Issue 2 — April 2011
King Island Days
Image by Kaisa Heikkilä
King Island Days
Image by Kaisa Heikkilä
Welcome to The 4th Estate, and our new online home.
The publication of our second issue coincides almost exactly with Aberdeen University’s Easter break, however we wanted to follow the success of the first with something more substantial than “Happy Holidays”. T4E remains committed to print editions but as so few of you are on campus over the break, we’ve made Issue 2 online only.
You’ll still have seen our posters around though. Those were especially for you (if you are an under appreciated and over worked postgraduate student).
This issue, as always, was put together by the members of T4E, made up of the writers, proof-readers, designers and marketers, not by an omnipotent editorial. The 4th Estate will consider any article, poem, comic, photograph or artwork. We have no political or subject bias, we just want to be interested, and challenged.
We welcome your submissions and thank you for your support.
About the cover photograph:
King Island Days
I used to spend a lot of time on an island, a tiny little island, called King Island which belongs to the state of Tasmania though geographically it’s closer to mainland Australia. Not much happens on that island but that’s okay, for it has some glorious beaches, surf and sunsets…
My friend had a funny-looking old station wagon and I can’t remember if I was napping in the car while watching the surf, reading a book, or whether we were driving, just that it was a beautiful afternoon. I was holding my camera in my hand, as I always used to, and I took this photo so that I would never forget those King Island days…
Kaisa Heikkilä
Adarsh Makdani, for The 4th Estate
Undergraduate and PhD students are getting a raw deal. The average PhD stipend is 13k. This is much the same as a full-time minimum wage job. Post-graduates are subject to direct domination or exploitation from staff in terms of administration, research, coffee-fetching and of course teaching. The last time your lecturer marked a non-honours year [...] Read full article »
In the UK, the mainstream view is that British society is largely a tolerant society with regards to race, religion, gender and sexuality. It would be logical to point that Britain has totally transformed itself; if you look at the situation within the last 40 years ago. Name-calling, discrimination in education and employment, the virtual [...] Read full article »
It’s nothing new. You’ve seen it before. Moth-balling: a technical term for the careful process of breaking up military hardware and recycling it. When tanks, planes and weapons reach their life expectancy, they are dismantled by governments around the world to be made into new products. The £3.9bn it costs for a new aircraft carrier [...] Read full article »
The tavern has been for a thousand years Regular drinkers; with well practiced ears A story never holds true once told Who could imagine, the stories these walls hold? The barman, Thomas has worked all his days Wakes, works, eats, drinks and before bed, prays An honest man? A kindly face, he is well read [...] Read full article »
A spectre is haunting Europe, but its roots no longer lie in revolutionary Marxism. While many traditional left-wing political parties sink into oblivion or turn to alternative ways of winning the vote (New Labour comes to mind), it is the supposedly “New Right” which is on the rise. In the most recent Dutch elections, the [...] Read full article »