Unashamedly eavesdropping on a conversation between a group of students on Cornmarket discussing where to go for dinner, I couldn’t help but be struck by the domination of high street restaurant chains on the list of their choices. And this is without judgement: I will confess that if I want Japanese food I go to Wagamama, if I’m craving sashimi I’ll be first in line at Yo Sushi! and if I’m in the mood for pizza, pasta or a salad my choices are limited to Pizza Express, ASK or Strada. Pretty convenient, therefore, that in the 10 minute walk down Cornmarket and onto George Street I find myself passing all of the high street giants. It is only on my return from living in Paris for 6 months, eating in countless independently run brasseries, that I pause to consider going to a restaurant “off the eaten track”. Wandering around the street of the French capital, I realised the Parisian eating-out scene seems to have resisted the growth of chain restaurants that we have experienc ...

Over the summer I spent some time in Scotland. At the end of our stay in Edinburgh, my companion and I wanted to leave our bags somewhere for half a day, as our train to the Highlands didn’t leave until later that afternoon. The most obvious solution was the left luggage office at Edinburgh station. Contrary to my romanticised expectations, this was not a cosy room where leather suitcases with exotic labels were piled high, but a much leaner and meaner operation, in which people’s bags were heaved up to the counter, x-rayed, and then mysteriously stowed away by the staff. As the notice on the wall informed us, leaving one’s luggage also entailed answering certain questions. I told the unsmiling employee that yes, I had packed my suitcase myself, and that I hadn’t left it unattended, but when it came to "Are you carrying any firearms?" I couldn’t contain myself any longer. I decided to answer this question with another: "Do I look as if I’m carrying a firear ...

This weekend I finally threw away my t-shirt from the 2010 Conservative Party Manifesto launch. It was not a political statement. I did not throw it away in disgust at the state of the country, and I still have my copy of the Party Manifesto perched on the shelf between Niall Ferguson’s Empire and Will Hutton’s Them and Us . The Lib Dems probably would not like to be compared to runaway slaves I liked the shirt, a lovely soft blue, but it was simply uncomfortable. In fact, I could not bear wearing it, with stiff plastic letters emblazoned across the chest in the shape of Great Britain proclaiming, “We’re all in this together”. Frankly, it did not make me feel any better to know that the whole country was banding together with a stiff upper lip, bravely to take whatever fiscal retrenchment the Treasury sent our way. In the same way, it does not make it any easier to suffer through a Saturday morning hangover to know that all my mates’ heads are pounding just as much a ...

Last Wednesday British students finally rediscovered their political voice. In the protest march on Westminster, the silence which has so far formed the backdrop to the most damaging cuts in a generation was broken. The message was sent to the Con-Dem government that civilized society will not go quietly into the night. The Tory media may have focused their attention on the anarchistic actions of a "minority" of protesters outside Conservative headquarters, but the real revolutionaries are David Cameron and Nick Clegg, supported by their submissive cabinet. In every aspect of government policy, years of progressive consensus is being overturned by vicious small state attitudes and petty mindedness, cloaked in a pseudo-philosophical rhetoric lifted straight from small town America.It was fitting that students should take up the fight, since university fees represent the apogee of the coalition's approach. In raising the fees cap to £9,000 a year to fill the gap left by a wi ...

This Thursday, polling stations across the country will be filled with the voting electorate. For weeks now, the British public has been bombarded with sound-bites and video clips of politicians eager to please. Despite the continuous stream of statistics and data that we have been subjected to, no one can truly claim to be able to know what awaits us at the outcome of the General Election. However, one aspect is clear: the Liberal Democrats will command far more of the popular vote than ever before. Even so, their rise in popularity has not been met with a similar degree of scrutiny of its policies: far too much of it has gone on Nick Clegg as a leader. In Oxford East, the constituency encompassing the University of Oxford, the election is a two-horse race. The incumbent labour MP, Andrew Smith, is challenged by the Liberal Democrats’ parliamentary candidate: Steve Goddard. Since 2001, Dr Goddard, a university lecturer, has whittled Andrew Smith’s majority down to less than one ...

The Alligator 's Thomas Morris and Freddie Manson continue our special General Election coverage with an in-depth interview with the Liberal Democrat candidate for Oxford East, St Catz don Dr Steve Goddard.Dr Goddard defends his party's policies on tuition fees, the Euro, reforms to the electoral system, nuclear weapons and an amnesty for illegal immigrants - and explains why he thinks Gordon Brown was "out of order". ...