In a market now saturated with great-tasting protein bars which can hardly be distinguished from actual chocolate bars, perhaps it’s to be expected that nutritional values might slip. Is it too much to ask that a protein bar tastes good and does good? Enter UK brand PHD’s Smart Bar range. Having long associated PHD with their old (before the re-vamp) ‘Diet Whey’ bars – all as bland, powdery and stiff as the last – I was reluctant to believe their claims about this new ‘delicious’ range. But, credit where credit is due, someone at PHD deserves a raise because these bars really are impressive.

Did you cringe watching Rocky down raw egg yolks, or Buddy the Elf dousing his spaghetti with maple syrup? If you’re honest, were you left with some form of emotional trauma after watching Miss Trunchbull force poor Bruce to eat that entire chocolate cake? Far from something to flesh out a scene or give characters something to do with idle hands, food is a subtle yet invaluable tool for filmmakers.

Note: I wrote this almost two years ago now, and I’ve left it almost completely unedited. Although I touch on it, if I was to rewrite this now, I’d be much more upfront about how difficult I found the whole experience – socially, mentally and academically. It’s Thursday of my second week here at Oxford. I’m sat in the library, taking a break from reading about Cnut’s invasion of England to recount my experience of Freshers’ Week at Oxford University. Before I rocked up, I had no idea what I was in for. Although I’d read all the emails, scoured the internet for recommendations on what to pack, and even bought myself a cook book, I really was just a naive little Fresher.

In 1875 the jury of the Salon, the official exhibition of the French Academy of Fine Arts, rejected a painting they considered to be ‘vulgar’ and ‘unheroic’ and Émile Zola described the same painting as ‘anti-artistic’. That painting is now regarded as one of Gustave Caillebotte’s best modern works - ‘Les Raboteurs de Parquet’ or ‘The Floor Planers’.

Whilst it’s great that these previously marginalised people have found a way to express their self-love, it does leave many feeling that they’re not curvy enough to be body positive. Of course I’m not saying that anyone should be excluded from loving themselves and I’m certainly not implying that slimmer people don’t struggle with body image issues – many of the 96% from Dove’s study will have been an average dress size. What I am trying to say, however, is that body positivity has become confused with confidence and self-love meaning those who the movement was originally intended to empower are often left on the outside looking in. There’s this new pressure to love ourselves when, for many of us, this is often far from realistic.

It’s this kind of laid-back, witty and approachable aura that impressed me when I spoke to the Radio 1 Breakfast Show DJ after his event at the Union. We talked about everything from his radio career and fundraising efforts to his university years and love of cheese and wine. Throughout our entire conversation he was so at ease that I never would have guessed his traumatic train experience. James tries to channel this relaxed and friendly approach into his radio shows, spending time working on a more “natural style of presenting” like that of Terry Wogan, someone he counts among his heroes.

In 2010, Quest graced the protein bar market with their take on ‘cheating clean’, releasing a new kind of bar in two flavours – Vanilla Almond Crunch and Peanut Butter Supreme. Fast-forward almost a decade and the Quest bar line up has expanded massively, including a range of more, sometimes unusual, protein bar flavours, such as Maple Waffle or Blueberry Muffin AND other protein products like cookies and even pizzas! At considerable personal expense (a definite con of Quest bars is their hefty price tag) I have set out here to review every Quest bar in existence.

I still can’t believe how much these bars are like regular chocolate bars. Part of me is even expecting some law suit where it’s revealed they’ve duped us all by using a regular chocolate bar in fancy protein bar packaging – it’s that good.

Oh look, it’s everyone’s least favourite time of the year – exam season. This means revision, which in turn means it’s time to reacquaint yourself with your books, your flash cards and your stress ball. It’s one thing to know you should be revising, but quite another to know what this actually means. For a long time, ‘revision’ to me meant making beautiful posters with detailed illustrations and perfect colouring. If the information didn’t fit on the page, or God forbid it didn’t look good, then it didn’t make the cut. Entertaining? Sure. Effective? Not so much.

The letter, seen exclusively by Cherwell, reads: “The collegiate system tends toward ad-hoc welfare structures. While at some colleges the welfare team can give much needed emotional support, or referrals to the counselling service or NHS, elsewhere, suitable procedures might be completely lacking."

Tutorial Fellows at some colleges could face a £20,000 difference in their annual pay compared to other colleges, with the discrepancy being described as “scandalous and entrenched classism”. Whilst at St John’s and New College the average remuneration for a Tutorial Fellow came to an estimated £49,333 and £40,637 respectively, at Lady Margaret Hall and Mansfield it was an estimated £21,076 and £22,116 respectively.

Professor John Lennox is one of the world's top mathematicians. He is also a committed Christian. If these two things sound incompatible to you, you're not alone. Science and religion are often cast as fundamentally opposed, a battle between heart and mind. It seems that every man, woman and passing cat in the worlds of science and religion have thrown their opinion into the raging debate, and as of yet there is no end in sight. But for Professor Lennox, the debate is hardly worth having - the answer seems so obvious.

Librarian for the Oxford Union, Brendan McGrath, has survived calls for impeachment after winning yesterday’s poll by 400 votes to 189. A motion for McGrath’s impeachment was led on Thursday last week, 7th February, as a result of concerns over his decision to ask the Returning Officer, Liam Frahm, to review the ‘Trial Slate Ban’ implemented last term and that he was using his position for political gain.

The University’s scheme designed to redistribute wealth amongst colleges, the College Contribution Scheme, is currently under “live discussions” among college heads, with a new version of the Scheme to be announced later this year. Under the most recent Scheme (Scheme 6) colleges with taxable assets of above £45 mil- lion paid contributions into a fund from which poorer colleges could apply to for grants.

Research by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and network analysis firm Graphika has provided the most comprehensive analysis into Russia’s disinformation campaign around the 2016 US election. According to the Washington Post, a draft of the report reveals the Russians to have targeted voters through social media to encourage them to elect Donald Trump.

‘My own feeling is that almost any place would be more appropriate for a Ladies’ College than Oxford and I should certainly not grudge Cambridge the privilege of carrying out that experiment’ wrote Max Müller, Oxford’s first Professor of Comparative Philology, upon learning of the plan to found a college for women at the university. The idea certainly threatened to shatter tradition; for almost eight centuries Oxford had exclusively educated men, producing such figures as the philosopher John Locke, the poet John Donne, and historian Edward Gibbon.

Oxford University’s lack of diversity is well known and I will resist the temptation to elaborate on it here, but the fact that these statistics have revealed that students from certain backgrounds are more likely to suspend highlights the enduring inequality in the education system as a whole. Those from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds do not receive the support - whether it be financial or emotional - they need in order to access the same opportunities as their counterparts.

PARKINSON'S UK's Basingstoke branch has received a financial boost from a building society. As part of Newbury Building Society’s Community Support scheme, the charity was awarded £375 to support its ‘Loud and Clear’ speech therapy sessions and tai-chi exercise classes. Hosted at Popley Fields Community Centre, both activities offer a welcoming environment with access to specialist care for people in the Basingstoke and Deane area living with Parkinson’s.

A CLINIC has moved to a new home, but still within the same village. After five years, The Body Reset Clinic has recently moved to a new home on the A30 heading out of the village towards Hook from its base in High Street. The Body Reset Clinic offers a range of services to clients, including sports therapy, physiotherapy and McTimoney chiropractic sessions.