it a fine asset to the celebration that

is Welsh Varsity.After all, Varsity is a celebra-

tion. It’s an opportunity to in-dulge in sports that you’re famil-iar with, and also discover new ones. Last year, I went to watch the Ultimate Frisbee match, which Cardiff played incredibly well in. I had no prior knowledge of the sport beforehand, but I quickly found myself emerged in the spirit of it.

Therefore, regardless of whether the aim is to get drunk throughout the day and become full-on Welsh nutters, I would urge people to explore Varsity, get into the spirit, and really enjoy it. It’s definitely possible, even if you don’t like sport.

Can buses be cool?Varsity is coming: prepare yourself

What must be appreciated about the Welsh Varsity, though, is it’s unrivalled grand scale

Sam LloydOpinion Writer

Cardiff raises the age limit on child tickets in an attmept to make buses ‘cool’. Has it worked? Bartholomew “Bazzles” Archer investigates

May is fast ap-p r o a c h i n g . For most of us that means that our exams

are drawing near. You might be a first year, or final year, student, but I bet you’re all starting to feel the pressure. In fact, since its deadline season, I’m sure that most of you reading are already on first name terms with stress.

This time of year, I often hear friends say that they’ve gone into ‘exam mode’, or ‘dissertation mode’. I take this to mean that they’ve withdraw into a world

of revision, isolation, late nights and generally not looking after themselves. Now, some of us can do this with minimum fallout. I think, however, that for a lot of us this simply isn’t possible.

In the past, when I’ve reverted to this hermit like stage, I’ve re-ally suffered. I’ve struggled with mental health issues since I was a teenager and it has run in my family for a few generations. I struggle most around this time of year, when the pressure is on. It’s so tempting to fully consume my-self in assessment preparations because we’re under the illusion that working 24/7 is the best way

to get the top grades. I have to remind myself to enjoy life, oth-erwise I will crash and burn out.

It’s a sad truth that one in four of us is probably going to expe-rience mental health problems over the course of our lives. You might have realised that last week was Depression Awareness Week, and I know what you’re thinking, it often seems like ev-ery week has some kind of theme attached to it. But if you were in any doubt of the importance of raising awareness of depression, then I hope that statistic strikes it home for you.

I don’t think it’s just people

with depression that need to remember to look after them-selves and have some fun dur-ing this time of year. A lot of people struggle with anxiety and stress even if they don’t usually have problems with their mental health. I’ve seen situations with friends where this has been con-suming. Had they remembered to look after themselves, then it would have been a lot less pain-ful.

One thing that’s really caught my attention over the last few weeks has been a new Facebook group called ‘Keep Calm and Love Life’. It’s a project started

up specifically for Cardiff Uni-versity students. The group does a great job of encouraging me to love life and is a regular source of motivation for me when I’m flag-ging. The group was started up by last year’s honour roll student, Rachel Egan. I was talking to her earlier on in the week and she spoke about it being important to her that the group provides regu-lar affirmation while also pro-viding “links to resources about where to seek help”.

Rachel, rather poetically, de-scribed the Facebook group as being “a candle in the darkness for a student suffering in si-lence”. I found that, when I’ve be-ing struggling most with depres-sion, I don’t tell anyone about it. Not even my husband. It’s a mistake I’ve made over, and over, again. I can’t emphasis enough how important it is to tell some-one about what you’re thinking. When you allow it to fester, the darkness becomes stronger, but by letting other people in you are opening a door and allowing a ray of light to shine through.

We’re lucky in this university in that we have some great facili-ties to help students who are ei-ther struggling with their mental health, or with the stress of their course. To use Rachel’s imagery, there’s more than one candle in the darkness.

I’ve used the counselling ser-vice a number of times while a student. But, in addition to that, we’ve got some great student run societies. I’ve been to events by both the Mental Wealth Society and SRSH. Not only are they both really understanding and supportive, but their events and activities are so much fun. The highlight of my year is always Mental Wealth’s Inner Child day. If you’ve missed it, it’s basically a day when they take over Solus with bouncy castles, sweets, face paints and Sumo Suits. Needless to say, it’s an amazing way to blow off steam and not take your-self so seriously.

I guess that if I were to sum-marise my column this week, it would be to say, look after your-selves, don’t give in to isolation and have some fun.

12 / Columnist

by Katie Bennett-Davies

Keep calm and love life

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14 / Politics

This month has seen the introduction of some of the Coalition’s biggest reforms to welfare yet. Meryon Roderick discusses these changes, and asks some students what they think

Last week marked the introduction of dramatic cuts to the UK’s benefits system. Several key reforms were intro-

duced that will all be in place across the country by the end of this year.

The first and most far-reach-ing change is a benefit cap which now limits any childless adult to a maximum claim of £350 a week and any lone parent or couple to £500 regardless of the number of children in their household. The government claims these limitations on benefit claims will save £110m in the financial year 2013/14 and will encourage more people to find work.

However, the plans have been criticised by opposition minis-ters as they claim that regional disparities such as house prices and cost of living have not been taken into account, and large families will be hugely disadvan-taged. Households receiving ben-efits stand to lose £93 a week on average. Around forty thousand in total will be affected, up to 50 per cent of which will be lone parents.

This has caused widespread opposition in some areas as pro-testors led by the group UK Un-cut blocked the street outside the North London house of Lord Freud, the welfare minister.

Greenwich, a Labour constitu-ency, will be one of the first au-thorities to impose the new sys-tem. They are offering 6 month job placements in the public sector, including recycling and street cleaning in an attempt to

help people currently claiming benefits to gain employment.

However, Conservative crit-ics have expressed doubt as to whether these placements will lead to any kind of long term em-ployment, arguing instead that the money should be invested in the private sector to create job opportunities there.

The second change to be en-forced will be the single room subsidy, or the ‘bedroom tax’ as Labour have scathingly branded it. This system is designed to en-sure that tenants are living in a house that is suitably sized. This means 14 per cent of housing benefit will be lost by those with one extra room, and 25 per cent lost for two or more.

A maximum of two children up to sixteen years of age are ex-pected to share a room if they are the same gender, and up to the age of ten two children of any gender are expected to share a room. This means that a family of two parents and two fifteen year old boys in a three bedroom house would still lose 14% of their housing benefit as the boys would be expected to share.

It has emerged that in many ar-eas (particularly in Wales), there are not enough single bedroom houses to accommodate people moving out of ‘oversized’ homes. Despite this, families living in houses that are larger than nec-

essary are expected to downsize to a smaller house to avoid the single room subsidy.

Those opposed to the cuts believe this may lead to raised levels of homelessness due to many being unable to pay for their homes with such reduced benefit.

Another drastic change to the benefits system is the replace-ment of DLA (Disability Living Allowance) with PIP (Personal Independence Payment). Dis-ability benefit is one of the larger benefits paid out, with around 3.2 million people currently claim-ing it.

Under the new system up to a fifth of these claimants would be ineligible leading to an ex-pected saving of £2.2 billion by 2015. It is claimed that this is a fairer and easier to understand sys-tem but disabil-ity groups have condemned PIP as a money sav-ing exercise, as they claim DLA is one of the most ac-curately ad-ministered b e n e f i t s with a fraud rate estimat-ed at only 0.5 per cent.

I inter-viewed two first year stu-dents, Natasha Lampard who has first hand experience of the benefit system, and Arthur Ush-

er whose family do not claim any benefits. When asked who would suffer the most from ben-efit cuts Natasha suggested that the elderly stand to lose a lot of benefit due to the bedroom tax, and that for families with a child at university it is unclear wheth-er their room counts as spare or not if they occupy it during the holidays. Both agreed that single parents who may not be able to work due to childcare commit-ments certainly stand to lose out hugely under the new system.

Both thought that some of the changes to the benefit sys-tem were necessary: Natasha suggested that moving single occupants into smaller homes to make room for families was a necessary move, and Arthur thought that cutting Job Seek-ers Allowance may encourage people to find work. However both agreed that the bedroom tax seemed poorly thought out and heavily flawed. Natasha argues that more pres-sure ought to be put on those with higher incomes, such as a tax on second homes.

They disagreed about whether the cuts would encourage work .

Arthur suggested that people would be encouraged to work to gain a higher income, though other measures would have to be introduced, such as more jobs and employment programmes. Natasha disagreed, saying that a persons unwillingness to work is more to do with social factors than purely income, and taking more money from people would simply discourage them from trying to contribute more to so-ciety.

Despite their reservations, both students agreed that the current system is unfair, since many people are able to claim benefit that is unnecessary; Ar-thur cited the television present-er Philip Schofield’s claiming of child benefit as a prime example.

These interviews clearly sug-gest divided opinions when it comes to many of the key issues surrounding cuts and welfare reform. If you are personally un-

affected by these reforms, it is difficult to objectively

gauge their effects on so-ciety. It is clear though that where our inter-viewees are in agree-ment, it highlights some quite important

oversights in what many believe are over-gener-

alised and poorly thought out re-

forms.

Government announces dramatic benefit reforms

Same-sex siblings are expected to share a room up to the age of sixteen

Vince Cable has announced a 12p increase in the National Mini-mum Wage to £6.31. This is a cut in real terms as the increase is significantly below inflation. Young people will be most affect-ed by what is effectively a wage reduction.

The Youth Development Rate for 18-20 year olds and the rate for 16-17 year olds have increased by only 1 per cent, to £5.03 and £3.72 respectively. Inflation is ap-proximately 3 times as high, with RPI at 3.2 per cent and CPI at 2.8 per cent.

Cable defended the changes, saying: “cuts in real wages de-press consumption and demand and thereby cause unemploy-ment”. Although this appears to be an unusual defence for what is, in fact, a cut in real wages, he was defending the increases from

business leaders and those on the right who were in favour of a pay freeze.

The changes are a disappoint-ment to advocates of the living wage, which is currently £8.55 in London and £7.45 in the rest of the UK. The living wage is cal-culated based on the cost of es-sentials such as food, housing, childcare and transport. The introduction of the living wage would make work pay without people having to rely on in-work benefits such as Working Tax Credit. Currently, 1 in 5 people are not paid enough to live on.

In rhetoric at least, the living wage has cross party support. Boris Johnson has required com-panies to pay the living wage to obtain public contracts with the capital, although ministers from his own party have criticised the scheme for its possible illegality.

Similarly, Ed Miliband has pledged to only offer Whitehall

contracts to companies paying at least a living wage. Labour Stu-dents have been campaigning for a living wage for all university staff over the past year, and have been successful at Manchester University, Kent and De Mont-fort.

The minimum wage was de-cided by the Low Pay Com-mission, taking the struggling economy into consideration and balancing the interests of stake-holders: businesses and trade unions. Although the modest in-crease in the minimum wage has been regarded as necessary given the economic climate, TUC gen-eral secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Boosting the incomes of the low-paid goes straight into the economy.” This is because low-paid workers spend all their income rather than saving.

Intuitively we expect an in-crease in the minimum wage to stop companies from hiring

thereby increasing unemploy-ment. Economists however have found that an increase in the minimum wage has no signifi-cant impact on unemployment. The Centre for Economic Policy Research found that, rather than stopping hiring, businesses make adjustments to compensate by reducing the pay of those on higher income, increasing effi-ciency and making small price increases. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) found that a living wage would likely only cause a 0.5 per cent increase in unemployment.

The US currently has similar levels of unemployment to the UK, with 7.6 per cent and 7.9 per cent respectively. Despite this, Obama has pledged a significant minimum wage increase to $9 an hour. Future minimum wage increases in the US will then be linked to inflation.

Lauren BoydPolitics Writer

Business secretary raises minimum wage

The living wage would make work pay without having to rely on benefits such as Working Tax Credit

“

Farewell worklessness!

15Monday January 28th 2013 | @gairrhyddpolMonday April 22nd 2013 | @gairrhyddpol

Politics14–15

Professor David Nutt, a former drugs ad-viser to the UK government, has at-tracted further con-troversy this week

by suggesting that bankers tak-ing too much cocaine may have caused the financial crisis. He told the Sunday Times that the drug makes people ‘overconfi-dent’ and its use by bankers en-couraged risk-taking behaviour.

The Cambridge-educated aca-demic, who was in charge of the government’s Advisory Coun-cil on the Misuse of Drugs from 2008-09, claims that cocaine is a perfect fit for the banking “cul-ture of excitement and drive and more and more and more. It is a ‘more’ drug”. As well as the current financial crisis, he also attributes the impact of the drug to the collapse of Barings Bank in 1995.

Dr Chris Luke, a specialist at Cork University Hospital, agreed with Professor Nutt stating that widespread cocaine abuse in the City meant bankers “were mak-ing insane decisions and think-ing they were 110 per cent right … which led to the current chaos”. Whilst Dr Luke says that “self-ishness, ignorance and ruthless-ness” were major factors in the

risk-taking behaviours exhibited by bankers, he goes on to say that it would be “foolish” to ignore the role of cocaine in the crisis.

Ex-banker Geraint Anderson has scathingly attacked the co-caine culture that is rife in the City, saying “only cocaine-rav-aged buffoons would actually buy billions of dollars’ worth of mort-gage-backed securities when they were so clearly doomed to explode the minute the property boom stalled”. He also noted that since the financial crisis bank-ers are becoming afraid to use cocaine, fearing further financial woes, and that the drug’s use has diminished.

David Nutt, who teaches neu-ro-psycho-pharmacology at Im-perial College London, is in fa-vour of the decriminalisation of a number of drugs, and claims that the illegal status of magic mush-rooms, ecstasy and cannabis makes it difficult for scientists to study their beneficial qualities. He believes that psilocybin, the

psychoactive compound present in magic mushrooms, is an effec-tive treatment for depression, but the illegality of the drug has ham-pered his research.

He said: “We have regulations which are 50 years old, have nev-er been reviewed and they are holding us back, they’re stopping us doing the science and I think it’s a disgrace actually”. The Home Office have rubbished his claims saying that there is no evi-dence that drug regulations are a barrier to research.

Nutt is notoriously outspoken on the UK’s current drug policy, and was sacked by the govern-ment in 2009 after he made claims that LSD and ecstasy are less harmful than alcohol. He criticised the government for ‘devaluing’ scientific research in favour of ideology when faced with the drugs debate.

After his sacking, Professor Nutt founded the Independent ‘Scientific Committee on Drugs’ which aims to carry out scientific investigation on the risks of rec-reational drugs without political interference. In 2012 he partici-pated in Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial in which a number of par-ticipants were given ecstasy live on television as part of an experi-ment.

Only cocaine-ravaged buffoons would buy billions of dollars of doomed securities

Thatcher continues to divide the nation in deathThe death of Margaret Thatcher on April 8th triggered possibly the most significant public reac-tion to the death of a prominent figure since that of Michael Jack-son. During Thatcher’s reign as British prime minister from 1979 to 1990, her domestic and eco-nomic policies were regarded by some as innovative and trium-phant, while to others, particu-larly those affected by industrial action in the early 80’s, she was seen as a harsh and ruthless lead-er. The divisiveness of the late Mrs. Thatcher has been reflected emphatically in the public reac-tion to her passing.

The national newspapers, of-ten the agenda setters in UK cur-rent affairs, were predominantly pro-Thatcher in their coverage of the former Prime Minister’s passing. On the morning of April 9th, the Daily Mail led with “The Woman Who Saved Britain”. The Express and The Telegraph fol-lowed suit – each publishing an all-black commemorative front page. The Guardian and The In-dependent each opted for a black and white full page image of Mrs. Thatcher: aesthetically sombre in tone, but not without their own balanced headlines – The Guardian headlined with a quote

from the late political commen-tator Hugo Young; “She became harder than hard.”

Perhaps given the impact she had on each area, regional news-papers from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland were far less

sympathetic to Thatcher’s death. Each newspaper was quick to emphasize the so-called Iron Lady’s social and political divi-siveness.

In the days that followed, de-bate between Thatcher’s sup-porters and dissenters intensi-fied to a fever pitch. Notably,

the Premier League opted not to schedule a minute’s silence on the weekend’s matches, given that fans could not be expected to respect the silence. As well as this, a campaign to get the song “Ding Dong The Witch is Dead”

to #1 on the UK singles chart fell just short, reaching #2. BBC Ra-dio One, amid pressure from the public, senior figures in govern-ment, and even the writer of the song himself, decided only to play six seconds of the song on the Sunday chart show, out of re-spect for the late Mrs. Thatcher.

Perhaps the most interest-ing reaction was that of the Twittersphere. Within minutes of the news being announced, calls were made for apparently tongue-in-cheek (yet probably serious) website IsThatcherDea-

dYet.co.uk to update their status from “NOT YET” to “YES”.

Amid initial celebrations from anti-Thatcherites, prominent lib-eral and left-wing figures such as Labour MP Tom Watson were quick to urge Thatcher’s dissent-ers to be respectful of the Thatch-er family in mourning. Tweets

from the NUS Conference, which was on-going when the news was announced, claimed that some of the delegates from UK-wide universities burst into spontane-ous cheering and applause upon hearing the news.

Debates regarding Margaret Thatcher’s legacy are still on-go-ing. The Daily Mail has recently attacked the BBC, claiming its coverage was left-wing and dis-respectful, while many dissenters claimed that the coverage was far too commendary.

Besides this, while it had al-most become cliché that an-ti-Thatcherites would hold street parties upon the death of Thatcher, the few gatherings that did take place were rather low-key and for the most part, non-violent. This is most likely because even the most die-hard anti-Thatcherite would likely feel uncomfortable dancing on the grave of a deceased elderly per-son (metaphorically speaking).

With Thatcher’s funeral over, and news coverage on the matter beginning to die down, the public reaction to the death has made it emphatically clear that, for better for worse, Britain’s first female Prime Minister changed things, and has left a lasting legacy that the British people will remember for many years to come.

Bankers’ cocaine use caused financial crisis

Christopher McSweeneyPolitics Writer

Ashley Bebbington discusses David Nutt’s controversial hypothesis that excessive cocaine use by London city bankers created risk-taking behaviour that could have caused the crisis

A team of Cardiff University cybersecurity and cybercrime experts have been awarded a grant of £1.2M by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to further im-prove their research into online crime fighting and prevention.

Cybercrime refers to any criminal activity that takes place on a computer network or the Internet, and includes anything from identity fraud and copy-right infringement to gaining unauthorised access to national security documents and disrupt-ing governmental information systems. Cases of more serious actions aimed at promoting ex-tremist political motives or caus-ing widespread damage and ter-ror are sometimes referred to as acts of cyber-terrorism, and have been described by the Obama ad-ministration as posing more of a threat to the United States than ‘traditional’ methods of terror-ism. The UK National Security Strategy has also categorised cy-ber attacks, such as large scale hacking, as one of its four Tier One Priority Risks, and it is esti-

mated that at least 20 foreign in-telligence services have invested in cyberspace warfare against the UK.

The grant comes as national security programs and police forces all over the world are bol-stering their cybercrime preven-tion methods, most recently the Japanese police force, which re-cruited 140 multilingual comput-er experts specifically to police the Internet.

The EPSRC Consortia for Ex-ploratory Research in Security (CEReS) is aiming to bring to-gether scientists from different

backgrounds in order to take a multidisciplinary approach to understanding cybersecurity. A collaborative cybercrime preven-tion project initiated between Cardiff University’s Schools of Computer Science and Informat-ics and Social Sciences fall into

line with the goals of CEReS. The EPSRC’s support for Cardiff ’s project, which brings together computer scientists, criminolo-gists, lawyers, psychologists, economists and mathematicians, makes perfect sense. Not only that, but firms such as BT and internet security giant Kaspersky are involved too; unsurprisingly in the case of the latter after its

founder’s abducted son was res-cued with the help of cybercrime prevention technology.

The products of the collabora-tive project will benefit business-es of all sizes, organisations with the national infrastructure and governmental programs such as the Cyber Crime Reduction Part-nership.

16 / Science

Alexey UnderwoodScience Editor

Cardiff cybercrime fighters receive backup

InSight.HHSLQJ�DQ�H\H�RQ�\RXU�FLW\nV�ODWHVW�VFLHQFH�QHZV

The National Security Strategy has also categorised cyber attacks as one of its four Tier One Priority Risks

Botox linked to depression

Sophie HowellsScience Writer

A recent study carried out by Dr Michael Lewis of Cardiff University's School of Psychol-ogy has found that Botox facial treatments may induce depres-sion. A link between facial ex-pressions and mood has been made, indicating that our ability to smile and frown may deter-mine how we feel. The neurotoxic protein, Botu-lism Toxin A, is used cosmeti-cally in the reduction of facial wrinkles, namely laughter lines, crows feet and frown lines. The drug works by weakening the muscles in the face, limiting facial expressions such as smil-ing and frowning, which cause wrinkles. Dr Lewis’ study found that in those individuals who had received Botox injections to reduce crow’s feet around the eye area experienced more feel-ings of depression. However, the opposite has been found in the treatment of frown lines, as individuals who frowned less also appeared to feel less depressed. Dr Lewis explains, "the expressions that we make on our face affects the emotions we feel; we smile be-cause we are happy but smiling also makes us happy. Treatment with drugs like Botox prevents the patient from being able to make a particular expression. For example, those treated for frown lines with Botox are not able to frown as strongly. This interrupts the feedback they would normally get from their face and they feel less sad."

CITER lauds decennary

Michael O'Connell-DavidsonScience Writer

This month saw the tenth anni-versary of Cardiff University’s internationally recognised In-stitute of Tissue Engineering and Repair (CITER). Over the years, the institute has devel-oped a national and internation-al reputation for its expertise in various fields. Its achievements include its MSc in Tissue Engi-neering, which has been taught for the past seven years.

InSight

Fears are rife that another bird flu pandemic may be imminent in China. Nine people have died and more than 20 are seriously ill in the latest outbreak of the virus. This particular version is named H7N9. More worryingly still, it has three of the five mutations known to allow the H5N1 version of the virus to spread between mammals. Such a phenomenon is what allows a bird flu virus to cause mass casualties.

Currently, Chinese authorities are attempting to allay concerns.

They are insistent that there is no evidence yet of H7N9 spreading between human beings. Most of the recent pandemics have been the result of a hybrid mammalian and bird flu. This has meant that the subsequent consequences

were relatively mild as mamma-lian flu tends to be less severe in humans than bird flu. H7N9 how-ever is a pure bird flu virus and hence may be more dangerous

than other pandemics we have seen before.

The deadliest global flu pan-demic ever recorded was a pure bird flu virus that could spread between humans. That was in 1918 and scientists are fearful that H7N9 may prove to be its modern equivalent. So far, how-ever, the two known cases of flu caused by the virus have proven to be surprisingly mild. Chinese authorities are trying to estab-lish how many unreported cases there may be of people becoming mildly ill.

H5N1 has still not mutated to be able to pass from human to

human. Ron Fuchier, of the Eras-mus Medical Centre in Rotter-dam, the Netherlands, has devel-oped a transmissible version of the virus in the lab. This caused him to come under fire from crit-ics who worried that bioterror-ists may be able to benefit from his work. His research, however, has illustrated that if H7N9 can bind to mammalian cells, it could adapt even further to mammals, just as Fouchier's primed H5N1 did in his ferret experiments.

Fouchier explained that "All pandemic viruses have acquired this [mammalian cell] binding and polymerase activity. The

Rhiannon DaviesScience Editor

Lethal avian flu in China raises health concerns

H7N9 is a pure bird flu virus and hence may be more dangerous than other pandemics

A team of researcher at Virginia Tech have successfully produced large qualities of high-quality hy-drogen fuel by fermenting xylose sugar with a unique mixture of enzymes not normally encoun-tered in nature.

These findings build on prior research into the area, as the fer-mentation of xylose sugar to bio-fuels such as hydrogen and etha-nol has been long been an area of keen interest by biochemical scientists.

The new work by Professor Percival Zhang and his team of researchers at Virginia Tech is one of the first to offer a viable method of producing high-purity, fuel-grade hydrogen in bulk. A unique mixture of enzymes and polyphosphate massages enough energy out of the sugar to cause adjacent water molecules to split into hydrogen for harvesting.

The methods used gave an efficiency of over one hundred

percent; in other words, there was a net gain of energy pro-duced as a result of the process. This is in contrast to the many past attempts by rival scientists to produce hydrogen fuel, who produced very small yields of the fuel and used more energy in the procurement of hydrogen than the fuel could supply, and there-fore only served as developmen-tal experimental science with no real-world application.

To date, fuel derived through earlier inefficient methods has been used in developmental rac-ing car prototypes such as the BMW H2R and Aston Martin’s recently released Hybrid Hydro-gen Rapide S, as well as experi-mental aircraft such as the Tu-polev Tu-155 and Boeing Theator and other prototypical vehicles.

However, without the financial backing that these international companies enjoy, the average consumer is yet to reap the ben-

efits of the zero-emissions fuel as the technology is yet to trickle down. Budget marques such as Hyundai and Toyota have pro-duction models ready for the market, but cannot release them to the public until hydrogen fuel becomes more accessible.

Sceptics will no doubt recall with horror the Hindenburg disaster of 1937, when the Ger-man blimp LZ 129 ‘Hindenburg’ was destroyed in a terrible fire thought to have been caused by a spark in the on-board hydrogen used to provide lift. However, a similar disaster behind the wheel of a car is highly unlikely, as hy-drogen fuel is not dissimilar, in terms of danger, to

the conventional fuel we use nowadays. Conditions upon the Hindenburg were exacerbated by the presence of acetate and aluminium powder on-board, ex-plosively flammable substances that worsened the blaze. With the correct storage methods, the fuel should prove to be safe.

If Zhang’s new method spreads, hydrogen fuel could

be readily on sale within three years. Apart from providing driv-ers with zero-emissions means to go about their daily business, Zhang’s new technique offers benefits to all strata of technol-ogy. Buses, ships, planes, gen-erators and anything else that can run on standard fuel could be modified to utilise hydrogen fuel, bringing about a substantial worldwide decrease in pollution and climate change.

17Monday April 22nd 2013 | @gairrhyddsci

Science16–17

Virginia Tech pioneers hydrogen fuel production method

A new neuro-imaging tech-nique has been developed by psychistrist, Karl Deisseroth, and his team at Stanford Univer-sity, California. The new method, “Clarity” (Clear Lipid-exchanged Acrylamide-hybridized Rigid Imaging /Immunosta in ing /In situ hybridization-compatible Tissue-hydrogel) is set to revo-lutionise the way in which sci-entists are able to analyse brain tissue as well as that of other or-gans. !This new method removes the opaque structures within the brain, whilst preserving the brain anatomy for scientists to observe.!

The process of Clarity consists of hardening the brain tissue with formaldehyde and stabilis-

ing the brain structures with an acrylamide hydrogel, which gath-ers and solidifies in the neuron membranes. Within the hard-ened gel, remains the neuron structures and networks, DNA and RNA.

The light-blocking lipid structures from around the neu-rons are then removed using detergents and a process called ‘electrophoresis’, where a voltage is applied to the gel. These lipids are what previously prevented other techniques from observ-ing the inner regions of the brain, without dissection. Once the tis-sue is fully transparent, the inner neural networks can be observed using imaging techniques such as Optogenics.!

Jeff Lichtman of Harvard Uni-versity says, “Although the brain

looks like a bucket of wires, as you look at it further it starts hav-ing some structure and organisa-tion as if there’s some logic in the way it’s connected.” By observing DNA and RNA structures within clarified brains, scientists be-lieve that this new technique will help uncover possible physical causes of metal disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism, among others. Deis-seroth has applied Clarity to an Autistic brain in the hopes that the new technique will provide some new insight in the aetiol-ogy of the disorder.!

Clarity has so far only been tested on non-living tissue; it is not clear yet what effect replac-ing cell membranes and lipids would have on a living brain. Per-haps this would be the next step in neuro-imaging.

Sophie HowellsScience Writer

New neuroimaging technique gives sci-entists additional Clarity

Alexey UnderwoodScience Editor

drogen fuel is not dissimilar, in terms of danger, to

Sceptics will no doubt recall with horror the Hindenburg disaster of 1937

If the new method spreads, hydrogen fuel could be soon readily on sale

Anything that can run on standard fuel could be modified to utilise hydrogen

This new method removes the opaque structures within the brain

Once the tissue is transparent, the inner neural networks can be observed

20 / Societies

A conference open to all students and staff is being held on Saturday, April 27th at the School of Math-

ematics. The conference is de-signed to bring people who have

mathematical elements to their degree (e.g. Computer Science, Engineering, Biology), and those interested in mathematics, to-gether for a day of diverse talks.

These talks will include the use of mathematics in video games, the supersonic car Blood-hound SSC and speed cubing. A Q&A Employers panel will also be taking place where delegates can direct questions to the panel

about careers. This is in addition to a variety of networking op-portunities that will be available throughout the day .

The conference is run by the Institute of Mathematics and is held twice a year. It will be a while before Cardiff University are the hosts again. Registration is particularly affordable as the Maths Society are providing half-price admission for the first 160

students, with prices starting at a mere £5.

With such cheap ticket prices, the conference is a great oppor-tunity to add something unique and highly attractive to your CV.

For more information about the conference, or if you are a non-student wanting to attend the conference, visit the following web page: http://www.ima.org.uk/con-

ferences/conferences_calendar/ferences/conferences_calendar/early_career_mathematicians_conference_spring_2013.cfm

For discounted student prices, login to Campus Groups and visit login to Campus Groups and visit the Maths Society page (http://the Maths Society page (http://groups.cardiffstudents.com/math-soc), where the the link to the Con-ference event page can be found on the left hand side.

Maths conference comes to CardiffMaths conference comes to Cardiff

It has been a brilliant year for Cardiff Snowsports. There has been success on the slopes, a bumper Christmas trip followed by a record breaking trip to Alpe D’Huez. 79 Cardiff students joined forces with 1500 students from around the country to in-dulge in a week of skiing, sun and some serious après-ski.

Main Event is the most impor-tant in the student skiing calen-dar as it gives the competitors the chance to discover the fast-est, gnarliest skiers and boarders on the mountain alongside the

chance to gain some vital BUCS points for your university.

There is of course all the tra-ditional ski and board races held throughout the week, but there is also Skier X, Boarder X and a range of freestyle events in-cluding Big Air, Slopestyle and Shred’n’Butter. There is also the wacky Red Bull 1976 Games which essentially reward the teams that have the most fun, as that is what BUCS Main Event is truly about.

This trip was not just for the seasoned racers; there were plen-ty of first timers as well who took advantage of the glorious sun-shine for a full on introduction to skiing that only a university ski trip can offer.

Lessons ran in the mornings whilst the afternoons were kept free for some intense aprés. Après was suitably mad, with even the coach drivers getting in-volved and joining the infamous Cardiff Snowsports chant.

For those new to aprés ski it was certainly an eye opener, a chance to bask in the sunshine,

dance on the tables, mingle with the other universities or just en-joy a stein of beer.

This all took place under the supervision of Cardiff Snows-port’s new mascot, Sultan the Tiger, who was the envy of all of the other universities present. Those who partied with distinc-tion were rewarded at the end of the week with signed certificates by the great beast himself.

On the slopes the racers put in some impressive individual performances with Tom Bayles notching up second in the Board-er X, third in Individual Duals and fourth in the Snowboard Gi-ant Slalom, a race in which James Colston also finished in the top ten.

The skiers also put in some strong performances with Claire Brown placing 13th in Super G,

10th and 12th place finishes for Lucy Tomlinson and Grace Mc-Cutchan respectively alongside a 12th place finish for Kirsty Hatch-er in the Slalom.

One of the most exhilarating events is the team duels, in which the universities best riders go head-to-head in a knockout com-petition under the floodlights. In sketchy conditions both Cardiff ’s Ladies and the Board team were edged out in the semi finals but came home with bronze.

The freestyle competitions drew large crowds in the sun-shine with both teams giving everything they had. Hugo Peck-ham and Natasha Ellwood repre-sented Cardiff in an area of the sport that is evolving relentlessly.

Unfortunately the freeride competition, in which Cardiff were looking particularly strong, was cancelled due to unsafe con-ditions off-piste. The Main Event results reflect on an exciting time for Cardiff Snowsports.

Needless to say you can’t lock up 1,500 students during a week like this; every night was bigger

and better than the previous. The week kicked off with the Other Tribe playing an amazing set, and finished on a high with Lazy Habits taking the roof off at the awards ceremony through their feel good vibes.

On a side note all members are warmly invited to the committee elections on April 25th at Kama Lounge to cast their vote and have a say in the running of the club next year. There is just one event remaining on the Snows-ports calendar in the form of the Kings Finals. This event takes place at the end of April; Cardiff Snowsports intend to end their year with one final flourish.

Cardiff Snowsports represented at BUCS Main EventHugo Bristol Societies Writer

This all took place under the supervision of Cardiff Snowsports’s new mascot, Sultan the Tiger, who was the envy of all of the other universities present

The freeride competition was cancelled due to unsafe conditions off-piste

James Cheeseman Societies Writer

The main event results reflect on an exciting time for Cardiff Snowsports

22 / Taf-Od

Straeon OD o bob rhan o’r byd... Wythnos yma, pencampwriaeth Marblis y byd...

taf

OD

-

Bu newyddion da iawn i rai ohonnych sy’n cysidro eich hunain yn ‘Choco-holics’ wythnos di-wethaf, yn dilyn cy-

hoeddiad bod gwyddonwyr wedi darganfod ffordd greu siocled sydd ond gyda hanner y braster sydd gan siocled arferol, heb ef-feithio blas na gwead y siocled.

Mae’r technoleg newydd a ga-fodd ei greu gan wyddonwyr yn galluogi iddynt gyfnewid hanner y braster fuasai yn arferol yn y siocled, am sudd ffrwyth, dwr neu fitamin C. Mae’n debyg fod y technoleg hyn yn gallu cael ei

ddefnyddio i greu pob mathau o siocled. Yn ogystal a gostwng y maint o fraster yn y siocled, mae’n debyg fod yn bosib lleihau lefelau siwgr siocled yn yr un broses.

Mewn newyddion arall sy’n gysylltiedig â siocled, yn y Al-maen yn ddiweddar, cafodd 5 a hanner o dunelli o ‘Nutella’ ei ddwyn. Mae’n debyg fod gwerth yr hyn a gafodd ei ddwyn oddeu-tu £13,000. Mae’n debyg fod yr un grwp o ladron wedi dwyn tunelli o ‘energy drinks’ o’r un lleoliad mewn digwyddiad ychydig yn ôl. Os ydych yn dod mewn cysyl-ltiad a’r grwp, busai Taf-od yn yn

hynod falch o jar neu ddau, mae’n nhost i braidd yn sych...

Mewn un o ddigwyddiadau mwya’r byd chwaraeon wythnos diwethaf, fe goronwyd tîm o Bry-dain yn bencampwyr marblis y byd. I ennill y gystadleuaeth, a gynhaliwyd mewn pub yn Craw-

ley, curodd y tîm o dafarn y ‘Black Dog’ dîm o’r Almaen, i gipio’r bencampwriaeth, sy’n dyddio yn ôl i 1588. Gobeithio bod y mar-blwyr(?) yn ymwybodol bod y wlad i gyd yn ei cymeradwyo. Y cam nesaf - y Gemau Olym-paidd?!

Yr iaith Gymraeg in the Union

Yn ystod yr wyth-nos ddarllen cyn y Pasg – pan oedd cyfran uchel o fyfyrwyr Caer-dydd adref yn

gweithio’n ddyfal* (*neu’n diod-def hangofyrs niferus) – cynhali-wyd etholiadau Undeb y Myfyr-wyr. Dyma’r etholiadau a oedd yn penderfynu pwy fydd yn ffurfio’r tîm o bobl a fydd yn arwain yr Undeb o fis Gorffennaf ymlaen. Wrth gwrs, mae’r canlyniadau ei-soes yn hysbys a gwyddwn pwy fydd yn gwneud beth.

Y fi sydd â’r fraint o fod yn Swyddog Myfyrwyr Cymraeg. Pwrpas y rôl, mae’n debyg, yw cynrychioli myfyrwyr Prifysgol Caerdydd sy’n dod o Gymru, ond rwy’n bwriadu defnyddio fy ml-wyddyn yn y swydd i gynrychioli buddiannau Cymry Cymraeg y Brifysgol, a cheisio codi pwysau ar y Brifysgol ac ar yr Undeb i gynyddu a gwella eu darpariaeth i fyfyrwyr trwy gyfrwng y Gym-raeg.

Ar hyn o bryd, mae’n siƀr fydd nifer yn cytuno taw dar-pariaeth docenistaidd iawn sydd. Arwyddion dwyieithog ar hyd y lle, ambell i boster ac e-bost yn y Gymraeg. Da iawn wir.

Nid yw’n ddigon. A ninnau’n fyfyrwyr ym mhrifddinas Cymru, a’r iaith Gymraeg yn iaith swydd-ogol yng Nghymru, dylem fod yn gallu disgwyl darpariaeth lawn a chyfartal yn iaith ein dewis – y Gymraeg. Nid dyna’r sefyllfa ar hyn o bryd a rwy’n bwriadu gweithio’n ddiflino yn ystod y flwyddyn i ddod er mwyn ceisio sicrhau fod pethau’n newid. Nid wyf yn addo y byddaf yn llwyd-do – ry’n ni gyd yn gwybod mor anodd yw hi i geisio cael dar-pariaeth gyfartal yn y Gymraeg. Ond rwyf yn addo y byddaf yn

gwneud fy ngorau glas.Wrth edrych yn ôl ar wythnos

yr etholiadau, ag oblygiadau’r canlyniadau i ni Gymry Cymraeg y Brifysgol, darlun cymysglyd iawn sydd. O’r sawl a etholwyd fel Swyddogion Llawn-amser (SLA) neu Ran-amser (SRA), daw 36% o Gymru. Gan gofio bod llai na 30% o holl fyfyrwyr Prifys-gol Caerdydd yn dod o Gymru, mae hynny’n addawol! O’r sawl a etholwyd fel SLA neu SRA, mae 21% yn honni eu bod yn medru’r Gymraeg; un ohonynt yn Swydd-og Llawn-amser a dau ohonynt (gan gynnwys fi) yn Swyddogion Rhan-amser. Cofier mai canran sylweddol lai na hynny o holl fy-fyrwyr y Brifysgol sy’n medru’r Gymraeg, felly oes, mae gennym ni Gymry Cymraeg Prifysgol Caerdydd fwy o gynrychiolaeth na ddylwn ni.

Ond wir, a fyddai unrhyw un ohonom yn honni bod mwy o gynrychiolaeth yn Undeb y My-fyrwyr yn golygu unrhyw beth o ran y Gymraeg? Dw i ddim yn credu y byddai unrhyw un ohonom o’r farn fod y ffaith bod 3 o’r Swyddogion newydd yn medru’r Gymraeg yn sicrhau dyfodol da i’r Gymraeg ym Mhri-fysgol Caerdydd ac Undeb y My-fyrwyr.

Sawl un ohonom sydd wedi ceisio cyflwyno gwaith trwy gy-

frwng y Gymraeg ac wedi wyn-ebu problemau? Fe geisiais i fy hun gyflwyno gwaith y llynedd a’r ateb a gefais oedd rhywbeth tebyg i, ‘Well, yes, I suppose you can. But why do you want to? I’ve never had anyone want to do that before!’ Y canlyniad, wrth gwrs, o ran fy ngwaith i, yw ei fod yn fwy o drafferth nag sydd werth cyflwyno gwaith trwy gyfrwng y Gymraeg, ac o’r herwydd, mae pob darn arall rwyf wedi ei gy-flwyno wedi bod yn y Saesneg. Gallwn, gallwn fynnu cyflwyno gwaith yn y Gymraeg fel mater o egwyddor, ond wir, pam yn enw’r Ddaear dylai fod yn rhaid imi wneud unrhyw beth ond oherwydd egwyddor? Pam ddy-lai fod yn rhaid imi neu unrhyw un ohonoch chi fynd i drafferth ychwanegol ond oherwydd ein bod yn dymuno cyflwyno gwaith ym mhrifysgol prifddinas Cymru trwy gyfrwng iaith swyddogol Cymru? Mae’n wallgof!

A sawl un ohonom sydd wedi blino ar dderbyn e-byst uniaith Saesneg wrth Undeb y Myfyr-wyr? Dw i wedi hen flino! Eto, darpariaeth docenistaidd – gwneud cyn lleied ag sy’n bosibl – sydd yn yr Undeb. Agwedd de-byg i, ‘Give them their bilingual signs and that’ll keep them quiet’, mae’n siƀr. Sori, na. Dyw e ddim yn ddigon da. Mae Undeb y My-

fyrwyr yn ddarparwr gwasana-ethau i ni fel myfyrwyr a rheini’n wasanaethau y mae’r Brifysgol yn eu cefnogi; yn hynny o beth, dylai fod gennym ni yr hawl i’w derbyn trwy gyfrwng y Gymraeg.

Os oedd unrhyw un ohonoch chi o gwmpas yng Nghaerdydd yn ystod wythnos yr etholiadau, mae’n siƀr y cawsoch syndod wrth weld mor Seisnigaidd oedd y broses etholiadol ei hun. O’r maniffestos a’r fideos, i’r taflen-ni a phosteri etholiadol, i’r dig-wyddiadau cyhoeddus megis yr hystingiau – braidd unrhyw Gym-raeg a brintiwyd neu a glywyd yn ystod yr wythnos lawn. Y peth sy’n codi braw – sy’n godi cyfog! – arna i yw mai dyna oedd yn y canllawiau! Mae'r canllawiau eu hunain yn amodi ar ddu a gwyn bod mwy o Saesneg yn y mani-ffestos ac ar y taflenni a phos-teri nag sydd o Gymraeg. Bron yn anghredadwy, ond yw e? Ond dyna’r gwirionedd. Rhaid newid y sefyllfa annerbyniol hon.

Does gan Undeb y Myfyrwyr ddim Cynllun Iaith Gymraeg dan Ddeddf yr Iaith 1993, felly mae’r sefyllfa’n anodd. Anodd hefyd yw’r ffaith nad yw’n glir ar hyn o bryd pryd fydd Safonau’r Gym-raeg dan awdurdod Mesur Iaith 2011 yn dod i rym, na chwaith beth fydd y safonau hynny. Rwy’n go-beithio cael cyfarfod gyda Cho-

misiynydd yr Iaith, Meri Huws, i drafod sut gellir gweithredu’r safonau newydd ar undebau my-fyrwyr a beth gallwn ni ei wneud nawr er mwyn codi pwysau ar Undeb y Myfyrwyr i wella eu darpariaeth Gymraeg.

Dyna’r peth pwysig. Rhaid i ni godi pwysau ar yr Undeb ac ar y Brifysgol i newid eu hagwedd. Dyna fy swydd i o Orffennaf ymlaen, ond dyna hefyd swydd foesol bob un ohonom. Rhaid i ni godi ein llais dros ein hiaith a’n diwylliant – a’n hawliau statu-dol – achos dw i’n gallu dweud wrthych chi’n gwbl sicr na fydd unrhyw beth yn newid heb law ein bod ni’n gwneud hynny. Dyna sut mae’n gweithio ers talwm o ran y Gymraeg.

Dw i’n ffyddiog, gyda’n gwaith ni i gyd dros ein hiaith, mi fydd gan y Gymraeg ddyfodol dis-glair ym Mhrifysgol Caerdydd ac Undeb y Myfyrwyr, ac fe fydd cenedlaethau o’n blaen yn edrych yn ôl ac yn synnu fy mod erioed wedi ysgrifennu’r fath ddarn â hwn ar gyfer Taf-od.

Gall unrhyw un sy’n dymuno cysylltu â fi ag unrhyw adborth neu syniadau o ran y Gymraeg anfon ebost at;

jonescr9@caerdydd.ac.uk.

Yn dilyn eu etholiad diweddar i rôl Swyddog Myfyrwyr Cymraeg yr Undeb, Cerith Rhys Jones sy'n trafod dyfodol yr iaith yn yr Undeb a'r Brifysgol

23Dydd Llun Ebrill 22ain 2013 | @taf_od

Taf-Od22–23

Ar y 23ain o fis Ebrill bydd S4C yn gwneud newidiadau mawr i’w amserlen. Mae’n debyg fod am-ryw o wylwyr wedi gweld yr hys-bysebion yn nodi fod newid ar droed. Ond a fydd y newidiadau hyn yn fuddiol i’r sianel, yn en-wedig wrth ystyried mai dyma’r ail dro mewn ychydig dros flwyd-dyn i S4C geisio ail-strwythuro cynnwys y sianel?

Yn syml, newidiadau i amser-len sydd yn cael eu gwneud y tro hwn. Newidiadau megis, symud y ‘Newyddion’ o’i slot arferol am 7:30pm i 9:00pm; amseriad ddy-lai fod yn fwy hygyrch i wylwyr, ond eto ydy 9:00pm rhy hwyr i rai? Bydd yno hefyd fwletin byr am 7:30pm yn dilyn ‘Heno’. Yn ogystal, ceir newid i amseriad ‘Rownd a Rownd’ o 6:10pm ar ddydd Llun a Mercher i 7:35pm, wrth iddynt geisio apelio fwyfwy at wylwyr hyn. Bydd ‘Sam ar y Sgrin’, sydd yn prysur ddod yn un o ffefrynnau’r sianel, yn cael ei ddarlledu’n gynt am 8:25pm.

Ymgais yw’r newidiadau hyn i apelio fwyfwy at wylwyr hen a newydd a bod yn fwy hygyrch id-dynt oll.

Mae’n debyg fod pawb yn ymwybodol o drafferthion S4C dros y blynyddoedd diwethaf gydag ariannu’r sianel, ac yn ar-bennig wrth geisio cadw’r sia-nel genedlaethol yn berthnasol i wylwyr cyfoes. Ynghyd â’r ne-widiadau strwythurol hyn, mae amryw o raglenni newydd wedi’u comisiynu gan gynnwys ‘Y Lle Arall: Ochr Un’, rhaglen fydd yn canolbwyntio ar yr SRG, yn ogys-tal â ‘Corff Cymru’ fydd yn ceisio darganfod unrhyw amrywiadau arbennig i DNA’r Cymry. Bydd yno hefyd atodiad newydd i ‘Po-bol y Cwm’ yn cael ei ddarlledu ar y we yn unig; bydd ‘PyC’ yn dilyn hynt a helynt aelodau ifen-

gach cymuned Cwm Deri. Dros y blynyddoedd diwethaf

mae S4C wedi ymgeisio fwyfwy i gynnig amrywiaeth o raglenni i’r Cymry. Ond llynedd, yn di-lyn gweddnewidiad mawr i ra-glenni megis ‘Wedi 7’ a ddaeth yn ‘Heno’, ac ychwanegiad ‘Pen-8nos’, bu gwrthwynebiad brwd gan nifer o wylwyr selog. Yn wir, roedd yn ymgais arall o nifer gan S4C i geisio ‘symud gyda’r amser’ ac efelychu rhaglenni poblogaidd Saesneg fel ‘The One Show’ oedd hyn. Methaiant fu’r gweddnewid-iad hwn, ac yn fuan newidiwyd yn ôl i’r hen strwythur. Mae’n debyg y tro hwn na fydd gymaint o wrthwynebiad gan na fydd ne-widiadau i gynnwys rhaglenni’r sianel.

Nid yw amserlen y BBC na ITV wedi newid ers blynydd-

oedd maith, felly pam fod S4C yn teimlo’n angen i wneud ne-widiadau o’r fath? Mae’n debyg, na wnaiff nifer sylwi ar yr ail-strwythuro, yn arbennig gyda ni-fer o wylwyr yn dewis defnydido gwasanaeth Clic yn hytrach na ar

y sianel ei hun. Yn wir, wrth dra-fod newidiadau hyn, gallaf ond meddwl am yr ymardrodd Ses-neg - ‘don’t fix it if it ain’t broke’.

Angharad HywelTaf-od

Ail-strwythuro amserlen y sianel...eto?!

Nid yw amserlen y BBC na ITV wedi newid ers blynyddoedd maith

Mae cyn Ysgrifennydd Cymru Paul Murphy wedi rhoi’r bai ar ysgolion ac athrawon Cymru am y nifer isel o ddisgyblion o Gym-ru sydd wedi mynd yn eu blae-nau i astudio yng Nghaergrawnt a Rhydychen.

Adroddwyd BBC Cymru wythnos diwethaf fod nifer y myfyrwyr a aeth i un o brifysgo-lion ‘Oxbridge’ o ysgolion cyfun Cymru wedi gostwng o 96 o fy-fyrwyr yn 2008 i 76 yn 2012.

Cafodd Paul Murphy, Aelod

Seneddol Torfaen, ei benodi gan Lywodraeth Cymru mis diwethaf i arwain tasglu i geisio hybu mwy o ddisgyblion o ysgolion Cymru i gael llefydd ym mhrifysgolion gorau’r wlad.

Ymysg y problemau a dynnodd yr AS sylw tuag at, oedd ei bry-deron fod y Fagloriaeth Gymreig yn “rhwystr”.

Un o brif bwyntiau Mr Mur-phy oedd ei bryder bod athrawon nawr gyda diffyg uchelgais a llai o wybodaeth ar sut i gael myfyr-wyr i mewn i brifysgolion Rhy-dychen a Chaergrawnt oherwydd bod llai o’r athrawon wedi bod yn

fyfyrwyr yn Oxbridge eu hunain.Fe ddywedodd Mr Murphy,

"rwy'n siƀr bod llawer o bobl if-anc fyddai'n hoffi mynd yno ond sydd ddim yn gwybod sut i fynd o'i chwmpas hi... Mae'n fater o gael gwared â'r ofn o elitrwydd canfyddedig pan fyddan nhw'n mynd yno... Oni bai ein bod yn rhoi pwysau ar ysgolion a chole-gau yng Nghymru i wneud hyn, yna fyddan nhw'n gwneud dim i wella'r sefyllfa."

Fe ddywedodd y prifysgolion eu bod wedi bod yn ceisio gwei-thio i ddenu mwy o fyfyrwyr o Gymru, gan gynnwys cynha-

dledd a gafodd ei gynnal gan y ddwy Brifysgol yn Abertawe fis diwethaf.

Cafodd gwerth y Fagloriaeth Gymreig ei gwestiynu hefyd gan Mr Murphy, yn enwedig ei effaith ar siawns myfyrwyr o gael lle yn y pryfysgolion. Mae Rhydychen

a Chaergrawnt fel arfer yn gofyn i fyfyrwyr gael tri lefel A wrth geisio i astudio yn y Prifysgolion, fodd bynnag, gyda’r Fagloriaeth Gymreig, mae llawer o fyfyrwyr 6ed dosbarth yn dewis ond astu-dio 2 bwnc lefel A.

Er y cwyno am y Fagloriaeth, yr hyn a ddywedodd Dr Julia Paolitto o Brifysgol Rhydychen yw yn syml, rheswm mwyaf am y nifer bychain o fyfyrwyr o Gym-ru sy’n astudio yn Oxbridge yw canlyniadau arholidadau, ac hyn-ny yw’r “rhwystr mwyaf o bosib”.

Tomos LewisGolygydd Taf-od

Dim lle i'r Cymry yn OxbridgeUn o brif bwyntiau Mr Murphy oedd ei bryder bod athrawon nawr gyda diffyg uchelgais

I'r rhai ohonoch oedd yn meddwl i'ch hunain "Lle oedd Taf-Od wythnos diwethaf?" Mae'n rhaid i mi ofyn am eich maddeuant, er bod cynnwys yn barod i fynd, yn dilyn nifer o wallau (Dim gennai yn bersonol...), roedd Taf-Od ddim yn y papur pan gafodd ei yrru i brint. Felly'r erthyglau sy'n Taf-Od wythnos yma yw'r rhai oedd fod yma wythnos diwethaf. Wps.

24 / Puzzles

sudokuEach Sudoku has a unique solution that can be reached logically. Enter numbers into the blank spaces so that each

row, column and 3x3 box contains the numbers 1 to 9.

kakuroFill in the grid so that each run of squares adds up to the total in the box above or to the left. Use only numbers 1–9 and never use a number more than once per run (a number may recur in the same row, in a

separate run).

UK\Vn�ULGGOHV

Last week's solution:

IntermediateFill in the blank squares so that each row, each column and each

3-by-3 block contain all of the digits 1 thru 9.

If you use logic you can solve the puzzle without guesswork.

Need a little help? The hints page shows a logical order to solve the puzzle.

Use it to identify the next square you should solve. Or use the answers page

if you really get stuck.

© 2012 KrazyDad.com

Sudoku #1More Intermediate Sudoku Puzzles by KrazyDad, Book 3

This will be a mem

orable month -- no m

atter how hard you try to forget it.

7 1 3 4

7 1

6 5

2 1 4

2 5 8 9

9 8 6

8 5

4 7

1 8 2 7

Fill in the blank squares so that each row, each column and each

3-by-3 block contain all of the digits 1 thru 9.

If you use logic you can solve the puzzle without guesswork.

Need a little help? The hints page shows a logical order to solve the puzzle.

Use it to identify the next square you should solve. Or use the answers page

if you really get stuck.

© 2012 KrazyDad.com

Sudoku #1More Easy Sudoku Puzzles by KrazyDad, Book 8

When the wind is great, bow before it; when the wind is heavy, yield to it.

9 8 1 7

6 8 3

1 4 7 5 8

8 2 7 5

7 2 4

4 6 2 1

5 4 9 6 7

7 6 5

3 7 9 8

Easy

Steve has been put in charge of half-time entertainment for this year's Varsity rugby match. He has a dragon, a swan and some ‘bread of heaven’. Steve needs to trans-port all three to the Millennium Stadium.The only problem is that Steve's milk ! oat can only han-dle himself and one other animal/item; if Steve leaves the dragon alone with the swan, the dragon will eat the swan; and if the swan is alone with the bread, the swan will eat it.How can Steve safely ensure the weirdest half-time show ever?

Each row describes the row above, so the next row in the sequence will read: 1113213211 (one 1, one 3, two 1s, three 2s, one 1).

Monday April 22nd 2013 | @mediacsu

Minus The Bear Wednesday 24th April at Clwb Ifor Bach, 7.30pm, tickets £11

We Are The In Crowd Thursday 25th April at Solus, 7pm, Tickets, £16.50

The Correspondants Thursday 25th April at 10 feet tall, 8-m, Tickets £10

Signature Presents: Eton Messy Thursday 25th April at Buffalo, 10pm, Tickets £5

Bedlam and Aparture presents: Sub Focus Friday 26th April at Solus, 9pm, Tickets £16.50

MUSIC

The Great Gatsby Tuesday 23rd - Saturday 27th April at the New Theatre, Tickets from £8

Ghost until Saturday 27th April at the Millenium Centre, Tickets from £17

Listen Up! Wednesday 24th April at Clwb Ifor Bach, 10.30pm - 4am, Tickets £3.

Comeplay Saturday 27th April at Solus, 10pm - 3am, Tickets £5

THEATRE

SPORT

CLUBS

Listings 25

ART & CULTURE

Life Drawing Class tuesday 23rd April at 10 feet tall,

6pm

Kisomba African Tango Class Tuesday 23rd April at

10 feet tall, 8pm.

Welsh Varsity 2013 at themillenium

stadium, 7pm, Tickets and a T-Shirt £15

26 / Sport

Piste-off Bath silenced by Cardiff

Gone are the days when the Car-diff University Snowsports team watched on help-lessly as other

better-equipped and more fo-cused teams denied them a po-tential avalanche of medals.

The annual British Univer-sity Snowsports Championships (BUSC) held in Alpe D’Huez last month saw the third successive year of unprecedented success for a club now only partially hin-dered by gratuitous alcohol con-sumption.

Having taken the Ladies’ team slalom silver in 2011 and finished third in 2012, the impressive com-bination of race captain Kirsty Hatcher, Grace McCutchan, Claire Brown and Anita Zycka managed to reclaim their bronze medals.

This was despite falling victim to some dubious seeding, which saw a notably below-par Durham reach an anti-climactic final and

claim secnd place. Cardiff ’s reigning Western

and UK snowboarding champi-ons were eager to compete at a national level, despite the ab-sence of their talisman and cap-tain Tom Parr, who was sidelined with illness.

After a tense third-place play-off, President Tom Bayles, Hugo Bristol, James Colston and Berk-shire prodigy Alex Grinsted were celebrating a thoroughly de-served third place.

Individually, Tom Bayles picked up not only an outstand-ing fourth place in the snow-board giant slalom, but narrowly missed out on gold in the Board-er Cross, being forced to settle for ‘slopey’ seconds! The Civil Engineering student also secured some valuable BUCS points for the club and university.

Bayles said: “The results have been just great. To take three medals in one year is possibly one of my greatest achievements and I’ll definitely have trouble topping it in the future”.

James Colston also secured an excellent seventh place in the snowboard giant slalom and Lucy Tomlinson finished 10th in the female Skier Cross.

A special mention must also go to the tenacious freestyle cap-tain Alex Papadovassilakis, who finished 47th in the Skier Cross in a very strong field.

A total of 78 Cardiff students made the trip to the Alps and those who didn’t formally com-pete certainly made their pres-ence felt on the après-ski scene.

The afternoons saw an out-standing display of the group unity and amicability that sets the Cardiff Snowsports society apart from the rest!

The results capped a momen-tous year for a club which, faced with limited funding due to a reputation for intoxication and

debauchery, has consistently expanded and improved in the competitive arena.

Over the past two semesters, the club has celebrated numer-ous victories across the UK.

In November and February, Sarah Hoefflin cemented her po-sition as university freestyle ski-ing’s first lady, back-flipping her way to first place in the finals of the British Dry Slope and Indoor Championships in Edinburgh and Leeds.

The infamous snowboard team managed to round off their year with impressive second- and third-place finishes overall in the Western finals of the ‘Kings’ league competition, and third place at the British Indoor Re-gional Championships.

Even more impressive was the girls’ domination in the ladies’ competition, where they secured first and second place overall.

The club will be hoping for similar success for all six teams at the national finals later this month!

However, the club’s scope stretches significantly further than it’s racing team’s exploits.

In December, 360 students em-barked on the annual Snowsports Christmas trip to Val-D’Isère, in the idyllic French Alps, for a sun and snow-filled week.

First-year Geology student Alice Crookenden described the events to gair rhydd: “It was a magical way to end a great first

term at Cardiff. I’ve made so many friends for life, and it was like doing my gap year all over again! I can’t wait to go again next year.”

Every November, a 40-strong group of Snowsports competitors and supporters journey North for the relentless British University Dry Slope Championship week-ender in bonny Edinburgh.

This event sees 2,000 UK stu-dents from 70 different universi-ties invade the Scottish capital for four days of racing and free-style competitions, as well as big-name DJs and headline acts such as Danny Byrd and Shy FX.

All this and more will be on of-fer to students next year. Begin-ners are always more than wel-come to join the society.

If you want to find out more in-formation about the Snowsports Club’s trips or their sizable socials, check out their Facebook page:

www.facebook.com/cardiff.snow-sports

Sport writers Alex Papadovassilakis and Kirsty Hatcher reviews a successful week for Cardiff Snowsports in the French Alps

The annual British University Snowsports Championships (BUSC) held in Alpe D’Huez saw the third successive year of great success for Cardiff

The club will be hoping for similar success for all six teams at the national finals later this month

27Monday April 22nd 2013 | @gairrhyddsport

Sport26–32

Cardiff run riot in Madrid

Ending last year’s competitive season with an impressive haul of 104 medals and a ranking of second in the university cham-pionships, the Cardiff University Taekwon-Do Club had a lot to live up to this year.

After gaining 41 golds in total last season, maintaining Cardiff ’s reputation as one of the best uni-versity squads in Britain has been a challenge the club has taken very seriously. Coached by Dean Matthews, the team have im-pressed at this season’s tourna-ments, so far earning 81 medals in six national events, with another two major competitions lined up for the summer.

Recently, Cardiff took a squad of 12 students to Leeds for the an-nual International Taekwon-Do

Foundation (ITF) British Univer-sity Open, which brings together some of the top university squads to compete for the golds in spar-ring, patterns and destruction.

Led by club president Jona-than Beer, the team included senior grades as well as a few of the club’s newest members, who would be undertaking their com-petitive debut.

Nerves were running high as the squad prepared to put up a good fight and maintain their outstanding record for another year. The day was a success, with Cardiff winning a total of 14 golds, 10 silvers and five bronzes.

Most notably, Oli Mather picked up four golds, winning all of his categories. In addition, Tom Harris and Jonathan Beer each took three golds, with Jona-than breaking three boards with one technique to take the gold

in destruction. Cardiff ’s domina-tion at the tournament led to the club finishing first in the league table and winning the title of ITF British University Champions for 2013.

The squad’s overall perfor-mance has demonstrated Car-diff ’s growing talent, but the upcoming clash at Varsity has helped to inspire the club to keep focused and push on with their training. Cardiff seek to take an-other victory and retain their un-defeated Varsity title, despite key members being away at the Euro-pean Championships in Slovenia.

Swansea have shown good form earlier in the year, prom-ising an intense and exciting encounter for the Taekwon-Do clubs. Cardiff will face Swansea as part of the Varsity Shield and will compete at the Welsh Insti-tute of Sport.

Brenna McInerneySport Writer

Taekwon-Do Club crowned champions

Cardiff University Athletics and Cross-Country Club embarked on its first tour last week, return-ing with an array of success in-cluding personal bests and an age group winner.

CUAC’s first tour took 23 ath-letes, both long-distance and sprinters, to Madrid to compete in the city’s Half Marathon and 5km road race.

Setting off first were Nick Marsh and Ben Slack competing in the 5km road race. Marsh, who is a regular sprinter, and Slack, who arrived to the meeting in a cape and a pair of superman shoes, both completed the 5km in just over 23 minutes and within 20 seconds of one another.

In the Half Marathon, all start-ers were able to finish inside 2 hours and 20 minutes, with sprinters Jack Button and Jess Alfert crossing the line in 2:13:02 and 2:13:09 respectively. Many of CUAC’s long-distance run-

ners experienced their debut Half Marathons in Madrid, with Cardiff ’s first female runner, Mai Worthington, across the line fin-ishing in 1:50:17. She was followed by successive debutants, Gemma Mayled and Laura Howells, fin-ishing within four minutes of each other either side of the two-hour mark.

CUAC’s male debut runner Pe-ter Hart ran an impressive 1:27:28, despite still recovering from in-jury. However, the most notable

debut runner was Dan Nash, win-ning in his age group. Despite not having competed at this distance before, Nash clocked a time of 1:11:13 to win the under-20 age group by over two-and-a-half minutes and achieve 30th place in the overall race. This result sees Nash topping the UK’s un-der-20 half marathon rankings; a considerable achievement for a debut run.

Other CUAC members en-joyed success as they achieved personal bests. First of these was Antonio Cirillo, running 1:23:05,

shaving three minutes off his previous time. Lee Tredwell also ran an impressive personal best of 1:34:44.

CUAC’s veteran runner Alex Ulyet finished the Half Marathon in a remarkable 2:06:23, despite claims throughout the race that he could no longer feel his legs. On completing the 13.1 miles, he had this to say: “It was more pain-ful than being stuck between the rocks in 127 Hours and coinciden-tally took about the same time.”

Following Sunday’s strenuous activities, CUAC took the eve-ning off from the usual training routine to indulge in some team bonding and casual drinks.

This proved to be an issue for future social secretary Dan Mitchell, who was unfortunately inhibited quickly by the eve-ning’s excitement and forced to return at 11:30pm for recovery.

However, while the inexperi-ence of the future social secre-tary was telling, it was plain to see that trip organiser and cur-rent social secretary Rhys Annett was on top form, crawling into bed in the early hours with James Thompson and Laura Howells, despite a crippling injury sus-tained during the run.

CUAC would like to thank Rhys for such a memorable and well-organised tour. It truly was a fantastic weekend and we can only hope that future tours can live up to it.

�

Rhys AnnettSport Writer

Two Grand Slams and a Six Na-tions title for Wales, two caps for the British and Irish Lions, and now a degree in Medicine from Cardiff University – eight years of education in the Welsh capital have come to an end for Wales centre Jamie Roberts with the announcement that he is now a qualified medical doctor.

Roberts’ graduation comes a month shy of his departure from the Cardiff Blues, with a move to France imminent – report-edly to Racing Metro in Paris. In the meantime, he has two games left for the Welsh region, against their West Wales rivals, the Scar-lets, and league leaders Ulster.

Talking about his latest achievement, Roberts said he

was “looking forward especially to a few lie-ins after lots of early mornings in the library before and after training. It’s been tough but it’s been worth every second to achieve one of my main goals in life.

“My nickname amongst team mates has, for some time, been ‘Doc’ and I’ve always felt like a little bit of a fraud. It’s nice that I’ll finally be able to call myself a doctor,” he said.

Before joining the Blues, Rob-erts played regularly for the Car-diff University Rugby Club, and although he did not play in the match, he was selected in the squad for the 2007 Varsity Match. Since then, he has acted as Car-diff ’s representative at Varsity events, last year turning out with Swansea alumnus Alun Wyn Jones to promote the event.

Dr Roberts passes medical exams

Tom Parry-JonesSub-editor

23 athletes went to Madrid to compete in the city’s Half Marathon and 5km road race

If one was asked to name the form team heading into the final stages of this year’s IMG competi-tion, it would be difficult to look past C-PLAN.

The IMG newcomers are on an impressive six-match winning streak that has seen them rocket to the top of the third division, in which they were placed fol-lowing a tough qualifying group containing Premiership outfits Psycho Athletico, EarthSoc and Roath Park Rangers.

Their skipper, Mark Tagliafer-ri, tells gair rhydd how his team have found the IMG experience.

So, who are C-PLAN? Who is your squad made up of, and how have you enjoyed IMG?We are a team mainly comprised of Geography and City and Re-gional Planning students, with a few players from other courses such as Business, Economics and Law, as well as having a mong geologist. We are all second-year students as well. We have all found the IMG experience very enjoyable.

You’re fighting hard at the top of the Third Division in your very first season as a team and your results have been excellent in Phase 2. Are you pleased with how the season is going so far?Couldn’t be happier! Bit disap-pointed with our first loss of the second phase, but all the results after that have been very promis-ing. We hope to keep our strong form up until the end of the sea-son.

Any potential stars in your team? Who have been your standouts?Cultured midfield playmaker

Joshan Singh and pacey, flying fullback Mark Tagliaferri, not to mention some strong per-formances from the rest of the defence. There have been per-formances of a high standard in both phases from Meaney and Brown, the midfield combination of Singh and Phillips has been a sight to behold, as well as our clinical forwards Beckett, Dafydd and Martin.

How would you describe the C-PLAN style of play? We’ve had a lot of teams referring to themselves as Stoke City, so someone needs to redeem the competition!

The defensive skills of Oscar Pis-torious’ lawyers, the midfielders with the work rate of beavers and the finishing of an emperor penguin. We tend to use set piec-es to our advantage, with long throw-ins and corners working particularly well due to the aerial threats we can put in the box. We are quite a physical team and have enjoyed putting in some hard tackles. I don’t think I could name a team who we play similar football to, in all honesty.

Who have been your toughest opponents?In the first phase, we found teams difficult to break down,

in particular Roath Park Rang-ers. However, after playing more and more football as a team, we started to improve and are now pulling some quality results out of the bag. In the second phase, we haven’t really had any tough games. We feel we were very un-lucky to have lost the first game of the phase.

Do you have much of a social scene? What do you get up to on a typical Wednesday night?Every now and again, we will meet up for a few drinks. Retro on Wednesday is popular with the team due to it being so cheap! But we do also meet at The Lash

at the Union as well, and go for the odd pint or curry.

Where are you looking at fin-ishing this season? Are you confident that you can win the league with JOMEC and Time Team hot on your heels?Please, no, my heart! We should win this league comfortably. The league is in our hands and we have some easy games approach-ing, so, hopefully, we won’t upset the apple cart and throw away the league. We feel winning the league in our very first season would be a great achievement and a great benchmark for next year.

28 / Sport

Team Talk: C-PLAN C-PLAN captain Mark Tagliaferri describes his side’s debut season to Ross Martinovic

Focus

Premiership P W D L GD Pts

1 CARBS FC 7 7 0 0 16 21

2 Roath Park Rangers 7 4 0 3 6 12

3 Law A 4 3 0 1 4 9

4 Psycho Athletico 6 3 0 3 2 9

5 SOCSI 6 3 0 3 -2 6

6 Momed AFC 7 2 0 5 3 6

7 Pharm AC 6 2 0 4 -12 6

8 EarthSoc 3 1 0 2 -1 3

9 FC Euros 6 1 0 5 -16 3

Division One P W D L GD Pts

1 1st XI 6 4 0 2 7 12

2 Cardiff Mets 4 4 0 0 6 12

3 Inter Menan 4 3 1 0 4 10

4 Engin Loco FC 6 3 1 2 2 10

5 AFC Dentistry 6 3 0 3 6 9

6 CHAOS FC 5 2 1 2 -3 7

7 Cardiff Uni IMG 1st 6 2 0 4 -2 6

8 History AFC 4 0 1 3 -6 1

9 Cardiff Uni IMG 2nd 5 0 0 5 -14 0

Division Two P W D L GD Pts

1 C-PLAN AFC 7 6 0 1 14 18

2 JOMEC FC 6 4 1 1 8 13

3 Time Team 5 4 0 1 5 12

4 Engin Auto FC 7 3 2 2 5 11

5 Chemistry FC 5 2 1 2 1 7

6 OPSOC 7 2 1 4 -4 7

7 Gym Gym 6 2 0 4 -5 6

8 Law B 4 1 2 1 0 5

9 Computer Science FC 5 1 1 3 -3 4

10 Too Big To Fail 6 0 0 6 -21 0

29Monday April 22nd 2013 | @gairrhyddsport

Sport27–32

As the only surviv-ing member of last season’s JO-MEC squad, Dot-ty Baker was left with the daunting

task of creating a competitive side from scratch.

Finishing in second position in Group C is an excellent return for the JOMEC netball girls. Dot-ty speaks to gair rhydd about her season as captain.

So, the season has finished with JOMEC in second posi-tion in Group C. Are you hap-py with the progress you have made?We have managed to win pretty much every game apart from one (I think) so we’ve become a much stronger team over the past semester. We are delighted with the league position we’ve achieved and hopefully this can be built on going into next sea-son.

Have there been many chang-es in the squad from last year? Lost many key players ahead of this season?I was the only player remaining from last season, which was quite scary as I had a lot of work to do to build a team. So, it’s a whole new side this season but luckily we’ve all got on really well this year.

How has the new team shaped up? Who have been the stand-out performers this year? Any girls catching the eye?The whole team have really stepped up this season and we have notched up some really pleasing results. Livi Azadegan is our top scorer, Carys Bowden is our strongest centre and Jo Faulkner has been our most-improved player. I am happy to

be leaving the team to Hannah Wright and Tasha Smith, who have shown dedication and skill throughout the whole season.

Where do you think your strengths lie? Any particu-lar positions where you have been consistently strong?Our training sessions this season have really focused on gelling the team together, talking to each other on the field and improving our team work.

Is there much interest in IMG netball within the JOMEC school? Is it easy to recruit at the start of the season?I don’t actually study Journalism, so initially it was quite difficult to recruit, especially from within the school. However. after a few girls decided to join the team, they told a few friends who came along to training.

What’s the social scene like for JOMEC netball? What do you get up to on a typical night

out?We always start at Varsity in Roath, and usually head on to The Lash. We always have a great laugh and get on really well!

Who have been your tough-est opponents this year? Have you had any strongly fought battles?SOCSI B were our toughest op-ponents this year. They are a great team and work really well together, and we played them very early on in the season.

We have had quite positive feedback regarding the run-ning and organisation of IMG this year? How have you found it and is there anything you would look to improve?It’s been OK, the umpires are great and friendly. I think that a bit more guidance as to the setting-up of a team at the be-ginning of the year would have been helpful. As a new captain and the only surviving member of JOMEC from last season, I felt pretty lost when I started!

The Tip-Off: JOMEC In this week's Tip-Off, James Shapland speaks to JOMEC Netball captain Dotty Baker

Division Two P W D L Pts

1 ENCAP B 5 4 0 1 12

2 SOCSI A 6 4 0 2 12

3 Pharmacy A 5 3 1 1 10

4 Cardiff Uni B 5 3 0 2 9

5 Engin Auto 6 2 0 4 6

6 Cardiff Medics A 3 1 0 2 3

7 EarthSoc 6 0 1 5 1

Division Three P W D L Pts

1 SOCSI B 5 5 0 0 15

2 JOMEC 6 5 0 1 15

3 OPSOC 6 3 0 3 9

4 Chemistry 6 2 1 3 7

5 Psychology B 6 2 0 4 6

6 CARBS B 6 2 0 4 6

7 URNU 5 0 1 4 1

Division Four P W D L Pts

1 Cardiff Dental 6 5 0 1 15

2 Cardiff Medics B 4 3 0 1 9

3 HistorySoc 6 3 0 3 9

4 Bioscience 5 2 1 2 7

5 EUROS 6 2 0 4 6

6 Pharmacy B 5 2 0 3 6

7 Gym Gym 4 0 1 3 1

Division One P W D L Pts

1 ENCAP A 5 5 0 0 15

2 CARBS A 5 5 0 0 15

3 Law A 6 4 0 2 12

4 Cardiff Uni A 6 3 0 3 9

5 Law B 6 2 0 4 6

6 Psychology A 6 1 0 5 3

7 Engin Loco 6 0 0 6 0

30 / Sport

Varsity 2013 FixturesSport Venue TimeSailing Cardiff Bay 10:00am

Golf Vale of Glamorgan 11:00amTaekwon-do WIS Dojo 11:00am

Ultimate Frisbee Pontcanna – Pitch 4 11:00amBadminton WIS Jubilee Hall 11:30am

Netball WIS Main Hall 11:30amMen’s Football WIS Main Pitch 12:00pm

Tennis Lawn Tennis Club 12:00pmMen’s Lacrosse Pontcanna – Pitch 3 12:30pm

American Football Pontcanna – Pitch 4 12:30pmWomen’s Rugby Pontcanna – Pitch 1 1:00pm

IMG Football Pontcanna – Pitch 2 1:00pmMen’s Fencing WIS Upper Hall 1:30pm

Women’s Fencing WIS Upper Hall 1:30pmWomen’s Basketball WIS Main Hall 1:30pm

Men’s Squash WIS Squash Courts 1:30pmWomen’s Squash WIS Squash Courts 1:30pmMen’s Volleyball WIS Jubilee Hall 2:30pm

Women’s Volleyball WIS Jubilee Hall 2:30pmWomen’s Hockey WIS Hockey Astro 2:30pmFreshers’ Rugby Pontcanna – Pitch 1 2:30pm

Women’s Football Pontcanna – Pitch 2 2:30pmWomen’s Lacrosse Pontcanna – Pitch 3 2:30pmMen’s Basketball WIS Main Hall 3:00pm

Men’s Hockey WIS Hockey Astro 4:00pmMen’s Rugby Millennium Stadium 7:30pm

31Monday April 22nd 2013 | @gairrhyddsport

Sport26–32

Adam and Sion ready to seize their chance

With the big-gest game of the year fast ap-proaching, Director of

Rugby Martyn Fowler took the time to speak to gair rhydd in a recent interview.

Results have been disappoint-ing this season, with Cardiff reg-istering only 14 points over their 10 league games, seven short of their total from last year, when they finished third.

Having won only three times in BUCS Premier League South A season, they find themselves above only Glamorgan in the table, 13 points behind Varsity ri-vals Swansea.

Despite this, Fowler believes that his squad has the experience to ensure that recent form has no effect on the fixture.

“The potential starting XV will be alright. Most of them are play-ing Premiership rugby, a few have played regional rugby and a few have tasted international rugby as well, so I don’t think that [con-cerns about recent form] will be an issue.

“With any Varsity, it’s ulti-mately a case of who manages the nerves best, and, like any cup game, it’s really about who per-

forms better on the day. “Form goes out the window for

games like this.”When quizzed about Cardiff ’s

growing injury list, Fowler was optimistic that the majority of his squad would be fit to play on Wednesday.

“There’s only one definitely out – Rhys Luckwell. He would have started on the blindside, but he broke his collarbone on Sunday in training. Luckily for us, back row is one of the areas where we’ve got great strength in depth.

“We can’t really name a side yet, but we’re well covered.”

The 2012–13 season has pre-sented with a number of difficul-ties for Cardiff, the most prob-lematic of which has been the squad’s difficulty in balancing Cardiff rugby with other com-mitments.

“We’ve done everything we can do in terms of getting ready. It’s been really difficult this year because of the large amount of inclement weather, not just the university games have been knocked back and had to be rear-ranged, but so have a lot of club games in Wales.

“The amount of players play-ing external rugby and managing their time in terms of ensuring

that they’ve got enough time to do that, play for the university, study and play in the Varsity has been a real challenge this year.

“I’d say that about 90% of our team play external rugby as well as playing for the university.

“Obviously, a number of these guys get paid to play external rug-by, so that will take precedence. It’s been quite hard to manage that. I’ve been very mindful that, as a university, the academic side has to come first.

“Telling a player to play four times a week - twice for his club and twice for the university - in the knowledge that they need study time is difficult.

“We always have to take the moral high ground as a univer-sity club”.

Held in the world-famous, 74,500-capacity Millennium Sta-dium, the Varsity game is famous for a boisterous atmosphere, something that Fowler is fully appreciative of.

“We’re expecting a carnival atmosphere, the one thing that sets Varsity apart from any other rugby match I’ve played in or coached in is the atmosphere. Having the roof shut, the noise bounces back of it and straight back down. It’ll be a great occa-sion.”

Experience can see us through – Fowler

Varsity 2013 Fixtures Varsity 2013 PreviewSport writer Jacob Dirnhuber talks to Cardiff Director of Rugby Martyn Fowler ahead of this week’s Varsity grudge match

Rugby players Adam Field and Sion Jones speak to Sport editor Ross Martinovic about their three-year journey to Varsity

The past few years have been quite a whirlwind for Sion Jones and Adam Field.

Having com-menced their Cardiff University careers in 2010, the pair swiftly joined the University’s famed rugby club.

Both impressed sufficiently in early training sessions to enjoy tastes of 1st XV action in their first year, helping Martyn Fowl-er’s side gain promotion into BUCS Premier League South A, before they were selected for the 2011 Freshers’ Varsity match against arch rivals Swansea.

In front of a raucous crowd at Pontcanna Fields, Cardiff recov-ered from a 13–3 deficit on the hour to snatch a draw, with Ad-am’s stunning 40-metre solo try, which he describes as “one of the best tries of my life”, sparking the

revival.The home side went on to lose

in a drop-kick competition, but it is an experience that both dis-cuss with fond memories.

“I was originally involved in the main Varsity squad as a fresh-er but didn’t make the cut,” Sion, a Human Geography and Plan-ning student, recalls.

“I remember feeling very dis-appointed about the whole thing. Mark Schropfer did a good job of keeping me in a positive mind-frame and assured me that my opportunity would come eventu-ally.

“I was then made available to play in the Freshers’ Varsity along with Adam Field. It was a great pleasure to play alongside people who I shared my first year of university with and I really en-joyed the experience.

“I remember the atmosphere down at Pontcanna was electric,

with Cardiff and Swansea stu-dents cheering on their respec-tive teams on the sidelines.”

Sion and Adam recovered strongly from the disappoint-ment of missing out on selection for the main Varsity match, in which Cardiff were comprehen-sively defeated 18–28, and fea-tured prominently in the Univer-sity’s first season back in Premier South A.

Cardiff finished third, ranking them as the top Welsh university above Cardiff Metropolitan and Swansea, before brushing the lat-ter aside 33–13 to claim 2012 Var-

sity Cup.Adam and Sion unfortunately

missed out on selection again, but a string of notable performances throughout the season saw Adam become one of Fowler’s first signings as Cardiff RFC’s direc-tor of rugby last summer, while Sion was rewarded with a Wales Students call-up.

And their time appears to have come at last with both poised for selection in Fowler’s squad for Wednesday’s showpiece event at the Millennium Stadium.

Injuries and unavailability have struck Cardiff ahead of the match, with skipper Ross Wardle and vice-captain Rhys Luckwell both ruled out, and Marine Ge-ography student Adam predicted a much closer affair on this occa-sion.

“I think it will be a lot closer this year,” the centre said.

“It’s a big loss in physicality

with Ross and Rhys not playing. Rhys is also a real leader and has been a key figure throughout the whole year.

“He has never missed training and games even when he was in-jured so we’re gutted for him.”

Sion added: “Many of the boys who were in last year’s team have graduated.

“Boys such as Jake Cooper-Woolley, Ross Grimstone, Craig Lodge and Jordan Wood really helped our pack dominate all fac-ets of play, which gave our backs the platform to run the ball.

“This year, it’s going to be a lot tougher, but I am still confident that our forwards can really chal-lenge Swansea up front.

“We still have a back line that can do damage – we just need to stay calm, not let the pressure get to us and be clinical on the day.”

Injuries and unavailability have struck Cardiff ahead of Varsity

SportSnow joke! Cardiff Snowsports impress in Alpe d’Huez<< page 26

cardi! studentmedia.co.uk/gairrhydd Monday April 22nd 2013 | Issue 1003

Fowler hopeful of Varsity glory

<< page 31

The Tip-Off: JOMEC Netball

Taekwon-Do top of tree

<< page 29

Cardiff University Taekwon-Do Club have gone from strength to strength this year, culminating in lifting the ITF British University Championship in Leeds recently.

Brenna McInerney reports on the success on page 27.