In this week’s agony aunt column, Aunty Annabel (Bella Stock) advises a student on whether to pursue a long-distance relationship while at university. Illustration by Iris Bowdler.
Columns
Move over free markets, reducing inequality is back in vogue: why fairness is central to a Green Recovery Now, and the means to collective prosperity
Photo by Michelle Mendieta Mean. Guest Climate Columnist Oli Storey argues that fairness must lie at the heart of a green recovery from Covid-19. Time and time again human society has faced crises of existential order. In each instance people show themselves to be resilient, innovative, and resourceful. Individuals use these skills for a range Read More…
More than a Fairytale: Why I’m no longer talking to the Marvel-mad about Mjolnir
In this week’s instalment of More than a Fairytale, Jess Steadman examines the various theories about Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, and discusses other famous heroes’ weapons.
Artwork by Chen (Cornelia) Chen
Ask Aunty Annabel: Bros before hoes? My friend is prioritising dating over our friendship – what do I do?
The Oxford Blue’s resident agony aunt, Aunty Annabel (Bella Stock), responds to a reader whose friend is caught in the thrall of online dating, to the point where her priorities interfere with the friendship. Illustration by Iris Bowdler
Ask Aunty Annabel: Burnt out and blue? How to manage expectations of productivity
Aunty Annabel (Bella Stock) responds to a reader on how to prevent burnout.
Artwork by Iris Bowdler
“I’m a connoisseur of spending the entire week procrastinating, beginning an essay at midnight and finishing bang on the deadline at 8am before hitting the hay. It’s a technique which has served me reasonably well, though it has probably taken its toll on my sleep and the life expectancy of my long-suffering mother, who is forever fretting about my notorious all-nighters. So when I say, ‘do as I say and not as I do’, I really mean it.”
Disability Looks Like This: Make no mistake – conservative policies are inherently ableist
In her column, Disability Looks Like This, Ellie Redpath examines the negative impact of conservative policies on the welfare of disabled people. From Thatcherite ‘individualism’ to delayed COVID lockdowns, there is a long history of disabled people being treated as an afterthought.
Illustration by Emer Sukonik
Who Owns England? In conversation with Guy Shrubsole
Photo by Michelle Mendieta Mean 25,000 people own half of the land in England. That’s far less than one percent of the country, who are in possession of millions of acres of farmland, upland, peatland, forest (what little of it we have), parks, and every other type of land you can think of, from London Read More…
On the Other Hand: Class Dismissed
In the latest instalment of “On the Other Hand”, Hayden Barnes examines changing conceptions of the working class, and how it intersects with modern politics.
Illustration by Rachel Macnaghten
The swift, the kite and the crow
Photo by Michelle Mendieta Mean. People don’t look up enough. They don’t stop enough. They certainly don’t listen enough. Apologies if this stop, look and listen stuff sounds like those primary school crossing-the-road lessons, but I stick by the important message of those words, albeit in a quite different context. In Oxford especially it’s important Read More…
Ask Aunty Annabel: the Dilemma Dater
Aunty Annabel gives advice on seeing multiple men, developing feelings in non-exclusive relationships, and talking to yourself drunkenly in Spoons.
Written by Bella Stock; illustration by Iris Bowdler
“From a purely practical perspective, it’s not easy to schedule a full-on dating life with life as an Oxford student, but it’s also emotionally (never mind physically…) draining to be *cough* ‘amorous’ with multiple people.”