Counterpoints

Reality Check For Opec

Oliver Wiseman — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 13:58:07 +0000

Author:Patrick Heren

Watch out, Opec: Shale fracking now makes up 43 per cent of the US's oil production (Joshua Doubek CC BY-SA 3.0)

After two years of decline, the oil market is enjoying a period of mildly bullish sentiment. Prices rose from a low of $26 a barrel early in 2016 to just over $50 in late October. The proximate cause is Opec’s decision to curb production in order to support the higher prices its members need to balance their national budgets. The trend should be treated with caution.

Golden Gogol

Oliver Wiseman — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 13:23:48 +0000

Author:Marina Gerner

Surrealism on stage: “The Nose” at Covent Garden (©ROH/Bill Cooper)

A new production of The Nose, Shostakovich’s opera based on Gogol’s mesmerisingly surreal short story, was part of this season at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. A Tarkovsky retrospective was held in Shoreditch. Any moment now, I expect to get invited to a poetry slam riffing on Mayakovsky.

Mounting Outrage

Oliver Wiseman — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 13:05:47 +0000

Author:Jonathan Neumann

The Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif? Unesco's use of only the Muslim name erases Jewish history (Idobi GNU 1.2)

“And Solomon built the house,” I Kings tells us, “and finished it.” That house, the Temple, has been at the centre of Jewish life ever since — Jesus, for example, condemned the sacrilege he witnessed there, charging that God’s house had become a “den of robbers”. And even in the two millennia since, when no Temple has stood on the mount that bears its name, Jews worldwide have prayed towards it.

Job Satisfaction

Oliver Wiseman — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 12:51:06 +0000

Author:Jonathan Ashe

Student stress: University isn't necessarily right for everyone (Anna Gutermuth CC BY-SA 3.0)

My journey through education seems to be the average middle-class dream: I went to good schools (some of which were private), participated in extracurricular activities and even became head boy. After A-levels I started an English degree in London. Life seemed to have set me a pathway and I relished the opportunity to follow it.

A Light Dimmed

Oliver Wiseman — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 12:49:14 +0000

Author:Caroline Potter

Leslie Coulson: "Who made the law that men should die in shadows?"

Though posthumously published in 1917, Leslie Coulson’s first and only book, From an Outpost and Other Poems, sold more than 10,000 copies that year and quickly went through four impressions. But time has dimmed this war poet’s light.

Born in Kilburn, north London, in 1889, Coulson worked as a journalist for the Morning Post and as a Reuters correspondent before enlisting as a private with the London Regiment Fusiliers in September 1914, having refused a commission. He preferred to work his way up through the ranks.

Brexit bébé

Oliver Wiseman — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 12:19:27 +0000

Author:Laetitia Strauch-Bonart

Expecting my first child at the beginning of December, I will give birth to what some might call a “Brexit baby”. That’s not a baby conceived or born on the day of the vote, even less a supporter of Brexit, but a baby born in the new era we are in — the return of the nation state. Born in 1985, I was a “post-Cold War baby”, or an “End-of-History baby”. This narrative may have worked for a while but the cycle is coming to an end. And if we needed further proof, we have the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, although I wouldn’t like to think of my little girl as a “Trump baby”.

Berenika Stefanska

Oliver Wiseman — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 12:12:57 +0000

Author:The Editors

Berenika Stefanska: A passion for Africa

Over the eight years since Standpoint was founded we have been helped by a string of young interns, usually recent graduates working with us for a month or two while they looked for more permanent employment in the media world. Some of them have succeeded in that aim; one of our brightest interns, Berenika Stefanska, certainly did.