Thomas Vaughan, Author at The Orbital

20Feb

By Thomas VaughanNo Comments

Opinion

A Super-cycle Highway to Hell?

The 18 mile segregated cycle route costing £160 million and set to become the longest of its kind in Europe, will take cyclists via segregated bike lane past some of the capital’s busiest and most iconic monuments and sites including Somerset House and Hyde Park, leading all the way up to the Parliament building. The majority of the path which will run parallel to the roads of London, will include pedestrianised crossings and conversions of existing roads to cyclist one-way paths. The measure will allow commuters and students alike to travel safely to and fro their destinations, as it provides separation from Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs), which caused nine of 14 deaths to cyclists in 2013. With it comes the hope that more people of London will begin cycling, moving away from use of priva...

30Oct

By Thomas VaughanNo Comments

Opinion

Trust: On Sale for $1.3 million

The United Nations. An organisation forged in the furnace of pacifistic desperation, in the spirit of multi-national cooperation and with a beating poverty-reducing heart at the centre of a body of good will. Ruined. By the greed of one man. John Ashe, 61, from the small 281km squared island of Antigua in the Caribbean was accused on the 6th October 2015, of bribery and corruption charges. The charges as they stand detail that Mr Ashe used his high-ranking position in the UN to obtain for a Chinese businessman a lucrative business deal for the construction of a conference centre in Macau, Hong-Kong, China. You read this sort of headline frequently, and it strikes you as awful, clearly, but humans do have their weaknesses and money is a fundamental enabler to happiness for many and,...

The Breath of Fresh Air with the Beard In Charge of Labour

27Sep

By Thomas VaughanNo Comments

Opinion

The Breath of Fresh Air with the Beard In Charge of Labour

Why should we love Jeremy Corbyn? Why should this man, this beard and beige adorning, allotment attending man, be greeted with our adoration? To answer this, we should examine the political sphere currently in place. A growing resentment towards politicians resonates amongst nearly all of us, and why? Despite strong words, big gestures and emphatic lip service given by politicians, Britain suffers from a limp lack of alternatives. Many critics of Ed Miliband’s Labour party state that it was his lack of radical alternatives to the Conservatives that lost him the election. On issues such as Europe he remained as silent as the grave, a decision that lead to as much for his career. Regarding the housing issue he was vague, nondescript and insufficient. We regard our political scene with ...

22Sep

By Thomas VaughanNo Comments

Opinion

How Not To Do Freshers Week

This is not an article that will detail that fine delicate balance between the cliché extremes of ‘working hard and having fun’, for several reasons. Those sorts of articles are patronising, unenlightening, and generally written by people who frankly know how to do neither. Instead, I will impart a few quick recommendations regarding what not to do during the VK sponsored inauguration ritual that is Fresher’s week. Do not, under any circumstances, even consider the remote possibility of spending a single night inside your room. For this week, there are no ‘early nights’. You have just arrived, all you have are blank A4 sheets and an empty timetable. You have nothing to be early for. Do not call your friends out the back of Medicine or the SU (these places will become familiar to you) on...

6May

By Thomas VaughanNo Comments

Opinion

History Is A Theatre

History Is A Theatre I read an article that made me angry. It read ‘Germany owes Greece 279 Billion Euros for the war’. This article made me angry because it involves Germany in a morality scandal-a scandal that Germany has negated their moral duty to Greece to repay costs and damages incurred in Greece during WWII, this is a period of time from which the current Chancellorship of Germany may possibly be unable to be any further separated. What Greece is asking for is the current government of Italy to stabilise the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Obama to apologise for the Wall Street Crash and this generation to make amends for the Sugarbabes. Despite deliberately emotive and antagonising, the actions of Greece do raise an interesting point when it comes to our connection with the past. As we...

28Jan

By Thomas VaughanNo Comments

Opinion

Founder’s Legacy

Founder’s building of Royal Holloway is beautiful. Its majesty excites the fortunate onlooker. This building is of the rare breed of sights that exceeds the aesthetics of its respective Google Image results. The students that scurry around its many levels of incalculable beauty bring it to life, such as oxygen does to the lungs, you can feel Founder’s breathing its history. However, Founders is not simply a master piece of constructed human vision, but a chapter, a turning point in the history of Britain that is easily overlooked as you succumb to the charm of this building. Women have historically been valued below men, everyone knows this, from women not being classed as citizens in Ancient Athenian Democracy to the suffragette movement in the 19th century, women have struggled to achie...

28Jan

By Thomas VaughanNo Comments

Opinion

Landfill of the Soul

An instruction from the accommodation services details the meticulous levels of cleanliness I have to achieve by 10 am on the day of departure. It is as I undergo this next stage of sanitising my frankly depraved living conditions, emptying the contents of my small bin, that a realisation struck me; my entire academic term can be defined by the goods I am disposing of. As I ferreted through the thrown-away, I noted an increase in the amount of screwed up paper, seemingly anonymously discarded. This to me shows a new reluctance to accept anything less than perfection, whilst the subject matter of the screwed up paper - of philosophy, of article ideas, of drawings - acted as a perfect demonstration of the person I am trying to become. Pretty profound stuff for items whose new temporary...