In April 2005 Parliament passed the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) which made any unauthorised act of protest within a kilometre of Parliament Square illegal. The Act has been associated with the continued one-man camp peace protest site of Brian Haw who has been a dogmatic feature sitting opposite the Houses of Parliament since June 2001, surrounded by a cacophony of placards, banners, Banksy’s donated contributions, photocopied war-zone reports, hand-made signs and a more impromptu ‘fallen comrade’ monument of traffic cones and garden cane that have grown in his five-year tenure. Parliament claimed that those shadowy figures of terrorism could use protests similar to Haw’s as a cover for their more devious activities and despite a successful ruling in his favour, they pursued Haw’s continued presence and finally, clutching a Court of Appeal ruling, 78 police arrived in the early hours of May 23rd last year to forcibly remove Brian Haw who had come to symbolise increasing anti-war sentiment.

“This place is a bit big for us” says Jamie T, blinking in the lights of the Astoria. It wasn’t too long ago that he was playing London’s grimier dives armed only with a bass guitar and a pad of scrawled lyrics, but the success of his singles, “If You Got The Money” charted at 13 and “Calm Down Dearest” entered the Top Ten, mean that tonight one of central London’s bigger venues has sold out, largely to a younger crowd than the hipsters who first championed him.

Whenever I used to watch films, my mind used to wander during the opening credits. If it were possible, I would skip through them. It seemed to me that their purpose was merely self-promotion: to show off the filmmakers’ and actors’ names to the accompaniment of uninteresting music and dull images. But now I think differently.

Three girls are hired at a talent show to be backup singers, then they get their own act, then they see that maybe fame isn’t as amazing as they thought or maybe it is. It seems to me that dream rhymes with Supreme? Also that Deena (the lead singer played by Beyoncé) sounds a lot like Diana? It’s just a hunch but perhaps Diana Ross based her career in The Supremes around this play. Dreamgirls is an adaptation of a very famous stage musical. This becomes quite obvious watching the film as here lie its failings. The performances are generally fine and sometimes good, but the cowardice of the adaptation is clear to see. It faces a dilemma that all adaptations of beloved material do. How much faith to the adored original and how much genuine adaptation to what is right for cinema? This is particularly hard when adapting stage material because the two art forms are deceptively similar yet completely different. Dreamgirls makes some stabs in the right direction, that is, making a film and ignoring all of the sentimental whiners, but sadly it is made by a few of those very whiners. It rarely feels like anything other than a camera focused on a realistic looking stage. The constraints of the adaptation are so screamingly evident yet so sadly ignored. The camera moves very little, set design is distinctly uninspired and we are simply hoisted from scene to scene with precious little imagination.

Four weeks into term and you are probably, much like me, sick of eating student food, cooking that same old pasta dish or microwaveable Sainsbury’s ready meal. I’ve been trying to hold on to the memory of good food like only my mama can make. A trip to ‘My Old Dutch’ for a ‘pannekoek’(Dutch pancake) always goes some way to ease my cravings.

My last day at the hogarcito, and I prepare the final details for the Farewell Pizza Party. Despite a few remaining language barriers it goes well; the lingo of pizza is universal.

Prada’s latest catwalk show for Spring 2007 prompted fashion chatter not simply because of the jewelled, rich silks and high-necked dresses daringly out of place in a Spring collection, but more noticeably due to the revival of the turban as a stylish female head-piece. For those of you who peruse the Financial Times rather than Vogue in your spare time, the word ‘revival’ may come as a bit of a shock, but it is indeed true that the turban made its fashion debut long before Victoria Beckham could even say ‘fashion whore’, let alone be one. In the 50’s and 60’s the uniform of Hollywood’s ultra chic was completed with a turban worn on the back of the head. However, its return to the style scene causes concern on both the religious and aesthetic fronts.

In The Bottomless Well, authors Huber and Mills establish two important facts that the conventional environmentalist community and much of the general public has yet to accept, much less consider. 

“Now really isn’t a good time,” says Pavla Fleischer. In the background I can hear a man’s voice, shouting questions for her to relay to me. “Where is he from? Who publishes his paper?” I answer his questions for her, and she tells me to call back in another couple of hours. This is not the most typical nor the most auspicious start to an interview, even in the ramshackle world of PartB, and I am already beginning to sense bad vibrations lurking in the ether. I have a horrible suspicion that the man’s voice was Eugene Hütz’s.

Erin Orozco and Emily Ding debate about the usefulness of Internet vs. Real Life.