We are in the golden age of the geek. After decades of being the butt of high school movie jokes – laughing at their interest in games and lack of interest in matching attire – suddenly the geek is king. Games and technology have gone mainstream, and giant glasses and Pokémon references are not the preserve of the socially awkward, but rather the socially pretentious. Our TV heroes have also gone the way of the geek; the tough, gruff “solve the problem with punching” protagonists have made way for the TV genius: someone who unravels the riddle and saves the world with intellectual might. Two of the highest rated shows in the UK feature such geek idols, and the geek behind the geeks is writer Steven Moffat, head writer of Doctor Who and co-creator of Sherlock, the recent TV adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle series.

Doctor Who, for the uninitiated, is a show featuring an “eleven-hundred-and-three-year-old” alien who travels through space and time in a police box (called the TARDIS – Time and Relative Dimension in Space), fighting monsters and finding friends to take along with him, only ninety per cent of which have been very attractive women. Having run from 1963 to 1989, the show had been on a seemingly permanent hiatus until a reboot headed by Russell T. Davis aired in 2005. A fan since childhood, Moffat jumped at the chance to write his childhood hero. “Back in 2004, when we were approaching that first series … it felt sort of magical and strange that Doctor Who was coming back. It felt impossible that we were actually doing it and could go to the set and see the police box. It hadn’t been on for fifteen years; it was so incredibly exciting, and I remember sitting down for the first time and thinking ‘Bloody hell, I’m actually writing Doctor Who’. That never completely wears off, to be honest, I’m always very excited about writing Doctor Who, but it’s now harder for me to recapture the feeling of it being entirely a novelty.

“It’s hard to remember Doctor Who as a show I wasn’t involved with, as opposed to a couple of words I’m having stapled into the middle of my name. It’s really hard to remember I just used to be watching, and will be again someday. That’s become odd. But very exciting, very, very exciting.”

One cliché of Doctor Who, and both a point of ridicule by non-fans and fond nostalgia by those who watched as children, is the cheesy special effects and alien antagonists. The new series has a more impressive budget and use of CGI than the original, but the writers are keen to stick to their memory of the show. Unlike most British series, which have few episodes and a single writer, each episode of the Doctor Who has a different writer, with Moffat writing key episodes and overseeing the story lines. This can lead to very different tones, from humorous to chilling. “Gareth Roberts, one of my fellow writers on Doctor Who, had a theory that you write the Doctor Who you remember.” Moffat explains. “He tended to remember the funny ones, so he writes funny Doctor Who, and I remember just being terrified over it, so I tend to write the scary Doctor Who. Neither memory is more accurate, it’s all kind of nonsense, but I do like the sort of weird sense of transgression of it being slightly wrong to have a television show whose mission statement is to petrify kids. Try pitching that and getting it made today!

“With Doctor Who, I’m thinking of how I can get people to be scared, I suppose; what’s the monster this week, what’s the adventure, what’s the fastest way we can start the story, how soon can I get Matt Smith [the actor behind the current Doctor] running is probably the focus there.”

“Sherlock is different, because Mark [Gatiss, co-creator of Sherlock] and I sit around wondering which one are we going to do this year, which bits of the original haven’t been touched, and there’s quite a lot of Sherlock Holmes that hasn’t been touched. We’ve had considerable success just by mining the bits people don’t usually do … I mean, we got such credit for having the first time we see Sherlock Holmes he’s flogging a corpse, and people said how amazing and clever we were but the truth is the first time Sherlock Holmes is mentioned in the first Sherlock Holmes story that’s exactly what he’s doing. We just nicked it from the original.”

Though he started his writing career making children’s television shows with Press Gang, a series based around a school newspaper, Steven Moffat has plenty of experience writing things aimed more at the adult market. He followed up the success of Press Gang with Joking Apart and Coupling, sitcoms about divorce, relationships and sex. However, he doesn’t feel there to be much difference in writing for different age groups. “I’ve never even thought about it. I really, really don’t, I don’t have to think about it, which possibly says something about my immaturity!”

“I think Sherlock is really loved by kids as well actually. I’m not absolutely certain that the Doctor Who audience and the Sherlock audience are as different as people might like to imagine. I was alarmed when they moved back the last episode to nine o’clock, because that’s slightly too late for kids to watch it, and, while we don’t make it for them, it’s obviously more adult than Doctor Who, at the same time I’m always careful not to include anything, you know, you can push the envelope a bit, but you don’t make it unwatchable by kids. There’s nothing my kids wouldn’t watch in it.”

Coupling is an exception to this rule. Featuring the classic sitcom lineup of three guys, three girls and a heap of misunderstandings, it is very much of the bawdy side of the genre. “The kids in Press Gang, my show years ago, were far more grown up than the ones in Coupling. It is very much in the adult camp, but compared to my children’s shows, so much more immature.

“I love Coupling, but you’ve got more licence, I suppose, when you’re talking to adults, but if I had my time again, I think I would have made Coupling more mainstream, because there’s a lot of episodes that kids can’t watch. ‘The Man with Two Legs’ was a very funny episode, my son would love it, I’m sure, but it’s just a bit too naughty. With just a little bit more inventiveness and a little bit of cover phrasing you could make that show for a mainstream audience as opposed to a niche audience”

The lines are also often blurred between comedy and drama, a feature of Moffat’s writing being the move between tense, emotional drama and tension-breaking jokes several times within an episode. “I honestly don’t change the approach very much at all; the difference is, when you’re doing a sitcom, you’re actually thinking ‘they’ve got to be laughing on this page and this page and this page’. I don’t think there’s any excuse really, unless you’re making people cry then you should be making them laugh. I wrote comedy before I officially wrote comedy, because Press Gang was always funny.”

The dramatic elements can also increase the humour. Comedy often comes from the subversion of expectation and the breaking of tension, allowing the two sides to play off against each other. “Comedy sits better in a drama, the way its sits in life really, but then successful comedies can come from dramatic elements. The line can be blurred, because comedy is an artificial distinction unless you’re actually talking about a comedian. If you’re talking about narrative comedy then it is just story telling.”

Steven Moffat’s latest hit has been Sherlock, an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels, whose second series recently aired to great acclaim. Sherlock sets itself apart from most adaptations with its setting in modern-day London. The show fully incorporates modern attitudes and technology, which Moffat feels is a natural progression for the original character of Holmes. “We just decided we were going to update him properly; he’d be a modern man because he’s a modern man in the Victorian version, he’s always using newfangled things, like telegrams. He’s someone who appreciates and enjoys technology; he’s a bit of a science boffin, he’s a geek, he would do all those things. I just think it’s fun, I don’t think all the fantastic tech we’ve got limits the storytelling, I think you can use it in all sorts of ways.”

Many people have commented on the similarities between the characters of the Doctor and Sherlock, down to their respective series finales, in which both characters faked their deaths. “We always knew we were going to have to do Reichenbach, and yes, indeed, I did have the Doctor faking his own death – though by slightly more elaborate means! The problem is, I’m in charge of both shows, and what I can’t ever do is not do something in one show because I did it in the other. Ninety-nine per cent of the audience haven’t a clue who I am or know that I work on both of them, so you just ignore things like that. They are two swashbuckling geniuses; they’re always going to be doing similar things.”

So what next for the man with the golden pen? Following the climatic end of ‘The Reichenbach Fall’, the final episode of the latest series of Sherlock, it was revealed to much delight that a third series has been commissioned. There is also a seventh series of Doctor Who currently in production, so it seems there will be no rest for Moffat in the near future. “We just had our official day commencing pre-production on Doctor Who, so as for knowing when it’s actually going to be shown is a little bit optimistic. But we’ll definitely show it, and I’m pretty sure it will be the autumn.”

Details of the upcoming series are vague, but it seems that the Doctor’s companions of the last two series, Amy Pond and Rory Williams, played by Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, will be leaving the show. “I’m writing that right now, the big Rory and Amy heartbreaking finale. It will be quite heartbreaking” Moffat teases, “I think you’ll be in trouble watching it.”

There is a great train that stretches all the way from Hamburg to Budapest and is used by all backpackers. You can hop on and off at any stage with an InterRail pass, or buy a ticket for any part of the journey. Seats are not allocated – as many as possible are sold and if you don’t manage to cram yourself on then you have to wait for the next one. Normally this isn’t a problem, but last August thanks to the Sziget festival, the train was packed. Sziget is one of the largest music festivals in Europe, with nearly 400,000 people attending annually and over a thousand acts performing. It is held in the centre of Budapest on one of the many islands on the river Danube and makes Budapest the city to be in over August, so be sure to get your ticket early to avoid feeling left out.

Apart from the train, Budapest is breathtakingly beautiful. The city is dominated by the Danube, with important buildings to be found on either side of its banks. From the huge central Széchenyi Chain Bridge you can see the baroque Buda Castle, rebuilt in the sixteenth century after the destruction of the original medieval castle, and the neo-gothic Parliament House – the biggest building in Hungary. Everything along the river is lit up at night, making for spectacular scenery. Most of the museums are around this area, and though you have to pay for entry, they offer student deals and discounts for visiting more than one. Even without these the fee amounts to no more than a few Euros. There are also free walking tours several times a day, each showing different aspects of the city.

Budapest is very easy to get around, either by foot or metro. The cost of the metro is reasonable, which is fortunate, because unlike most of the surrounding countries, it is impossible to get on without a valid ticket. There are staff at every entrance and exit checking and stamping tickets and they come down hard on anyone trying to cheat, so be warned. Taxis are expensive because they know only tourists will take them, but your hostel might be able to help you out, both to assist you with the language barrier and to make sure you don’t get ripped off too badly. There are day trips you can do outside the city but if you are only staying a short time then the centre has plenty to offer in a small space, making even the metro unnecessary if your hostel has a central location. Ultimately, Budapest demands a comfortable shoe.

One thing you should not scrimp on is your accommodation. While there are plenty of cheap hostels, many of them are outside the city centre, and the metro does not extend very far. The average quality is not as good as other cities, and at busy times you could easily end up paying over the odds for a dirty, noisy dorm. Along with the beautiful sites there are scary back streets full of boarded-up strip joints so pay attention to the ratings on the booking site.

The food is similar to other Eastern European cities; lots of meat, potato, stews and dumplings, and all delicious. Because it’s such a tourist-reliant city, it’s not as easy to get a cheap meal as other places. Depending on your budget you may have to take a walk away from the castles and museums, but even nice places aren’t outlandish. Two things make it feel more expensive than it is; first, if you have been travelling around a lot and come from somewhere like Slovakia, everything over a Euro seems horrifying. It’s amazing how quickly your expectations can adjust. The second is the currency. Hungary uses the Forint, worth approximately 320 to the euro. Paying over a thousand of anything will give you pause, even if it’s actually a fantastic deal. Even the cafés aimed at tourists are much cheaper than anywhere in Dublin.

Although maybe not as budget-friendly as the rest of Eastern Europe, Budapest has plenty to offer anyone with a love of travel, food or history, and an adventurous spirit.

When Otwo asked me to give up technology for a day, I told them no, and then I posted it on Facebook. However, after much negotiation, tears and eventually prying my iPhone from my still tweeting fingers, I was off on my technology-free adventure.

My instructions were to give up technology but I decided I needed clearer rules that that. What counts as technology? Was I allowed have the lights on? Is the printing press considered too high tech? Inspired by the New Year’s release of cabinet papers, like any good time traveller I settled on a cut off point of thirty years. Were they even that technology-free in 1982? They had televisions, phones and even video games, limited as they were to shooting circles with a triangle. When it comes to practicality though, I was in a much worse situation than my eighties counterpart. People in the eighties had landlines, but I don’t; mobile phones are so ubiquitous that landlords don’t bother to install them anymore. Then again, a student in the 1980s wouldn’t have had a phone either so it’s just as well. Similarly with Ataris, VCRs, walkmans or other eighties technological breakthroughs; while they existed at the time, few people had them and I certainly don’t. I don’t even own a radio. My attempt was also limited by the technology used in my flat – students in Ireland were unlikely to own a fridge but I don’t think my flatmates would have taken kindly to me plugging it out. As for TV, RTÉ existed in 1982 but frankly, I’d rather watch the fridge.

Stripped down to the basics, I began my day. I was quite looking forward to it. How hard could it be? I had lived in the eighties before. Briefly. Once I got over the initial shock of not being able to communicate every inane thought I had the second it occurred to me, I began to miss the truly useful aspects of modern technology. I went for a run but didn’t get far. Normally, I have an app with a voice telling me every few minutes how well I’m doing – just hours without constant electronic reassurance, and my life was falling apart.

I decided to go to town but I couldn’t check the bus timetable. In preparation for my technology-free boredom, I had arranged to meet a friend the day before. One of the major things we’ve lost as a society is the ability to plan. Normally when I’m going to meet a friend, I make a vague arrangement some days before, decide on a time that morning and then shortly before tell them I’m running late, all through text. Back in the day if you made a plan but something had come up in the mean time, there was absolutely no way to let them know. You either had to go anyway, or just leave them waiting. To check the bus times I had to walk to the bus stop and write down the times. On paper. Like a peasant.

I don’t usually wear a wristwatch since I have my twenty-first century pocket watch – a phone – so I misjudged the timing and arrived at the meeting place a bit late. My friend was nowhere to be seen, but I had no way of knowing whether he was also running late or had arrived, waited a few minutes, and then left. I had no choice but to sit down on some convenient steps and wait. And wait. I waited hours, years. Or maybe ten minutes, I didn’t have a watch. I couldn’t contact him, he had a phone but I didn’t have the number except in my phone. Even if I had, I would have absolutely no idea where I would find a payphone, or even how to use one. I’ve had a mobile phone for as long as I’ve had anyone to call. The worst part was I had nothing to do; nothing to play with, nothing to listen to. It was a long time since I’d heard the unadulterated sounds of the outdoors; I nearly always have my iPod on when going anywhere. Even when I’m not listening to music I have my headphones on so charity collectors, homeless people or random weirdos don’t start chatting to me. I was in great danger of becoming the latter that day.

Eventually my friend arrived and noises of the outside world aside, I was able to enjoy a fairly normal day drinking coffee and wandering around the shops. One bit of luck for the day was that I was able to use an ATM – cash machines arrived in Ireland in 1980 so I was saved the ignominy of having to go into the bank and interact with people. I headed home and after satisfying myself that whether past or present, RTÉ is rubbish, I spent the evening reading.

For a normal if slightly duller day, going technology-free wasn’t too bad. If it had been college time it wouldn’t have been possible at all. Back in the eighties we would have had to hand-write everything rather than just our exams, with our keyboard-withered claws. We would have had to go outside to discover new information, possibly even reading it on something that wasn’t backlit. We would have had to keep up with our friends by actually talking to them instead of reading their status updates and contributing “lol”.

Truly, this is a golden age.

10. Sam Spade – The Maltese Falcon (1941)

The original hard-boiled detective, and the Bogartiest of all Humphrey Bogart’s roles. If he was any more hard-boiled he’d be a peppermint humbug.

9. Nick Charles – The Thin Man (1934)

It’s half detective film, half slapstick comedy, but all drinking binge. Although Nick and his wife do manage to solve a murder, it’s merely a distraction from all the cocktails.

8. Clarice Starling – The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

FBI academy student Clarice is in a race against time to find a serial killer, so she enlists the help of a serial killer. So outside the box, this film created a new box in which it is firmly placed twenty-one years later. This movie ruined Chianti, fava beans, and the name Clarice.

7. Will Dormer – Insomnia (2002)

This hard-bitten detective travels to Alaska to solve a murder and battle his conscious while suffering insomnia caused by the twenty-four hour sunlight. Jeez Will, just close the curtains.

6. Inspector Thomson and Constable Dexter – Gosford Park (2001)

A better breed of bumbling detective. The comic relief duo in this murder mystery accidentally but systematically destroys most of the evidence at the scene and fail to solve anything.

5. Roger Murtaugh – Lethal Weapon (1987)

This is the archetype of the buddy-cop movie and Roger Murtaugh is too old for this shit. He does it anyway. The movie is twenty-four years old, so think how badass this guy must be now.

4. Eddie Valiant – Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

This dark film noir washed-up alcoholic detective has to prove the innocence of a cartoon rabbit. It is exactly as awesome as you imagine.

3. Inspector Clouseau – The Pink Panther (1963)

A return to the bumbling side of things with Peter Seller’s French police detective. His attempt to foil the theft of the titular Pink Panther diamond ends with him in prison for the crime. The original and the best.

2. Doctor Watson – Sherlock Holmes (2009)

The first film in decades to avoid ‘Stupid Watson’. While Dr. Watson was an intelligent and insightful man in the books, second only to Holmes’ genius deductions, most adaptations skewed him into a bumbling idiot who couldn’t figure out a murder if the victim had written the killer’s name is five-foot letters in blood in Watson’s own kitchen, thus allowing Holmes to provide endless smug extrapolation. The latest reboot restored him to his rightful intelligence.

1. Sherlock Holmes – Sherlock Holmes (2009)

The first true detective, he can figure out your life from the ketchup stain on your tie when everyone else just figures out that you’re sloppy.

The fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of Raidió Teilifís proves that after half a century Irish broadcasting is, in many ways, still in its infancy. As part of RTÉ’s semi-centennial celebration they will add to the current online archives on their website to provide an enhanced insight into events that have shaped Irish society, and to depict how the lives of Irish people have changed throughout the fifty years of the station’s existence. The availability of this archive is just one of the initiatives launched by RTÉ as part of its TV50 campaign, which encompasses a year-long celebration of fifty years of RTÉ that commenced on New Year’s Eve.

RTÉ currently has an archive section on their website that contains extensive footage and radio clips of notable events over the last fifty years. It is not clear as to whether this section will be enhanced in a way that users will be able to access material based on the year it was filmed or whether it will be divided into further categories of sport, news or Late Late Show episodes. This may depend on the volume of material RTÉ intends to issue to the archives. One of the most valuable features of the enhanced archive access will be the addition of a TV50 classics player, which will be launched in spring of 2012. The classics player will be available on the RTÉ website and will operate using the same format as the existing RTÉ player, allowing users to access some of the great moments in drama, sport and news in Ireland over the last fifty years.

TV license payers may be wondering why this facility was not made available to them by the state broadcaster many years ago. The simple truth is that RTÉ only began a scheme of digitising material in the mid 1990’s and this is set to continue for at least another decade. Up until now, viewers could only get access to RTÉ archives through the limited amount of footage placed on their website and through programmes such as Reeling in the Years, Léargas and Arts Lives. The majority of the material in RTÉ’s archives was captured on large open reels using analogue technology, usually magnetic tape. The drawback of analogue recording is that large amounts of space are needed to store the old reels and the quality of the footage on the reel deteriorates quickly over time. Converting the existing archives to digital format ensures that the quality of the footage will not deteriorate any further over time and allows the archives to be shared with the public in an online environment.

Many viewers will be excited by the prospect of trawling the classics player for news broadcasts and episodes of the Late Late Show in the hope of spotting a relative on the news or a son or daughter’s claim to fame on the Late Late Toy Show. The reality of the situation is that a large amount of reels were wiped in the early years of RTÉ in order to facilitate the recording of new programmes; production budgets were small and it was too costly to use new reels every time. This has, unfortunately, resulted in various pieces of footage being lost forever. Luckily material now produced by RTÉ is stored in digital format and catalogued so that future generations will be able to look back on high quality footage depicting the trials and tribulations of twenty-first century Ireland.

The release of RTÉ’s archives fits in with the current trend of nostalgia featured in Irish media and film in recent years. Many people are yearning to bask in the glory of times gone by; evidence of this is the success of Reeling in the Years and its DVD. There is no doubt that many people will use the TV50 classics archive to relive childhood memories of Bosco and The Den and watch famous events that RTÉ news covered over the years, but what about the even younger generation? It is hard to see many students of today ditching their usual helping of television to watch programmes documenting decades gone by. Those that do watch may mostly get a kick out of the dodgy hairstyles and fashion disasters. Many will be surprised to see how vastly Ireland has changed and advanced since fifty years ago, when the country was reliant on an agricultural economy pre-EEC membership. “Tied to the tail of a cow” is an understatement. At the very least, the RTÉ archive will bring an increased awareness of the past to younger generations and it will also provide a laugh or two along the way.

Going to college can be a daunting experience, but it is particularly tough if you are also leaving home for the first time. After eighteen years of being looked after you are suddenly left to fend for yourself, in a new city, maybe even a new country, sharing a small apartment with complete strangers. New students can often feel isolated during their first weeks away from home but it is also an opportunity to create a new home, a new community with your fellow residents.

Social provisions for a residence community used to be practically non-existent, with students obliged to forge their own way through campus-wide clubs and societies, and their own social initiative to befriend their neighbours. In the last few years however, the culture of UCD residence has expanded with the establishment of Res Life, a program created by the Students’ Union and the residences management with the very aim of promoting community spirit. Students’ Union Welfare officer Rachel Breslin is one of the strongest advocates of the program, her interest in the scheme stemming from her own experiences living on campus.

“I’ve lived on residence for 3 years and I’ve certainly felt, particularly in my first year when I wasn’t really involved in anything else, that the lack of community spirit in residences that I felt existed at the time can make you feel a bit more isolated. The biggest proportion of residences is first years, there’s over 800 of them, and a lot of them come from schools like I did in Donegal, not knowing anybody else in college. If there isn’t a built-in spirit of community in residences then it can actually add to your isolation rather than make you feel better about being in college.”

On the front line of the campus community initiative are the three Residence Representatives, who assist students with campus issues and represent residents in the Students’ Union council meetings. They have become heavily involved in fostering this sense of community and are working to increase awareness of the various programs and events available. Danielle Curtis, a second year Res Rep, explains how they have worked this year to increase their presence on campus.

“It was one of our aims, myself and the two other Res Reps, to get to know people. We have gone around and knocked on doors and introduced ourselves, we’ve lecture addressed in the main buildings where there would be a lot of country people on Res like Ag and Science and told people who we were. Even when we went lecture addressing about the march we introduced ourselves as Res Reps so the people who were sitting in lectures knew who we were. Its kind of us trying to get our name out there, to show people that there is somebody who represents them in council because not many people do know about that.”

One of the big projects planned for this semester is a formal Res Ball especially for the students living on campus, held in the Burlington Hotel later this month. “We have got a market of about 2,600 students to sell to, so hopefully it’ll go off”, Danielle explains. “The hitch is that it’s the first year it’s running in UCD … but hopefully we can start something small that will continue through the years.” Though the first of its kind in UCD, there have been hugely successful Res Balls held by other colleges, for example Trinity College.

The second big initiative planned is the residence magazine – a free monthly magazine put together by students and delivered to each apartment in UCD. The hope is that this will increase the community identity of residences as they become more informed about events and their fellow Res students.

“The magazine is really to make people aware of the events that are being run anyway” explains Breslin, “so L&H events, Ents events, any sort of talks that might be going on, even careers events. So kind of a calendar of events that are going over the month in the college itself to make students aware of some of the offers the campus outlets have got on … ways to save money in residences and then also to do things like, the Res Reps wanted to organise a Come Dine With Me competition. It’s difficult to organise over social media and Facebook but if we get everyone with the same leaflet going through their door and the same offer; like maybe we’re going to do an offer that week in the shop where you can buy tea for less and everyone kind of knows about it, then it will be easier.”

“We were thinking of doing a description of meals that you could cook with suggested recipes but then have house competitions so you might not get everyone knowing about the house if it’s online but if they all get a magazine they can get the house together and also post photos to the website, and then they would be in the next magazine.”

Those currently living in UCD residences have a less optimistic tale to tell of SU initiatives however. Fiona Brown, a first year Arts student living in Belgrove, feels that there is little community spirit in her building, “There’s not really a community feel, everyone just keeps themselves to themselves … I know the ones across the hall though, we can’t get rid of them! They’re over here drinking tea now”, she jokes. “It’s a big change, but I live with nice people.” Although there are parties and nights out among the group, the SU-planned events have sparked little interest. “Well they tried at the start of the year, it didn’t seem to work. There was a sports day organised but no one really went to it.”

Others paint a more positive picture of the resident community, “All my roommates are so nice” Catriona Daly, a first year Roebuck Castle resident affirms, “Half of them are exchange students only here for the semester and half of them are here for their whole course and I just think its really nice that we’re all getting to know each other, we’re all intermingling. I know a lot of people in Roebuck Castle, I’d say I know most of them because we eat together, we all have meals together. I know people from my course as well but not as well as I’d know the people in Roebuck Castle. There’s always parties going on in different apartments and people are free to come and join in so I’d say it’s definitely a community.”

Catriona agrees that there is little participation in organised Res events however, and feels the SU involvement is largely unnecessary. “I think that people are fairly good at organising their own events and stuff a lot of the time. There was an attempt to have a Roebuck Halloween thing but only a few people showed up because most people wanted to go out and stay out.

“I don’t think it’s necessary for the SU to get more involved. If they wanted to I’m sure people would be happy but at the moment we’re happy to organise our own stuff.”

Breslin however, feels that the SU drive for a residence community is very beneficial for students, particularly for those who may not be as quick to connect with classmates and neighbours. “I think that natural community on a residence, it depends on the people in the apartment, so if you have people in a block who know each other already then a community spirit builds up very quickly, but if you have people who are more shy, less confident, who maybe don’t know anybody then they don’t feel part of that community spirit unless there’s an event they can go to or unless someone makes an effort to bring them into the community, which is what I really want to do. I want to make sure that there’s an event for everybody, so that everyone feels comfortable going to at least one event during the year or doing one activity through Res Life.”

Getting to know your neighbours is not an automatic process and Rachel Breslin has found that residents are more self-contained than people realise. ”When I put in my manifesto last year … I was surprised how many students when we went round to the door, even casually when we asked if the person next door was in they’d say, ‘no, I don’t know them’ – within their own house. There’s more of that than even I was aware of.”

The feedback for the upcoming initiative has been very positive so far, with even those who feel support to be unnecessary expressing huge interest in involvement in the projects. “When an event has happened students have been really quick to say that it was really good. So rather than outwardly demanding it, when it has happened they’ve always come back saying that was a really good idea. There were lots of people attending so it shows there is an appetite for it here.”

Living on campus can be invaluable for a new student. It removes many of the pressures of living on your own for the first time; cutting out landlords, transport and depending on where you live, perhaps also cooking, which even final years seemingly struggle to master. Living in the centre of the action with so many people doing the same thing is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and these initiatives should help residents experience what UCD offers to the full.

Reflecting on her experiences as a resident, Danielle Curtis echoes Rachel in her support. “The community feel is there in every sense, I know everyone in my building this year. You just see people walking on the stairs, you introduce yourself and stuff like that. I think there is a community feel in each res and it’s pretty much the same vibe in each res. It made my first year, living on res.”

Last week a story hit the presses detailing a worrying new survey about job satisfaction. Conducted between 2010 and 2011, the report states that one in three Irish workers are seriously considering leaving their job, up from a fifth reported in a similar study conducted in 2004. This is even higher among younger workers, with just under half of sixteen to twenty-four year olds and forty-one per cent of those aged between twenty-five and thirty-four considering leaving their jobs. The largest decline in the survey related to how happy Irish workers are with their benefits. Only forty-seven per cent of Irish workers say that their benefits are as good as, or better than, those offered by other organisations in their industry, down from seventy-one per cent in 2004. The greatest concern of employees by far is base pay, the basic salary before overtime or bonuses, but only forty-six per cent say they are satisfied with this pay. Job security is the second most important factor for Irish workers.

While the headline-grabbing result that one in three workers wants to leave their job may have come as a surprise to those feeling that anyone lucky enough to be employed these days should be grateful for what they have, the general downturn in happiness is probably to be expected. Pay cuts and general job insecurity take their toll on people, and often cuts in some areas mean extra work is pushed on those remaining – thirty-six per cent said that the amount of work they are asked in their jobs is unreasonable, with the same number unable to maintain a healthy balance between their work and personal lives.

Is this a significant story however? While these survey results are certainly an interesting reflection of the recent recession, it must be viewed in the light of two major facts that have been somewhat skated over in the news: The survey size was just 1,000 people, and it was conducted by Mercer, the world’s largest human resource consulting firm.

1,000 people is just 0.05 per cent of the Irish workforce and hardly sufficient to give a clear snapshot of the thoughts and feelings of a population. The report doesn’t explain how these workers were found or what industries they work in. There are no such details for the 2004 report either and therefore there is no way of knowing if the groups asked then and now are in any way comparable. We don’t know whether the survey was conducted in person or via email, or whether response was mandatory or voluntary. While thirty-five per cent are reported as seriously considering leaving and forty-two per cent not, twenty-three per cent did not commit to either option. This is used as an indication of worker apathy in the survey but could easily be down to ‘survey apathy’. How many did not reply to the survey at all?

Maybe they were too busy with their fulfilling job. We don’t know. There are any number of biases that could be occurring in this report but there is absolutely no information available on its methods.

What makes this lack of information particularly relevant was that it was not conducted by a university, government agency or even by a media outlet, but a human resource consultancy. So what we have here is in fact less of a study than a PR exercise; a survey of employee dissatisfaction conducted by a company who hires themselves out to businesses to decrease employee dissatisfaction. Well done Mercer, at least someone is satisfied. Statements in Mercer’s report highlight the true purpose of the study, “These scores point to an environment that is ripe for employers to boost communication efforts, helping employees connect the dots to improve overall knowledge and acceptance.” Now, who can we find that offers just this sort of communication training…

This may not invalidate the results, but they were not produced by a disinterested party. This sort of skewed undertaking is so common that it is hardly worth presenting an example. Almost all surveys, studies and ‘scientific formulae’ for the ‘most depressing day of the year’ or ‘how to make the perfect cup of tea’ that are joyfully printed in newspapers every day are actually campaigns to get a product some publicity. They make the funny pages, the science pages, the business pages and even the news pages. Surveys without published methodology should always be taken with a pinch of salt and even more so when their producers are selling the product that is ‘lacking’. Just something to keep in mind before, say, hiring a human resource company to help with employee job satisfaction.

The votes have been cast and the ballots counted and we finally have a new president. But before you settle back for seven years of forgetting the job ever existed, it’s time to rake over this news corpse just in case we missed any gold fillings. Despite the role being largely ceremonial and providing no influence over government policy whatsoever, the campaign was awash with impossible promises. Dana promised to use the veto powers she wouldn’t have, Mitchell made the controversial pledge to both understand Ireland’s past and believe in its future, and Davis declared a thousand more years of Mary. Luckily all the soon-to-be incumbent President Michael D Higgins promised was to be “a president for all the people” which is in fact, literally true. It’s that sort of transparent politics that got him the big job.

While some may complain about the ludicrous levels of media coverage for what amounts to a two month interview for an entirely pointless job, one thing the race did provide was an interesting snapshot of changing Irish values. Having an openly gay candidate would be almost unthinkable in many countries, even in relatively liberal western countries such as the United States, but it was not treated as an issue by the Irish press or the majority of the population. For balance we also had Gay Mitchell representing the “why did they have to go and ruin a perfectly good word” portion of the country. At the same time the most ferociously religious anti-abortion candidate did incredibly poorly, although that was possibly due to her most significant contribution to the international stage being on an actual stage. Even the fact that the winner is from the Labour party is quite impressive. The economic crisis has, occupations aside, seen quite a dramatic swing to the right in Europe, where worrying promises of ‘traditional values’ dominate rhetoric and the National Front’s Marianne Le Pen has a chance at the French presidency. As always, Ireland is the Yin to Europe’s Yang and we just yinned all over ourselves. Hopefully this campaign will lead to a re-evaluation of Ireland’s international reputation as a hyper-Catholic backwater nation.

There was no shortage of other controversy throughout the campaign however. Martin McGuinness was particularly problematic given his allegedly checkered past, his candidacy punctuated by widows and children of soldiers confronting him about his time in the IRA. My biggest concern was the fact that he was the only candidate with a real job as Deputy First Minister in Northern Ireland, which he gleefully ignored for two months. Sean “the money was just resting in my account” Gallagher started off as the astute Dragon businessman but things went sour when allegations began to abound of pocketed brown envelopes from smugglers, reviving Fianna Fáil’s legacy in the electorate’s political memory, and destroying his frankly baffling forty per cent support in the final week. He then compounded the controversy by accusing McGuinness of ‘political assassination’ and calling for people to come forward with information about IRA killings, risking both his credibility and kneecaps. Dana topped even that with a myriad of contentious headlines from owning an American passport, to family allegations to accusing people of slashing her tires. Look, it wasn’t a great song but I did manage to get over it. It turned out that nobody had done anything to Dana’s tires but herself, by driving on a flat.

Norris hit the papers early and even pulled out of the race when it emerged that he had written to an Israeli court asking for clemency for a former partner accused of rape, and again when he rejoined the race and it looked like the odd nomination system would exclude him despite his popularity. His last-minute nomination ensured that no one would bother trying to change the system for at least seven years, and after his high of claiming a potential twenty-one per cent of the vote he spent the rest of the campaign whittling it down to just six. Gay Mitchell stayed relatively controversy-free by mainly being too boring for anyone to write about, and the only attention Mary Davis got was for her innovative blurring of the lines between political campaign posters and a Kelloggs advert. Michael D Higgins meanwhile, emerged as the calm and competent ringleader of a circus where someone has accidentally replaced the animal feed with crack.

But finally this weekend it all ended, and we can look forward to seeing some actual news again. Michael D can slink back into the political shadows, albeit now the shadows in a gigantic state-provided White House, and Mary McAleese can go back to her life as… well, I’m sure she’ll find something to do. I look forward to the opening of many primary schools and shopping centres.

The UCD Ball will take place on the final day of the second semester, Friday the 20^th of April 2012. A letter was presented at last week’s Students’ Union Council confirming the agreement of the date and location with UCD authorities.

The 2011 UCD Ball was cancelled and rescheduled at late notice due to disagreements between the Students’ Union and UCD authorities. Students’ Union Entertainments Officer Stephen Darcy assured the University Observer that this would not be an issue, “there was a miscommunication between the relevant authorities in UCD about the campus being closed but that’s been completely ironed out this year. What happened last year is one hundred per cent not happening this year”.

Students are encouraged to suggest and vote for acts they would like to see on the SU Ents’ Facebook page. Promotion for the event will begin before Christmas and tickets will be on sale early next semester.

Welfare Fund Increased

The Student Welfare Fund has managed to secure increased levels of funding this semester.  Kylemore have pledged additional money to the fund, while there has also been a “significant increase” in money from State sources.

Students’ Union Welfare Officer Rachel Breslin attributed the increase to higher demand due to grant cuts and explained that both the UCD SU and the USI have been lobbying the Government on students’ behalf.

“Certainly that the feedback from all the universities across the country is that this situation is getting worse for students. Finally the government has shown that they’re acknowledging that and that was where the money came from. There’s no denying that there are more and more students applying for the fund and that’s what the fact is, so it really had to happen.”

The funding, which comes both from the Government and the European Social Fund is divided between HEAR (Higher Education Access Route), the Student Assistance Fund and the Welfare Fund. The Welfare Fund meets every fortnight and is designed to help with unexpected events. The Student Assistance Fund covers students with an on-going need for assistance. Applications for this year are open from now until November the 15^th.

Slán Abhaile Receives UCD Backing

The SU Welfare scheme, Slán Abhaile, has received the full support of the UCD authorities, including financial backing and coverage for all bad debts incurred by the program.

The scheme, announced at the start of the semester, is a program whereby students can get a taxi home and pay the fare at a later date. A student’s details, including student number and phone number, will be registered in a system set up for the scheme. Once a student rings Wini-cabs, the taxi company through which the system is being run, they receive a text with a code, which is recorded by the driver. This allows the fare to be charged to the account that the SU have with the taxi company, in the student’s name.

“The way the technical system works” Students’ Union Welfare Officer Rachel Breslin explains, “is we have to have a float in the account. So [UCD] are going cover the float to make sure there’s always enough money in the account to make sure that people can get home that night.”

A reported 1,500 students have already signed up to the scheme, although some names remain unverified. To be included in the taxi scheme, your student card must be verified by the Student’s Union to ensure the security of the program. Card verification will take place on Wednesday, November 2^nd from 11am to 3.30pm. The scheme is scheduled to go live in the next two to three weeks.

Last week the Guardian embarked on an interesting experiment. Abandoning the protective aura of secrecy that usually surrounds upcoming news stories, they have decided to open up their news feed to contributions from the public. People can now see exactly what stories the Guardian staff are working on, and using the Twitter hashtag #opennews, send on tips and ideas. The Guardian’s aim is to restore the public trust in media in the wake of recent scandals by lifting the veil on the news process, thus hopefully boosting interest in the work they do.

This innovative move plays into the wider trend of democratization in the media. While once content was decided by shadowy figures behind closed doors and public opinion was limited to the vaguely mocking readouts in Points of View, the views of the many are now impossible to ignore. The opportunities to contribute to media output has exploded in the last ten years with the rise of the internet; every broadcast, newspaper, magazine and website begs you to ‘send them your views’. Call them, text them, email them, tweet them because your views are so important and deserve airtime.

The communication revolution of the last decade has also led to a decline in traditional media. To try and stem the huge financial losses caused by falling circulation and advertising revenue, job cuts have become common. Earlier this month the New York Times, RTÉ and the BBC announced job cuts, with the latter eliminating nearly 2,000 positions, and several papers in Paris failed to print over a number of days last week due to strikes over planned redundancies. Barely one round of lay-offs has finished before another is announced. However, these cuts don’t come with a decrease in output. On the contrary, they scrabble for new and innovative forms of communication. It’s now standard for a newspaper not only to have a website, but videos, podcasts, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and live-feeds, all of which need to be maintained. Twenty-four hour coverage is no longer the preserve of television.

The workload for the remaining workers has gone through the roof. Whereas a staff writer might once have had to turn in two or three articles in a work day, allowing time to follow up leads, make calls and research their stories, they are now expected to submit up to ten. It’s no wonder that the practise of reprinting press releases has become endemic. Research by Cardiff University discovered that fifty-four per cent of news articles use PR-created stories or text, while much else is bought in from news agencies such as Associated Press and Reuters. The remaining gaps are plugged by the public.

While it’s of course not the fault of unpaid public contributors that so many journalists are being laid off, it is part of a vicious cycle which helps make these cuts feasible when demand for content is so high. There simply isn’t the time or resources to research and write enough to fill all the necessary spaces, whether in print or broadcast. Turn on Sky News and see how they spend time counting down the top ten YouTube videos, or what percentage of radio shows are just DJs reading out text messages. Have a look at how much of a news site is taken up with polls, comments and forums. As free content is made available, it allows space to be filled more easily and cheaply. When space-filling is cheap and writers are expensive, it’s not hard to see why cut-backs are made where they are. The Guardian’s move plays into this; if it’s successful and the tweets flood in with stories, it may start to look quite tempting to budget-conscious bosses to cut loose those researchers whose work loads are now lightened. Perhaps next they will start asking for full articles for free; just so as to express the public’s view of course.

While newspapers may want to demystify the news process, this actually increases mistrust of the media by positioning trained media professionals as ‘others’. They are seen as elitist, the non-public who don’t care about you and tell you what to think rather than ordinary people working in an office, writing reports on events rather than reports on clients. The third millennium has been marked by an obsession with the man on the street, where scripted television been tossed aside for the far cheaper reality TV, and where the public sing and cry and humiliate themselves for our amusement. Everything is becoming like Wikipedia: user generated. We are not terribly far away from ‘reality news’.

As more and more jobs are cut and journalists are stretched to breaking point, the work becomes rushed, shoddy, poorly researched and largely plagiarised. People stop reading, circulation falls further and more jobs are cut. With just the bare bones – a skeleton staff of overwhelmed, overworked and undervalued writers – how can things go on? Send us your views.