Who cares about being antisocial? Some meals are so good the foul after-effects are worth it… I am, for the most part, a sociable chap. I like the company of others. Apart from homeopaths, libertarians, Morris dancers and men who drive small sporty BMWs with leather trim. Oh, and John McCririck. Other than that, come one, come all. In certain matters of appetite, however, I
Continue reading …Who cares about being antisocial? Some meals are so good the foul after-effects are worth it… I am, for the most part, a sociable chap. I like the company of others. Apart from homeopaths, libertarians, Morris dancers and men who drive small sporty BMWs with leather trim. Oh, and John McCririck. Other than that, come one, come all. In certain matters of appetite, however, I
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Simon Cowell is rumoured to be on the verge of quitting The X Factor. Tom Lamont and Euan Ferguson debate whether the programme could survive such a blow Yes, says Observer journalist Tom Lamont To borrow Cowell’s own expansive interpretation of maths: 1,000,000% yes. He is essential to The X Factor . That is not to say that when, as has been suggested, Cowell steps down from his on-screen role on the show, ending a seven-year run as judge and mentor to focus his attention on American TV, The X Factor will end. More than 20 million tuned in at its peak last year; ITV will not cull this revenue source in a hurry. But without Cowell The X Factor will be diminished. Keen smiles ( We’re OK! ). Host Dermot O’Leary doing twice as many clicks and heel-spins ( It’s still fun! ). Singers trying to look grave as they listen to verdicts from Cowell’s replacement ( This is legitimate criticism! ). The show will live on, but unhappily. The contestants are the problem. Conditioned by years of platitude and catchphrase-analysis from the show’s other judges (first Louis Walsh and Sharon Osbourne, then Walsh, Dannii Minogue and Cheryl Cole), auditionees have learned to care only what Cowell thinks. Good performers wait kindly while Walsh repeats their name several times and pronounces on their “star quality”, while Minogue says something about “smashing it” and Cole tries to cry. Yeah, yeah, their faces say – but what does he think? Bad performers look properly distraught if Walsh, Minogue or Cole say something mean, but always have one eye on Cowell. One of the incidental delights of The X Factor is that bit, a quarter-way through, when the contestants are divided into groups (under-25s, boy bands, and so on) and told which judge will “mentor” them. If they get Cowell it’s chaos: fancying themselves that much closer to escape from routine life, the hopefuls run towards him as if he were the last American helicopter out of ‘Nam. The other judges get a bit of fist-pumping, all the contestants grin, but their eyes are worried. They’re thinking about those peers, weeping and bear-hugging in Simon Cowell’s living room. It shows they’ve got some industry nous, already, to care about Cowell so much. Outside the bounds of its 20-week TV run, the show’s best chart successes have been defined by their relationship to Cowell. Either boosted by his lavish support (Leona Lewis, an X Factor champ in 2006) or by his teasing opposition (Will Young, a contestant on X Factor predecessor Pop Idol , launched to fame by being the first contestant to talk back to Cowell, to spar with the master). So, yes, he’s essential – essential, lastly, to audience enjoyment. At least mine. As is probably clear, I’m not so much a fan of The X Factor as a fan of the Simon Cowell bits. He’s really the only one with the nebulous quality the programme purports to search for. Charged to think up new ways to say “You’re good” or “You’re bad” well over 100 times a series, he keeps his little blasts of critique enviably fresh. Perhaps more impressively he keeps all boredom in check as, every year, the same crowd of karaoke veterans, frustrated professionals, tearful family types ( always instructed to audition at the deathbed of a relative) troop through. He keeps our boredom in check too. Cowell’s the whole show. No, says Observer TV critic Euan Ferguson Personally, I’d rather Mr Cowell stayed in Britain. Not, and I mean that word in big angry italics, because I think he does any good, but because Americans are now going to spend the next year thinking the cream of British style, wit and intellect today is faithfully represented by Simon Cowell and Piers
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Simon Cowell is rumoured to be on the verge of quitting The X Factor. Tom Lamont and Euan Ferguson debate whether the programme could survive such a blow Yes, says Observer journalist Tom Lamont To borrow Cowell’s own expansive interpretation of maths: 1,000,000% yes. He is essential to The X Factor . That is not to say that when, as has been suggested, Cowell steps down from his on-screen role on the show, ending a seven-year run as judge and mentor to focus his attention on American TV, The X Factor will end. More than 20 million tuned in at its peak last year; ITV will not cull this revenue source in a hurry. But without Cowell The X Factor will be diminished. Keen smiles ( We’re OK! ). Host Dermot O’Leary doing twice as many clicks and heel-spins ( It’s still fun! ). Singers trying to look grave as they listen to verdicts from Cowell’s replacement ( This is legitimate criticism! ). The show will live on, but unhappily. The contestants are the problem. Conditioned by years of platitude and catchphrase-analysis from the show’s other judges (first Louis Walsh and Sharon Osbourne, then Walsh, Dannii Minogue and Cheryl Cole), auditionees have learned to care only what Cowell thinks. Good performers wait kindly while Walsh repeats their name several times and pronounces on their “star quality”, while Minogue says something about “smashing it” and Cole tries to cry. Yeah, yeah, their faces say – but what does he think? Bad performers look properly distraught if Walsh, Minogue or Cole say something mean, but always have one eye on Cowell. One of the incidental delights of The X Factor is that bit, a quarter-way through, when the contestants are divided into groups (under-25s, boy bands, and so on) and told which judge will “mentor” them. If they get Cowell it’s chaos: fancying themselves that much closer to escape from routine life, the hopefuls run towards him as if he were the last American helicopter out of ‘Nam. The other judges get a bit of fist-pumping, all the contestants grin, but their eyes are worried. They’re thinking about those peers, weeping and bear-hugging in Simon Cowell’s living room. It shows they’ve got some industry nous, already, to care about Cowell so much. Outside the bounds of its 20-week TV run, the show’s best chart successes have been defined by their relationship to Cowell. Either boosted by his lavish support (Leona Lewis, an X Factor champ in 2006) or by his teasing opposition (Will Young, a contestant on X Factor predecessor Pop Idol , launched to fame by being the first contestant to talk back to Cowell, to spar with the master). So, yes, he’s essential – essential, lastly, to audience enjoyment. At least mine. As is probably clear, I’m not so much a fan of The X Factor as a fan of the Simon Cowell bits. He’s really the only one with the nebulous quality the programme purports to search for. Charged to think up new ways to say “You’re good” or “You’re bad” well over 100 times a series, he keeps his little blasts of critique enviably fresh. Perhaps more impressively he keeps all boredom in check as, every year, the same crowd of karaoke veterans, frustrated professionals, tearful family types ( always instructed to audition at the deathbed of a relative) troop through. He keeps our boredom in check too. Cowell’s the whole show. No, says Observer TV critic Euan Ferguson Personally, I’d rather Mr Cowell stayed in Britain. Not, and I mean that word in big angry italics, because I think he does any good, but because Americans are now going to spend the next year thinking the cream of British style, wit and intellect today is faithfully represented by Simon Cowell and Piers
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Frisée and trevisse, alfalfa and amaranth… with all the spring leaves to choose from, April is an inspiring time for salads The spring weather encourages a lighter touch to our cooking, and in my kitchen at least, a greater emphasis on main course salads. The leafy base may include some of the crisp, refreshingly bitter chicories and mild, mixed spring leaves but this is also when sprouted seeds and members of the cress family can be used to add everything from mustardy heat to a
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Helped by the RSPB, a small, remote community in the South Atlantic has worked together to save 4,000 endangered birds One of the world’s most dramatic wildlife rescues is coming to a successful conclusion on Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic. Thousands of endangered northern rockhopper penguins, which were caught in thick oil slicks, have been saved in a month-long operation involving virtually all of the islands’ 260 inhabitants. The penguins were trapped in oil released by the freighter MV Oliva when it ran aground and broke up last month off Nightingale island, 20 miles from the main island of Tristan da Cunha. Thousands of these delicately feathered birds – known locally as pinnamins – were coated in thick oil and all would have died but for the extraordinary intervention of local people. “Just about everyone on the island has played a part in this operation,” Katrine Herian, an RSPB project officer based on the island, said. “It was an amazing, co-operative effort. Some people took boats to Nightingale to pick up oiled penguins – a very tricky task given the swells and winds there. Carpenters on the main island built pens to keep them in. The main store – where tools, cement and machinery are stored – was cleared out and sand put down on the concrete floor so we could keep the penguins there. “Then the island’s swimming pool was drained of nearly all its water and used as a home for cleaned birds. People even ransacked their freezers to find fish they could thaw out and use to feed the rockhoppers. They would have starved otherwise.” In the end, about 4,000 rockhoppers were saved, although Herian warned that it was impossible to say how many others may have died: “We won’t really know until next year when the birds start breeding again and we can get a proper chance to count numbers and see how badly they were affected.” The northern rockhopper penguin, Eudyptes moseleyi, is found on only a few islands in the Atlantic, with 99% of its population making homes on the British overseas territory of Tristan da Cunha, a lonely, volcanic archipelago considered to be the world’s most remote inhabited group of islands. There is no airstrip and the nearest major ports are in South Africa. Keeping track of the northern rockhoppers in such a location is not easy. Nevertheless, ornithologists have discovered that their numbers have plunged by more than 90% since the 1950s, with factors such as climate change and over-fishing of squid and octopus – the penguins’ main source of food – being put forward as possible causes. As a result, the northern rockhopper is now classified as an endangered species. The wrecking of the MV Oliva, therefore, posed a significant threat to them. The ship was carrying 65,000 tonnes of soya beans from Brazil to China when it ran aground on 16 March on an islet off Nightingale island. All 20 crewmen were rescued by islanders, but the vessel broke apart and released more than 1,500 tonnes of oil on to the waters around the island, coating the rockhoppers. Within a day, islanders and RSPB workers began their remarkable rescue operation. When winds and the swell were low, they sailed to the island in small boats and, using Tristan’s principal fishing vessel, the Edinburgh, as a command vessel, began shipping oiled rockhoppers back to the main island. “The birds get very distressed when they are coated in oil,” said Herian. “They lose body temperature very quickly in the water and preen themselves to get rid of the oil. They get weaker and weaker as they do that. Unless they get help, they die.” Capturing the birds as quickly as possible became a priority. Then they were transported to the main island, where they were corralled in pens, then showered and soaped to get rid of the oil and given liquid glucose feeds that vets usually give to pet cats and dogs to provide them with a quick energy boost. Then they were dried off under infra-red lamps. “Many of the islands’ older inhabitants played a key role in this work,” said Herian. “These are remarkably hardy people and pensioners think nothing of walking many miles every day to get about. They did a lot of the hard work in cleaning up the penguins.” The local rescue mission was also given crucial support from a team from Sanccob, the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds, which arrived on the island on 5 April. They brought specialist cleaning equipment, vitamins – and 20 tonnes of frozen pilchards. The Sanccob team also installed three large hot-water geysers in the wash-bay to improve penguin-washing, as well as hundreds of metres of piping and cable to link to the island’s water and electrical supplies. In the end, a complex routine was established. Workers sprayed a fine mist of de-greasing agent over stricken penguins. Then the birds were washed in a warm bath of biodegradable soap and an antiseptic solution before being given a gentle clean round their eyes using a toothbrush. Later the rockhoppers were moved to the islanders’ swimming pool so that their swimming skills could be assessed. Those that passed the test were released into the Atlantic. “We will know next year how successful this operation has been when we count how many breeding pairs have returned to Tristan,” said Herian. RSPB Endangered species Wildlife Pollution Robin McKie guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Before U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles began to rain down on Muammar Gaddafi’s air defenses, the only conversation that President Obama had to have was with his senior advisers. They, and they alone would decide whether a country founded as a democratic republic would engage in what George Washington would have likely viewed as a “foreign entanglement” – using 21st-century ordinance against a sociopath with a history of violence and a worse hat fetish than Sammy Davis Jr. Obviously, in 200 years the United States has evolved from a rebel-with-a-cause into a world power, and additional involvement in world affairs has become part of the cost of doing business. There is also a good argument to be made that after the terrible mistake of the Iraq invasion, the US can do some good by putting an end to the murderous Gaddafi in Libya, as part of an international coalition made up of Arab and African countries, blessed by the United Nations. Yet, that does not change the fact that congressional support for this operation was as important as an appendix or a Newt Gingrich marriage vow. Obama and his people simply knew they could ignore the people’s representatives and safely rely upon a militarized culture primed to support an attack on an Arab nation. Particularly one the US had already thrown down with only a generation ago. It is this fact that makes author, syndicated columnist and talk radio host David Sirota’s new book, Back To Our Future, not only a fascinating read about the culture of the 1980s, but a manifestly important work in helping explain why the United States does the things it does today. From involvement in a civil war in Libya to allowing a madman sans background check to saunter into his local arms bazaar and purchase a high-powered firearm for an attempted assassination of a congresswoman. The latter being easier than say, finding plutonium for your DeLorean in 1955. ‘Outlaw with morals’ As Sirota explains it, the ’80s were the age of cross-marketing, when concepts that had a place in American history suddenly became commonplace. The anti-government language of president Ronald Reagan adorned films such as Ghostbusters and E.T. These “political messages in non-political settings indoctrinated the young, when their filter for political propaganda was turned off.” As a result, these framed narratives became part of the conventional wisdom, continuing to this day. In much the way E.T. heightened suspicions about our government, Libyan terrorists in Back To The Future and a bad-guy professional wrestling star named The Iron Sheik helped prepare the American people for the role we’ve played in the Arab world over the past decade. Meanwhile, the “outlaw with morals”, or rogue who had to work against the system to get things done, was a key message that reached the masses. The bromide of “government being the problem, not the solution”, was not only contained in Reagan’s philosophy, but Wall Street’s ethic, the frontier mythology of many regions of the country, and films, music, and television series, but perhaps most importantly promoted using athletes by one of the most powerful marketing machines ever seen – Nike. As Sirota offers about Nike’s effect, “they took this narrative to the level of societal saturation”. This can at least partially explain the rogue individualism that can be found in the love affair certain Americans have with guns, and even more importantly, the corollary that only they can protect themselves, often from the very government they once looked upon for this service. Of course, this cultural sea change did not just happen by itself. An array of right-wing think tanks and media organizations, born in the 1970s to lead this kind of a cultural revolution, synergistically grabbed this societal zeitgeist and hopped, skipped and jumped with it, declaring the 1960s and 1970s an illegitimate, naïve, or even dangerous social experiment. As Sirota reminds us, in the 1980s a minister speaking at The Heritage Foundation, one of these newish (1973) and lavishly funded right-wing media and policy operations intricately tied to the Reagan administration, believed he and his ilk, were “here to turn the clock back to 1954 in this country”. ‘Prepubescents’ in charge Danny Goldberg, former CEO of Air America, has also recognized this cultural evolution, and the role played by well-funded conservative organs in helping spread the non-love. As he sees it, appealing to the psyche and vision of the American people or pulling on their heartstrings, if you will, is in short supply on the Left, as “Democrats do not use imagination and culture to open minds for their agenda”. As Goldberg put it in a Nation piece, “you can count how many people click onto a web page, how long it was viewed and how many people it was forwarded to but determining how much impact it has on the minds of the readers requires educated guesses and fallible intuitive human analysis.” The Left had better begin to under this outsized role of culture, imagination and emotion in our politics soon. Because if we are indeed operating in parameters set up by not only the politics, but the arts and letters of 1980s, reinforced by millions of dollars invested in long-term conservative projects to convince the American people this is the way it has always been, we are in for a rough decade or three. For as Sirota says, “our world is increasingly run by the prepubescents, college kids, and young ladder-climbers who were originally indoctrinated and inculcated in the 1980s.” Therefore, if we are looking for an alternative to all-too-present strains of foreign adventurism, Wall Street me-ism and domestic militia-ism – among other challenges – we will need our own cultural rebirth to return to the values that once animated this nation. Because, whether he comes from Krypton, Kansas City or Kazakhstan, I am not ready to start kneeling before Zod anytime soon. You can follow Cliff on Twitter: @cliffschecter This column was first published at Al Jazeera English
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Bright, popular, rebellious and creative, 21-year-old Louise Cattell had everything to live for. Then she made a fatal mistake. She took the party drug ketamine and was found dead in the bath by her flatmate. There are 125,000 other ketamine users in the UK. Louise’s parents want to make sure it never happens to any of them… When Vicky and Ross Cattell woke at the usual time on Wednesday 2 March they had no reason to think the day would not pan out just like any other. They were at their flat in Geneva, where they had been living for just over a year, and their first thought, as always, was for their children in London, Tommy, 23, and Louise, 21. Both, as far as they knew, were still safely in bed, Tommy at the family home in Belsize Park and Louise at her bachelor-girl flat in Clapton, further east. Ross set off for work at Deloitte, the financial advisory firm, and Vicky prepared for her daily exercise routine. Everything seemed utterly normal. Then, just before his 8.30am meeting, Ross’s phone rang with the news that would rip their world apart: Louise was dead, drowned in the bath after taking ketamine, the horse tranquilliser that is currently the “party drug” of choice among young people across the UK. “When I first found out , I couldn’t believe it. I thought there must have been a mistake,” says Ross. “It was the most terrible shock.” Vicky nods in agreement: “You have this nightmare so many times as a parent that something like this is going to happen and then you wake up and think, ‘thank God, it’s not true’,” she says. “The problem is that now it is actually true. The worst thing that could happen has happened and there’s not a thing we can do about it.” We are talking at the Cattells’ house in London just a few days after their daughter’s funeral. It is a lovely light-filled space, full of bright rugs and cushions, books and paintings: an elegant yet unpretentious family home. There are photographs of Louise everywhere: smiling at the camera alongside her brother, her parents and her friends; striking poses in a succession of crazy frocks, her hair a different colour and style in every shot. Beneath the stairs is an impromptu shrine to “our darling girl” complete with scented candles, flowers and yet more photographs – Louise hula-hooping in giant sunglasses and a leopard print mini-dress; Louise winking and pouting in a long black wig and matt black lipstick: Louise with lilac hair in a black corset, competing in The X Factor (she got through to the second round). Among some wilting lilies stands a solitary half-bottle of champagne, its label customised with diamanté studs. Vicky shows me the card tied to its neck. “Dearest Louise,” it reads, “Something to help you on your journey”. Given what she has been through in the past few weeks, Vicky is remarkably composed. So, too, is Ross, who provides coffee and biscuits on a tray, then listens thoughtfully as his wife tells me about the last few weeks of their daughter’s life. Stroking Louise’s cat Pickle on her lap, Vicky recounts how Louise had returned in early February from a month in Australia visiting friends – a 21st birthday trip funded by her parents – and thrown herself into applying to art college. Already established as a photographer and DJ, and with a track record in the fashion industry (she did a foundation course at the London College of Fashion and worked as a production assistant during several London Fashion Weeks for names such as Giles Deacon and Julien Macdonald), Louise had decided it was time to develop her talents as an artist. “She was very, very creative, always artistic as a child, but she’d never focused like this on her art before. She did amazingly well getting her portfolio together so quickly,” Vicky says. “That was what we talked about during the last conversation we had – I told her I was so proud of her for getting it done in time.” It is only when she talks about the night Louise died that Vicky’s voice breaks and the emotion she must be feeling spills over. “She had dropped off her portfolio to Chelsea College of Art the night before and spent the day hanging out in her flat, working in the garden. In the evening three male friends came round to supper. Her best girlfriend, who was living with Louise at the time, was also there. Apparently, they had a nice meal – Louise was a terrific cook – and they drank some wine. At some point in the evening, I’m told, Louise and some of the others took ketamine. “The girls watched TV for a while and then Louise’s friend went to bed. Louise was tired too but didn’t think she’d be able to sleep, maybe because of taking the drug but also because she had things on her mind. She had given up her job [as a visual merchandiser for the fashion chain New Look] before going to Australia and she knew she had to find another one because she had bills to pay. She’d been worrying about that. So she said she was going to take a bath to help her relax. About an hour later her friend woke up and realised straight away that something was wrong. She just had a feeling. She went into the bathroom and found her. She had fallen asleep in the bath and drowned.” Horrified, Louise’s friend called the emergency services who told her how to try and resuscitate her but by then it was too late. The police called at the Cattells’ home in Belsize Park at 7.30am to inform Louise’s brother she had died. “It was terrible,” Tommy tells me over the phone after I’ve seen his parents. “I can see it so clearly in my mind, it is imprinted on my brain. Me in my pyjamas, the policeman and policewoman sitting on the sofa looking awkward and tired, the disbelief I felt in my heart – I just kept thinking it could not be true.” Too shocked to use the telephone, Tommy asked a family friend who was staying at the house to ring Ross and tell him what had happened. Before leaving Geneva, Vicky posted a message on Louise’s Facebook page. “Our darling Louise is dead,” she wrote. “Please help us through this very difficult time.” Within days she had been contacted by hundreds of her daughter’s friends, offering and seeking condolence. On the Saturday after Louise’s death they held an “open house” for everyone who had known her and around 200 people turned up throughout the day. “Obviously our own grief is terrible,” says Vicky. “But for the young people involved it is also incredibly hard to bear. Her friend who found her, the poor girl, I can only imagine what she is going through. We realised we had to support them all.” Because of the scale of the response to her death, the Cattells changed their original plan for a small, private funeral and opted instead for a “big send-off” at Golders Green Crematorium. Upwards of 400 people attended the humanist service, where in place of the usual hymns and prayers there were poems written by Louise’s friends and songs from her Spotify playlist, such as “Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns N’ Roses and “Just Like Heaven” by the Cure. The order of service was a fanzine-style brochure again put together by friends, full of touchingly goofy photos of Louise vogueing for the camera in outrageous, barely there clothes, mad wigs and kooky make-up, and with a heartbreakingly simple coverline – Louise 1989-2011 – that brings home the brevity of her life. The service ended with a mass singalong to the theme song from the movie Cabaret “in celebration of Louise’s love of life and karaoke”, which her mother thought a fitting tribute to “someone who never sat alone in her room”. Reading the many tributes on the memorial website set up by her parents, and talking to her friends and family, you get the sense that Louise Cattell was an absolute one-off. “Rest in peace you truly fantastic and much-loved beautiful person,” reads one testimonial. “Louise I’ll miss you for ever. You were the greatest, funniest, most amazing person I’ll ever know. RIP darling. I love you,” says another. And so it goes on. “She was full of energy and fun, she was always smiling and positive and you felt so happy and excited in her company,” says her friend Charlie, who was a classmate at Francis Holland School in central London. “She was a true original.” Her mother recalls Louise going to school aged 12 with green hair, being sent home, only to return with a subtle shade of aubergine, which they let her keep. “I think they secretly admired her chutzpah,” says Vicky. She admits she and Ross always let Louise do “exactly what she wanted to do, to a degree, and there were people, parents of her friends, who disapproved of that. But we tried things like curfews and it was hopeless. We found it worked best for the whole family when we trusted her to use her freedom wisely and she almost always repaid our trust. She got all her GCSEs and A-levels despite running club nights and doing gigs as a DJ from the age of 14. No doubt, there will be people who say all this happened because we let her be too wild but I simply don’t think that is true. Dying your hair a different colour every week and staying out late does not necessarily mean you are heavily into drugs.” Louise was in no sense a habitual drug user. “I’d talked to her about drugs quite a bit,” says Vicky. “She’d come across some quite serious cocaine and heroin addicts on the north London music scene and she said to me, ‘Mum, I’ve seen what drugs can do to you and how they’ve messed up people’s lives, and I’m never going to go there.’ She may have taken the odd ecstasy tablet but she didn’t even like smoking cannabis. I asked Tommy about that the other day – he said she didn’t like the taste.” According to her friends, ketamine was something Louise took on an occasional basis, as many of them do too. “It’s a new thing which is everywhere at the moment. People of my age are all doing it,” says one of her close friends, who is 21. Louise’s brother adds: “I was not surprised to hear she had taken it because it is very much part of the arty, east London scene she was involved in. It’s quite socially acceptable. They all take it, it is definitely the fashionable drug of choice at the moment.” Vicky believes that while young people of Louise’s age are very aware of the dangers of addiction to hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine, they are much less alert to the risks attached to occasional recreational use of ketamine. “We’ve been talking about this to a lot of Louise’s young friends, and I think because ketamine is so widely used and available, despite being illegal, there’s this idea among young people that it is somehow safe, but it is incredibly dangerous. I’ve found it too painful to do too much research into the drug but what I do know is you never know what is in it – and none of the people taking it seem aware of the dangers of using alcohol with it, for example. If Louise had not drunk alcohol, would she still be alive? We don’t know.” Also known as Special K, Vitamin K, Super K and just K, ketamine is actually a powerful dissociative general anaesthetic originally used as a tranquilliser for horses and other large animals, which depresses the nervous system and causes a temporary loss of body sensation. It was briefly fashionable in the 1960s as a psychedelic drug but then largely disappeared from recreational use, resurfacing in Europe and north America during the 90s. It was made a class C drug five years ago, but despite this ketamine now boasts an estimated 125,000 users in the UK, and more users among young people in England and Wales than heroin and crack cocaine combined. In 2008 the British Crime Survey revealed it was the fastest growing “party drug” among 16-24 years olds, leading it to be called the “new ecstasy”. Users taking a small amount experience a euphoric rush which wears off fairly quickly. Larger amounts can cause people to “trip” for about an hour – they call it “going into a k-hole”. Often they experience hallucinations and out-of-body experiences similar to those caused by taking LSD. Some report conversations with God. Because you cannot feel pain when you have taken ketamine it is possible to injure yourself quite badly and not be aware of it. Users may also become incapable of moving while under the influence, again exposing themselves to physical risk. It can cause dangerously high blood pressure if mixed with ecstasy or amphetamines. And, crucially, in relation to Louise’s case, if the drug is taken with other depressant drugs such as alcohol, even a small amount can dangerously suppress breathing and heart function and can lead to unconsciousness. Louise’s brother does not believe she would have been aware of these kinds of side-effects before taking the drug. “I think she would probably have thought, everyone’s taking it so it must be safe. The fact that it is only a class C drug could well have reinforced this view,” he says. David Nutt, the former chairman of the British Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, suggested before he was sacked from his post in 2009 that ketamine should be upgraded from a class C drug due to the harm it can cause to users. However, Louise’s parents are not convinced that a change in classification would have a great effect on the numbers of young people using it. Ross does not believe young people pay much attention to drug classifications anyway. “I think raising awareness is much more important than legislation. Young people need to be more risk-aware when it comes to ketamine,” he says. Vicky has a background in the media and PR – she has worked for the Telegraph Group and was most recently media director for the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development – and she is planning to draw on this to start a campaign to increase awareness of how dangerous ketamine can be. “We’re going to work with some of Louise’s friends and some of my contacts in the film industry to put together a short film using Louise’s life as a showcase, an example of a bright young life cut short, coupled with facts and figures to let young people know what is going on and to raise awareness of the dangers and risks associated with the drug,” Vicky explains. “It is going to be made by young people for young people. It doesn’t need to cost a lot of money. We’ll make it a viral campaign, on the internet, which is where it will reach young people.” Another close friend who did not want her name mentioned claims that Louise’s story has already had a profound effect on people who knew her and even on those who didn’t. “This has certainly woken up a lot of people,” she says. “I know a lot of people who regularly use ketamine who are stopping and thinking about what they are doing. I really want to warn people about it now.” She and other friends of Louise think it is especially important to get the message about the dangers of ketamine into schools and youth clubs because the people taking it are getting younger and younger. “My friend’s little sister who is 14 was caught taking it at school. Apparently loads of other girls in her year had been taking it.” As well as their campaign, Vicky and Ross are planning a memorial gathering for Louise on 21 June. This will be a simple Quaker-like ceremony where people will be able to contribute memories from the floor, after which they will launch magic lanterns over London in her memory. Next year the Cattells will stage a tribute concert to commemorate Louise’s life and highlight the ketamine awareness campaign. “We want to prevent any other young person from having a horrible accident like this,” says Ross. “If any good can come from this…” His voice tails off. In the meantime, he and Vicky are faced with the unbearably painful business of clearing Louise’s flat and tying up the loose ends of her young life, which had barely begun. “I’ve been to her flat once to collect her jewellery,” says Ross. “It was quite tough. But somehow not as tough as going to the bank to close her bank account, or ringing the water company to tell them to stop sending the bills.” Hardest of all was “ringing Ucas and telling them there was no point in progressing her applications to art school any further”. Louise’s brother Tommy doesn’t think he will ever get over her loss. “People say you grow to accept it but at the moment I just feel a really sad feeling in the pit of my stomach all the time. I’d always imagined that in 30 years’ time we would still be going on holiday together, going out of each other’s houses and our children would be friends. Now that’s never going to happen. It makes me feel empty and alone.” www.louisecattell.com Drugs Drugs policy Young people David Nutt Social networking Social trends Lisa O’Kelly guardian.co.uk
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With projected A-level grades of three As and a B, this talented student had hopes of reading English at Oxford or Bristol. But the huge influx of students trying to beat the rise in tuition fees has left her and countless others disappointed For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to go to Oxford. Martin Luther King had his dream, and I have mine – granted, mine is a lot more egotistical and selfish and not really concerned with social utility, but I’m 17 years old, give me a break. I don’t want to go to Oxford because I’ve had some inspirational chinwag with an eccentric teacher who satiated my growing ego with tales of how much potential I have and how good a writer I am (I am pretty good though, I can paint pictures with words, make them all pretty, like). I want to go there because it’s the best university in the country (excepting Cambridge, but they’re essentially the same thing, let’s call a spade a spade) and, according to universally acknowledged league tables, the best for my subject, which, if you hadn’t guessed from my colourful vocabulary, is English literature. I didn’t get into Oxford and it hurt, but I’m not going to detail my grieving process because it brings up too much buried pain and I’m reserving that material for my therapist. Anyway, it’s not just Oxbridge and it’s not just black students: getting into university this year has been a perilous feat, leaving students depressed, dejected and with a dismal outlook on life. The cap on tuition fees has been blown off like an unruly volcano and now we students are festering in the poisonous lava. David Cameron and Nick Clegg are trying to get ethnic minorities interested in aiming higher, yet their coalition government is allowing the increase in fees and sticking us with the prospect of a £27,000 debt over our heads. So this year, with an unbelievable influx of applicants all trying to beat the hike, all universities have had the undesirable job of choosing the best students out of a pretty indistinguishable pile. And thus we are stuck with a catch-22 where the only way out is a student lottery. Which is why people with higher grades, lower grades and pretty much the same grades as me are getting in, and others with higher grades, lower grades and pretty much the same grades as me are not. And that is just the way the unfair, unjustified and just plain stupid cookie crumbles. The most painful thing about not getting into Oxford was that, at the time, I didn’t understand why. I was predicted A*AAB (which, after the results of my January exams, has now been revised to A*A*A*B – bittersweet, to say the least), I had a strong personal statement, a good reference and a glittering personality (seriously, ask anyone). I met the entrance requirements, I aced the admissions test and my interview went pretty well, too. What went wrong? It wasn’t just Oxford that rejected me, but Warwick, Bristol, UCL and, seemingly, life – life has rejected me and left me a writhing, gibbering wreck with nothing to look forward to except a perpetual cycle of rejection. Hallelujah. Bristol was the worst. With every other university, it was more or less a clean break. It was all “we have received your application” and then – kaboom – “unsuccessful”. But not Bristol, they had to reject me with style. They had to be the rejectors to beat all rejectors. They had to make me want it. They had to make me wait with ceaseless expectation as they tended to my application. Keeping track became like monitoring a disease that got progressively worse, and then, when I had the most chance of recovery, Bristol pulled the plug on my life support machine, leaving me, to all intents and purposes, dead. And I still don’t know why. I mean, running with this disease metaphor, a doctor, while tending to my rotting corpse, would give my family closure, tell them that my application lacked passion or something, so the next time, following miraculous revivification, I would understand how not to die. But none of the universities thought past killing me. I do know, however, that it was not a lack of aspiration that led to these failures. It’s often said that due to a stifling culture that forces black students into not aiming high enough, or aspiring for better than their council flat in Bermondsey or their inevitable descent into gang warfare, ethnic minorities think Oxbridge is an unachievable dream. Well, they don’t. It’s not a case of black people seeing a mass of impenetrable whiteness at Russell Group universities and therefore being scared out of applying. I mean, we got a man on the moon. We didn’t let our fear of aliens stop us from breakdancing on that over-sized lump of rock, did we? Well, I mean “we” as a collective human race, not “you and me”, unless you happen to be Neil Armstrong. Ethnic minorities won’t succumb to not succeeding just because they’ve been dissuaded by a couple of secondary school teachers; if there’s something to aspire to, people aspire. I aimed high, and am from a generation that consistently dares to be better and achieve greater things, especially in the face of adversity. I aimed even higher when I was selected by the Social Mobility Foundation (SMF) – because I’m high-achieving, but underprivileged (yippee, I think) – for special mentoring. I still had to apply, though – you’d think being selected would grant me immunity from having to fill out the application form, but no such luck. I was paired with an amazing mentor called Ajay, who went to Cambridge and got a first in history and is now a journalist. This made me plan out the next decade of my life as such: go to Oxford, get a first-class degree, become a journalist, be amazing. As a mentor, Ajay gave me advice about applications and emailed cyber slaps whenever I was freaking out about life, the universe and everything. The SMF set me up with a wealth of interview preparation sessions and got speakers to come in and talk to us about careers, so I was pretty confident when, in wintry December, I had my interview at Oxford. It went well. You can’t hear my tone, so I’m going to have to state that I am not being sarcastic, it actually did go pretty well. When I got to Oxford, it was initially rather calamitous because I tried to make friends with some international students who probably thought I was an alien (with the blue hair and everything) and promptly ran away, and I couldn’t talk to anyone else because they were all sitting in fully formed circles in the junior common room, so I went to bed thinking, “Gah! Oxford is terrible!” But then I woke up and it was like it never happened. I met the rest of the English students and we bonded before our interviews and there was a really nice atmosphere because we swore that we would be best friends for ever. Except we can’t now, because Oxford has dashed my dreams of world domination. And having wicked cool friends. I had two interviews over consecutive days, each with two tutors. I’d been prepared for the old “So, why do you want to read English?” question, which, of course, they didn’t ask (because that was what my personal statement was answering). I was expecting a sort of “good cop, bad cop” operation, where one tutor would ask me where Leo Tolstoy spent his pocket money as a child while snarling at me, and the other would counter with “Now, tell me, what is a rhyming couplet?” Instead, the first tutor discussed a poem with me (it wasn’t a very good poem), then the second tutor and I discussed the socio-economic state of India in The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy and other examples in literature where a character has failed to adapt to changing situations. I even slipped in some background reading I’d done by way of an essay by Roland Barthes called “The Death of the Author”. They were smiling and nodding like Cheshire cats on acid when they heard that. In the second interview, I quoted the introduction of Lolita because it’s my favourite part of the novel and I like quoting things, and I linked the language used in Lolita to the grandiose language of Othello , which is my A-level text. Granted, I did confuse “Ode to a Nightingale” with “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, but it wasn’t as though I thought Charlotte Brontë wrote Hamlet or anything and I corrected myself and continued with my analysis of Romantic literature. I thought I did pretty well. Although I probably saw about one other black person while I was in Oxford, I didn’t feel like a minority. I remember meeting a German guy called Florian who was applying for linguistics – we had an argument over the spelling of “Bach”. It was good times. The only point at which I experienced any discrimination was when my all-male pub quiz team in the junior common room ignored me when I knew the answer to a football question. It’s been a gruelling year for students. Cameron and his cronies need to stop making strange racial assertions about one of the country’s oldest establishments and ensure the radical changes to the education system don’t make students of all colours fear for their futures. Tuition fees University of Oxford Higher education Students guardian.co.uk
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With radical transplant techniques and revolutionary formulae for regrowth, men – and the women who love them – may be looking forward to a luxuriantly hirsute future. Tim Lott investigates It is some time now since I started to worry about baldness – somewhere between the retreat of the already fine hair at my temples in my early 30s and the final failing of the last growth of hair at my crown a few years back. I had been trying to convince myself that things might not be too bad for the past 20 years. But at the beginning of this year, at the age of 55, an encounter with a ceiling-mounted mirror revealed to me what was doubtless obvious to others – a
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