July 2011
3 posts
Musical duo promote positive message →
One of my first articles published online at www.positivenews.org.uk - very different from what I’m used to writing!
Positive News →
February 2011
1 post
“Consider the Earth’s history as the old measure of the English yard, the...”
– John McPhee
December 2010
5 posts
“I’ve seen other writers dissipating their talent by being brilliant...”
– John Le Carre
7 tags
"Students belong here as much as anyone else"
Elected as a Guildford Borough Councillor for Onslow at the age of 23, Chris Ward has campaigned for many of the issues facing Surrey students during his time in office. Here, he discusses his past and present work for the community, as well as his reaction to The Browne Review as a member of the Liberal Democrats.
In 2003, Chris Ward faced his first challenge in the world of politics. Then...
6 tags
Tinie Tempah - Disc-Overy
“They say they ain’t heard nothing like this in a while/that’s why they play my song on so many different dials” boasts Tinie Tempah on his recent rags-to-riches hit ‘Written in the Stars’. While the South London rapper’s claim to innovation may be debatable, there is no disputing that his reputation has preceded him over the past six months. Since his first two collaborations with Labrinth on...
Dear Mr. Clegg, Forget Us At Your Own Peril
(Dated: 6th October, 2010)
To say politics is a dangerous game would be an understatement. You don’t have to sit down and watch Have I Got News For You? Or The Thick Of It to appreciate the cynicism many voters feel towards the underhanded mechanics of government. Politicians will say one thing when they mean another, avoid direct questions and openly lie in front of millions if it means shielding...
A United Front Against Oppression
China’s record for violating human rights was called into question again this month, after Norway awarded literary professor and civil rights activist Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Peace Prize. Xiaobo was first imprisoned for his involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests, now infamous worldwide for the government’s subsequent crackdown. He served in a labour camp for a period in the 1990s,...
September 2010
1 post
Alive Till I'm Dead - Professor Green
2010 has been a good year for London-based breakthrough acts. Since Tinie Tempah, whose hugely anticipated album Disc-Overy is due to be released this October, kick started the trend with massive club hit Pass Out in February, the charts have been dominated by such acts as Example, one-time soul superstar Plan B, Chase & Status, Roll Deep and esteemed producer/singer Labrinth. As perfect...
August 2010
1 post
“They say the 60s died when the Manson Family butchered Sharon Tate and company,...”
– Charlie Brooker
July 2010
11 posts
jjmasterfunk asked: Hey, fellow Surrey student. Some great posts you got here!
“The BBC has been criticised for its lingering shots of Wimbledon crowd members...”
– David Mitchell
“I thought it just went too far — and that’s from me, the first Bond in space!”
– Roger Moore on Die Another Day
“I was horrified on the last Bond I did. Whole slews of sequences where...”
– Roger Moore on A View To A Kill
Doddfest FTW
terriblepie:
The festival season might as well be over now, because Doddfest was a RIGHT laugh. We probably shouldn’t have gone to the pub because it broke up the momentum of the evening… but thankfully we more than got it back by the end.
We had football, fires, fights (with Tom Goulding) and general festivities.
I’d give a big thank you to everybody who came, but they don’t have Tumblr. So...
“That’s a tetanus jab waiting to happen”
– Me on Dodd’s pogo stick.
June 2010
12 posts
“It’s like raaaiiinnnn on your wedding day”
– Me on literally annoying everyone ever
Festival Virgins: Just Shut Up and Do It.
They’re the latest column-inch fashion, a hilarious formula that our favourite national newspapers have chanced upon in a bid to fill the empty pages between the relentless roadside bombing in Helmand at the front and the demoralized football commentary towards the back. Take a cynical, slightly neurotic dullard whose idea of paradise is watching How Clean is Your House? repeats on More4,...
“Cheap, affordable power could be attained simply by keeping Big Brother on the...”
– (via terriblepie)
Goth Kid: I guess you can join up with us if you want.
Goth Kid 2: Yeah. We're gonna go to the graveyard and write poems about death and how pointless life is.
Butters: Uh, uhm no thanks. I love life.
Stan: Huh? But you just got dumped.
Butters: Well yeah, and I'm sad, but at the same time I'm really happy that something could make me feel that sad. It's like, it makes me feel alive, you know? It makes me feel human. And the only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt somethin' really good before. So I have to take the bad with the good, so I guess what I'm feelin' is like a, beautiful sadness. I guess that sounds stupid.
Goth Kid 2: Yeah.
Stan: No. No, Butters, that doesn't sound stupid at all.
Butters: Well, thanks for offering to let me in your clique, guys, but, to be honest, I'd rather be a crying little pussy than a faggy Goth kid.
“There is no future. There is no past. Do you see? Time is simultaneous, an...”
– Dr. Manhattan
A Short Circuit
Funny, how the hardest decisions in life are often the simplest. Marriage for instance, that one moment (theoretically) whereby two members of the human race embark on a journey of commitment to the grave; an everlasting dedication to one another, elicited by the first person singular ‘I’ and the transitive verb ‘do’. Elsewhere, the difference between unfathomable success and untimely tragedy is...
Grit & Things That Sound Like Drills and... →
The entire human race Woke up one day with wings. There was no need for cars or buses, or planes because They could do all sorts of things -
Mankind stared itself in the face and said:
“We don’t need these synthetic things - these cogs and sprockets and springs have all been a waste of time!”
…
“If you actually examine the relationship between real life and fiction,...”
– Alan Moore
My Interview with Elizabeth Noble for The Stag →
Interview with international bestseller Elizabeth Noble on her new romance The Way We Were, released May 2010. Please be sure to check out many of the other great pieces printed in the final edition of The Stag this academic year.
“Just came back from the club
I can’t hear her breathing
Something...”
– Rob Swire on the biggest understatement of the century
I was watching a pirated copy of Who Shot Mr....
Oh University, what have you done to me?
May 2010
13 posts
The Barbers
I noticed it the moment I stepped through the doorway, the change that is. My presence was heralded by the ding! of a potential customer, followed by Mrs. Penny Tildesley’s fussing as she forced the drenched anorak from my back. The room had that dank odor, the whiff of remorse and decay that inevitably succeeded a sense of former entitlement. Porcelain tiles clung battered to the ivy green...
Regional Ignorance
Tom says: (21:35:11)
essex doesn’t have a beach!
Aimee. says: (21:35:25)
I know my way around
Aimee. says: (21:35:28)
and I can tell you
Aimee. says: (21:35:34)
there is a beach very close by
Tom says: (21:36:06)
aimee the landfill site next to the town pond isn’t the seaside
Aimee. says: (21:36:13)
Nooo
Aimee. says: (21:36:16)
it’s the seaside
Aimee. says:...
The Greenhouse →
Essential Cult Fiction: #2 John Fowles' The Magus...
“All the time I felt I was being watched, that I was not alone, that I was putting on an act for the benefit of someone…”
Nicholas Urfe is a young, middle-class chauvinist fresh out of University. Armed with the cynical confidence of a naïve intellectual, he sets his sight on a teaching job in Phraxos, an idyllic Greek island in the Mediterranean. But when he encounters the estate of aging...
Mandelson on the War Path
Note: This article may appear slightly outdated in light of our new government. It was intended for the first issue of The Stag after Easter, however due to a Liberal Democrat member abusing the terms and conditions concerning propaganda in the student paper, that edition has since been made obsolete. You’ve just got to love those arse-kissing Clegg fanboys!
I know what you’re...
I bet all you Lib-Dem voters
feel fucking stupid now!
“The Labour Party is not the personal plaything of Lord Mandelson”
– Anonymous MP
“Well did you hear, there’s a natural order
Those most deserving will end...”
– Running the World, Jarvis Cocker
When Flanders Failed
Lisa: Dad, do you know what Schadenfreude is?
Homer: No, I do not know what shaden-frawde is. Please tell me, because I’m dying to know.
Lisa: It’s a German term for `shameful joy’, taking pleasure in the suffering of others.
Homer: Oh, come on Lisa. I’m just glad to see him fall flat on his butt!….
“The press held up Brown’s Bigotgate outburst as evidence that he’s...”
– Charlie Brooker
April 2010
5 posts
Sigh.
Matt. says: (13:12:50)
you really don’t do anything now
Matt. says: (13:13:05)
you used to perhaps rant about something in a blog
Matt. says: (13:13:21)
now you just sit there in your stripey pyjama bottoms at your desk
Tom says: (13:13:50)
…
Tom says: (13:13:59)
it’s depressing you know what i’ve got on.
Before the Train
Just a little time left to squeeze in some Pokemon Fire Red emulatornage.
My life is going to be so pointlessly futile from this moment forth…
Plan B - The Defamation of Strickland Banks
Its fans have gone so far as to call it “a film for the blind”. Pretty strong stuff you might agree. Yet while it may be hard to swallow such charitable acclaim at first, no one is suggesting that Ben ‘Plan B’ Drew’s anticipated follow up to 2006 grime juggernaut ‘Who Needs Actions When You Got Words’ is anything but exciting.
Before we even get on to the music, the title presents you with a...