Author: Phillip Mott

Greetings from the Campus Life office! By now, you should all be settling in nicely, getting down to some serious study, and finally working out a rota of whose turn it is to buy the next family pack of loo roll and washing up liquid. The joys of communal living. Serious work is all well and good, but remember that all work and no play makes Jack (or Jill) a very dull person indeed. Not only is a bit of fun and relaxation good for you, but research shows that you are more likely to stay at Uni, complete your…

Thursday. Cheltenham. A city designed to feed the ivy and red-brick industries. The literary festival had been running for a fortnight, and the dots of pop-up bookstores and poetic conversation has settled into its groove. Everyone was used to the small assortment of plastic and glass hamlets that sprouted in this park and that. It was calm. Quiet, even, if you’ve seen the organised chaos of the festival at Hay-on-Wye. A packed-out Times Forum buzzed. Julian Barnes on art: it was the first event of the final few days. As with most speakers, it was the subject of his latest…

Bangor student Jamie Thomas has been signed by publishers Y Lolfa to write Wales’ Euro 2016 campaign. Jamie, who has already followed the team to qualifying matches in Cyprus and Cardiff, says that the project is “like a dream” and that “it doesn’t feel like work”. In an article on the Bangor University website, Jamie tells of how he never expected such swift success: “I read a lot of footballing books, and I’ve always wanted to write my own, but I thought it would take me years to build up the contacts and experience to be able to do it.”…

Dr Sophie Williams, who entered a coma after falling ill on a research trip to Southern China, was flown to the Walton Centre from Bangkok today. The conservation expert, 31, contracted Japanese encephalitis during a field expedition with students on July 6th. She was found unconscious after complaining of exhaustion and illness and was later taken to hospital for specialist treatment. Williams, who is from Yorkshire, was working on a collaboration between Bangor University’s Treborth Botanical Garden and Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanic Garden. Japanese encephalitis is a viral brain infection spread by mosquito bites, usually between livestock and birds. Though rare…

Last night, the Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Organisation (OVMRO), a HM Coastguard helicopter, and an ambulance worked together to rescue a teenage girl who fell into a disused Llandudno quarry. She gained access to the quarry with two friends by going through barbed wire, as the quarry was fenced off. Around 8.50pm on Saturday, it is thought that she fell, hit her head, and suffered from a seizure. She was winched out of the quarry and flown to hospital in Bangor by the coastguard. Her injuries are not believed to be life-threatening. A spokesman for the Welsh Ambulance Service said:…

In the past week, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) afforded to MPs an annual wage of £74,000, a rise of £7,000 from previous years. This, claims IPSA chairman Sir Ian Kennedy, is a “one-off adjustment” to compensate for recent pension reductions and expense restrictions. However, John Ralfe revealed in the Financial Times that MPs with as little as 14 years’ service will actually be entitled to retirement bonuses worth tens of thousands, with top front bencher payments even hitting the £50,000 mark. Mr Ralfe claims that, between wages and pensions, MPs will now receive £90,000. The Prime Minister David…

A Rhyl man was jailed after admitting to being a courier of amphetamines. Gary Wilkinson, 55, was approached by police at a petrol station in the Rhuddlan area in February. He was “in a panic” and apparently nervous, visibly shaking. When he was told that he would be searched, he informed the officers that he had drugs in the passenger footwell of his car. Prosecutor Emmalyne Downing said that Wilkinson had admitted to committing this crime three times previously. Wilkinson said that he met a man in a Liverpool park who offered him £250 to transport a package to North…

Dick Guest, 74, died on Saturday 4th July after attempting to save two teenagers from drowning. Guest assisted another bystander when the swimmers, both female, had been in difficulty on a beach near Tywyn, Gwynedd. He was unconscious when Aberdovey lifeboat crews recovered him from the water. Attempts to revive him were made at the scene, and he was airlifted to Bronglais General Hospital in Aberystwyth. He was later pronounced dead. The swimmers and second rescuer were recovered safely, but the former were admitted to hospital as a precaution. Tributes were posted on the Love Tywyn Facebook page, with some…

North Wales police have identified the two men who drowned in Llanberis Falls as Steffan Vernon, 33 from Caenarfon and Alexander Hadley, 21 from Dinorwig. Emergency services, including an RAF helicopter, were called at 8:30am yesterday to the 80th waterfall of the River Arddu, where four men had “got into difficulty”. North Wales Fire and Rescue Service, Welsh Ambulance Service, Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team, and the Police Water Rescue Service were present. Hadley’s body was pulled from the lake upon arrival. Vernon’s body was recovered some time later. The two surviving men, unidentified and aged 27 and 25, were taken…

In the coming Graduation Week, musician Gruff Rhys and DJ Huw Stephens will be honoured for their contributions to music and the arts by Bangor University. The Honorary Fellowships will be awarded during ceremonies across 11th-17th July. Gruff Rhys, both a solo artist and member of Super Furry Animals, recently supplied the scores to Dylan Thomas biopic Set Fire to the Stars and American Interior, his own pursuit of 18th century Welsh explorer John Evans. The book of the latter has made him a Welsh Book of the Year nominee, while album Hotel Shampoo and collaboration Neon Neon have won music prizes respectively. Huw…

Minecraft is the name of a computer game that most of you, if not all of you, will know. If you don’t know, shame on you. Where’ve you been living for the past six years? Before its official release on 18th November 2011, the game spent roughly two years in a beta testing period and, as of last year, had sold up to 60 million copies world-wide. Last year, Microsoft bought the company Mojang and intellectual rights to Minecraft for $2.5 billion. The BBC, the Telegraph, the Guardian, and more blog posts than you can shake a stick at have…

An exhibit of oil paintings that depict Richard III’s internment opened at Leicester Cathedral. The collection is by artist-in-residence Michael Harrison. Sarah Lucas unveiled I Scream Daddio, a provocative show that includes a nine-foot phallus, at the Venice Bienalle. Van Gogh’s L’Allee des Alyscamps sold for $66m (£43.5m) at Sotherby’s in an impressionism and modernism sale that took an impressive total of $368m (£242m). Helen Sear, the first solo female to represent Wales at the Venice Bienalle, unveiled photographs of the trees of Monmouthshire, where she lives. The Irishman who funded Tim Schmalz’s Homeless Jesus statue remains unnamed. All that…

The Page Three girls are beautiful models with their main careers focused on looking pretty damn fine. Love them and call them empowered, or hate it and call it distasteful, the one thing we can all agree on is that the third page is controversial. Whether it is a woman in all her glory, or the male gaze to the nth degree, the matter is it’s not going anywhere despite protests. However, we thought otherwise just a few months ago. In January, protesters rejoiced at the news that the paper had decided to remove the page three girls, and opt…

I can’t say that I expected to see the most famous ‘star-cross’d’ lovers kill themselves then get up for a song and dance immediately afterwards. It was however an entertaining conclusion to Shakespeare’s most famous tragic love story. Having only bought the tickets for this touring production of Romeo and Juliet as a means to fill an evening over the Easter break, I can’t say I was particularly enthusiastic about going. I was in fact pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this production as it presented a successful balance of comedic and tragic elements. Having had the privilege to…

Humans are obsessed with boobs. It’s not specific to any labels you want to stick in the spectra of gender and sexual orientation, and, as we can see here, it’s always been the case. Pre-Historic Named the ‘Venus of Willendorf’, this sculpture of the female form was found in 1908 near Willendorf in Austria. Carved from oolitic limestone and coloured with red ochre, the piece has been dated all the way back to 28,000 BC. Her full form and voluptuousness has been understood to represent fertility and procreation. Another group of thought, however, is that it acted as a good luck…

Harper launched a non-profit production company to save the play version of To Kill A Mockingbird in her hometown of Monroeville. The news came after licenser Dramatic Publishing did not renew the contract. Sotherby’s launched Henry Hudson’s new plasticine exhibit, during which critics commended the displays for their likeness to oil paintings. The Museum of the Year shortlist for 2015 was announced ahead of the Tate Modern ceremony this July. The nominees are The Imperial War Museum, The Whitworth in Manchester, The MAC in Belfast, The Tower of London, The Oxford Museum of Natural History, and The Stamford Military Hospital.…