A group of York students has won the opportunity to have their very own I-phone application developed after winning The App Challenge final, held at the Ron Cooke Hub on Wednesday, January 18.
YUSU Welfare officer Bob Hughes has warned students to be vigilant after a student loans phishing scam has been revealed.
Her Majesty the Queen will be visiting York on Maundy Thursday, 5th April, as part of the 800th anniversary of York’s Charter for the traditional “Royal Maundy” ceremony.
A flood caused by a heating system “failure” forced the university IT services to shut down many essential systems on Sunday night, causing problems for many students on the eve of their exams and assignment due-dates.
It looked as though Woodstock could head the same way as the Glastonbury "wash out" when the clouds opened over York in the early morning to continue one of the wettest Junes on record. But continuous sunshine from then dried out the concrete of Vanbrugh paradise in time for midday.
An early highlight was York's Jess Gardham who played as part of her nationwide tour to promote debut album Beyond Belief. Gardham supported KT Tunstall at Glastonbury 2005 and was introduced as a "coup" for Woodstock. Her easy listening chill out fitted perfectly with the afternoon sun.
Gardham told The Yorker: "I've lived in York since I was two so I'm a proper Yorkie. My style's very eclectic as I've grown up with folk, soul, R 'n' B and blues so my songwriting's sort of a mixture of all of them. A bit of a soul folk fusion sort of thing"
It's been brilliant there's a really good atmosphere and the weather's held out
"When I'm on my own with my guitar it's more acoustics, folk, soul but it gets a lot more funky as you've seen today when I've got the bass and the drums it changes it it makes it more upbeat.It's the first time I've done anything at the university actually.It's been brilliant there's a really good atmosphere and the weather's held out."
More on Jess Gardham here
The variety of acts included a set from improvised comedy group The Shambles. Early problems lead one audience member to tell us: "The Shambles are a shambles it seems."
But The Shambles showed the bravery you'd expect from people prepared to try to make a room full of strangers laugh without preparation. They turned the mood around with sketches such as the world's worst person to get stuck in a lift with and God versus the Devil, and seem genuinely delighted when The Yorker tells them they're good value for their regular charge of £1.
Philip Oldershaw of The Shambles said: "Usually the better venue for us is a smaller one. In a room of this size it's harder to do our stuff but it still went really well."
"We were set up by a member of the Oxford Imps, who were at the Edinburgh Fringe festival. Rather than doing stand up or something like that we're trying to join the elite like the Cambridge Footlights. We play every Monday at 8 o'clock in Goodricke JCR but we'll be changing our venue next year."
Fast food was the order of the day after a request from the students union for a special event menu, and so The Yorker enjoyed a burger and chips.
Magic P and the Innuendoes were next up on the indoor stage. One onlooker announced to The Yorker: "I don't know who they are but they sound good," before disappearing into the crowd. The group won popular acclaim for their mix of rock and Irish folk and seemed thrilled with the response they received.
Fiddler Aaron said:"We enjoyed it. I play folk fiddle, Phil plays jazz bass, Tony plays anything he can get his hands on and Mike plays rock guitar so it's a fusion. We bring in our own stuff to it because we're from completely different areas."
The band's success was followed up by a performance by gymnastics club, and our quotable onlooker returned by insisting that: "It's to make you feel really fat and lazy." Later on at the outdoor stage the ever popular Samba band raised all present to their feet for the first time and from then on the mood was more excited.
Pete Tunicliffe of York Samba explained his unique clothing style: "I'm wearing a poncho from Ecuador. Normally I wear a Brazil shirt but this is to keep me warm and cozy it's like a big rug, it's nice!"
"(Samba soc) is special we get together once a week to practice and normally we play charity gigs, last Friday we did one outdoors at The Charles. This is a big crowd for us but the biggest we played was when we went to Nottingham we played in front of 8,000 people. Today we were meant to play in front of 20,000 but if got rained off."
Perhaps the man of the day was Steve O’Gallagher. The guitarist and drummer known as Steve O played in five separate acts, which meant that he was on stage for three hours.
He said: “I played guitar with Playing For Keeps but drums for Jess Gardham and drums for Carnival Kid. It’s been a blast, I’m kind of continuously in three bands. Carnival Kid is quite challenging to take up because there’s a lot of different types of sections so you have to really nail it."
“It was really fun, we’ve had a good laugh, I mean I love nothing more than being on stage. I'm in the last year of an engineering degree and I'm going to London with Fenna Rhodes and the True Ingredients and Make it better later so hopefully you'll hear about them in future."
Later on pole exercise soc performed an exhibition that had the crowd cheering as dancers twisted and turned to Chicago tune 'He had it comin' in ways that made The Yorker blush.
Incoming pole exercise club president Ellie Scott said: "This is the biggest event we've done so far. It was new because we've never done pole outside before. The temperature can affect the pole so we were a little worried but no one fell on their head!"
This year York may have had its last taste of Fenna Rhodes and the New Ingredients, who many consider the best group to have come out of the university. The band have created their own unique sound over the last three years with influences including jazz, hiphop, drum and bass and reggae. They're set to move to London and plan on a worldwide tour in 2008.
MC Nur Jamal said: “That’s probably our last Woodstock I would imagine yeah. I’ve loved them all. For me what’s unique about it is that every time we’ve played it we’ve had a different line up of vocalists so that’s always changed."
"We’ve also played some new tracks, we always try to throw in some new ones. Personally I think I’ve gotten better and I think the other people in the group have too. The audience is the best man, getting involved with the audience was fun.”
Our source's original estimate is hazy: "Fuck knows. A lot." He later comes back with a "low estimate" of 15 kegs of beer and 165 cases of cans of lager or cider (which, by the by, at six "four packs" per case comes to 990 "four packs" or 3960 cans of lager and cider). Add to that spirits, shooters, bottles and (who'd have thought it?) non alcoholic drinks and we receive an even vaguer estimate of the takings at the tills. Chances are it's a pretty penny.
One figure we are sure of is that RAG achieved its target of £5000 by the end of the show at midnight.
RAG President Kyle McInnes said: "It's taken since February to organise and it's been better than I could ever imagine. Everybody keep giving to RAG we want to maintain this success!"
The £5000 is to be split evenly between RAG's beneficiaries:
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