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The Spinoff
14-07-2025
- Politics
- The Spinoff
The cost of living crisis is over – this is just our reality now
New Zealanders are participating in mass delusion by insisting we are still in a 'crisis', argues a nihilistic Mad Chapman. Imagine you don't smoke. You tell everyone you don't smoke, and it's true. Then one night you drink a few too many beers at a party and find yourself smoking a durry on the deck with your new best friend who you just met. You wake up the next morning, throat feeling disgusting, and think 'that was weird and out of character'. When someone tells you they didn't know you smoked, you say no, I don't smoke, that was just a silly thing I did in a moment of weakness. The next weekend it happens again. You still don't smoke, except when you're really drunk. Then you start a big work project and find yourself staying late at the office a lot. Sometimes you have a beer to take the edge off while you work. What goes hand in hand with a beer? A smoke. Just one pack you think. I don't smoke but this project is hectic and one pack could help with the stress. As soon as that big project ends, another one begins. A year later, your colleague sees you smoking outside the office at 11am and asks when you started smoking. No, you insist, I don't smoke! There's just a lot going on right now. They look at you for a second too long before nodding and walking away. This is how we all sound in the year 2025, insisting the cost of living is still a temporary crisis. We've become so used to the phrase it's hard to remember when it actually began. Such a concept is relatively modern. A search of newspapers (some as recent as 1989) returns no results for 'cost of living crisis' but does reveal that in 1918, Australian butter prices shot up and prompted public protests to the Price of Commodities Commission, 'a sort of Cost of Living Appeal Board'. The writer suggested this sort of thing was needed here in New Zealand too. What is a crisis? A crisis is 'a time of intense difficulty or danger'. A crisis can be personal, societal or economic, and demands immediate action and attention. The Covid-19 pandemic was a crisis. Effects of that are still being felt across the world but most people would agree the 'crisis' element has passed, largely due to that aforementioned urgent action and attention. The delayed impact was the cost of living, which became an official crisis in New Zealand around the beginning of 2022. Three and a half years later and you can still expect to see 'cost of living crisis' in a headline at least twice a week. That's a long time to be in need of 'urgent action and attention'. Which actually begs the question of whether or not our cost of living crisis can even be called a crisis if there has been a distinct lack of urgent action and attention? Like a cursed Schrodinger's cat, can a crisis exist if it is, by all practical measures, ignored? The finance minister certainly intends to address it, as the finance minister before her intended to. Nicola Willis told RNZ last week she agreed with Kiwibank economist Jarrod Kerr's assessment that we still live in a 'severe cost of living crisis'. She acknowledged the near-exponential increase in prices over the past five years (across groceries, power, transport etc) but suggested the true solution is a growth in wages to afford those skyrocketing costs. The government has a to-do list that is going to 'rebuild the economy' in the third quarter of its term, including specific cost-of-living actions around supermarket competition – which have not yet been checked off. When asked for a timeline for legislation that could potentially stem the rate of inflationary prices, Willis instead returned to a promise on rising wages. In other words, things aren't going to ever get cheaper but maybe you'll get a promotion. Wages did in fact increase recently – including a smidge increase in the minimum wage in April – but that hasn't scared the high prices away. In fact – and I'm no economist so don't quote me on this – a rise in wages typically encourages higher spending (higher demand) which tends to lead to increased prices unless there are, hmmmm I dunno, rules restricting that. Until then, it seems New Zealanders will continue to flock to Australia where wages really are higher and groceries are expensive but somehow still cheaper than here. Everything is getting more expensive (fun) but the arbiter of the cost of living is butter. A product of the biggest industry in New Zealand and a staple item considered an essential ingredient on any shopping list, butter is virtually unavoidable and the cost of it feels somehow directly tied to our collective mental health. In 2022, one of the most-read articles on The Spinoff all year included the words ' $4 blocks of butter '. The article itself was a fascinating business feature on the expansion of The Warehouse into the supermarket space but I don't think that's why everyone clicked on it. I think everyone clicked on it because they Googled 'cheapest butter nz'. Back then a $4 block of butter was certainly the cheapest but only by a dollar or so. Now, an ad for a $4 block of butter means you're about to have your credit card information stolen. Any time someone dares suggest that New Zealand is a blissful paradise, a raspy voice will remind them that butter is $10. That it costs $50 to buy butter, eggs, milk and a couple of chicken breasts. And these prices are only heading in one direction, with no end in sight. (Willis has since said she's asked Fonterra some questions about the cost of butter and milk. Can't wait to hear the answers!) In the meantime, there's a comfort in calling something a crisis, because a crisis is temporary. A crisis has an end point (even if that end point is really blurry on the horizon and may in fact be a mirage). If the crisis went away but butter was still $10, what are we supposed to do then? Perhaps our mass delusion in believing that someone, anyone, will eventually do something about the cost of living is the real crisis. And if we really are in a crisis, we are well past the point of urgent action and attention. This is just our lives now. A cost of living reality. We're all huddled on the shaky deck of the New Zealand economy, passing around a single durry.
India Today
14-07-2025
- Politics
- India Today
Schrodinger's Aadhaar in Bihar, it is everything and nothing at the same time
Numbers can be mysterious. Ask a mathematician. Or ask an UIDAI official, and he will confirm the mysterious properties of the number that we call Aadhaar. It can be described in several ways, with poetic vexations or with something like what the fick, depending on where you have been asked to produce this number, under what circumstances and with what results. Fick You is probably what many people in Bihar are muttering nowadays as they produce their Aadhaar number again and again and are told that the number, despite its 12 digits, means zero, absolutely zero, total nada!advertisementThe story of Aadhar would be comical if it wasn't tragic or hassling for the people of this country. You see, almost 15 years after Aadhaar started making a presence in our lives, no one — not even UIDAI, or Nandan Nilekani, whose brainchild it is — knows the nature of this back in 2020, when I was more active on Twitter, one of my tweets went somewhat viral. It went like this: 'Aadhaar is nothing. Aadhaar is everything. Aadhaar is anything UIDAI wants it to be. Aadhaar is the stick. Aadhaar is the carrot. Aadhaar is the cake you can have and not eat. Aadhaar is also the cake you can have and eat. It's Schrodinger's Aadhaar.' Schrodinger's Aadhaar: The phrase, inspired by Schrodinger's cat that is neither dead nor alive, is not new. It has been bandied about since 2017. I used it in 2018 in one of my tweets. But it struck a particular nerve among Twitter users from India in 2020 because, by then, the Aadhaar number had become the metaphorical Chimera, changing on a daily basis its shape, identity, purpose and use. By 2020, at least those of us who had always seen through its charade had firmly realised that Aadhaar was everything and yet it was a decade later, as the Election Commission of India conducts its voter roll verification in Bihar, we are still trying to find an answer to what is Aadhaar. Decades ago, economist Joan Robinson said that 'Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true.' In 2025, we can use the same words to describe Aadhaar. The argument nowadays is that Aadhaar is proof of address, and not identity. This seems rather strange because Aadhaar started as a number that would provide each person a unique identity. The UIDAI itself has a 'unique ID Authority' in its name. When the government created UIDAI, it did so with an express purpose and told it to 'generate and assign UID to residents.' And because it was an ID, it was tied to a person's biometrics, such as fingerprints and eye scans, in ways not even the Indian Passport is when the World Bank — or rather World Bank economist Paul Romer — described Aadhaar, it was deemed 'the most sophisticated ID programme in the world.' The same people who are now saying that Aadhaar is not an identity proof and that it is just an address proof, are the ones who until a year ago would slam the certificate from Romer — but described as a certificate from the World Bank — in the faces of Aadhaar has been Aadhaar's story throughout its existence. The number might have been born out of the necessity of identifying actual MGNREGA beneficiaries, its purpose and characters have changed again and again to suit the whims and fancies of this government department or fact, seeing how government departments use it, it has also been captured by private individuals and private organisations, who use it without any oversight or proper guidelines. The result is that Aadhaar is used in 10,000 ways. It is demanded by security guards when you enter a residence complex. It is demanded by guards at the airport. It is demanded by the courier services when their porters come to deliver goods. It is demanded by banks. It is demanded, in various ways and for sundry purposes, by almost all government departments. It is even demanded when you go to a hospital, are laid on to a stretcher and rushed into an emergency Supreme Court, in 2017, limited its scope, but the march of Aadhaar continued left-right, left-right and centre. The government, in almost all its communication on the matter, has deemed Aadhaar not mandatory because by the law, as explained by the Supreme Court, it can't be mandatory for walk into any government department for any citizen service, from registry of property to setting up a business, and the first thing that is 'mandatory' is Aadhaar. The contradictions run deep and wild, and in hilarious ways. The UIDAI says that we should never provide a copy of Aadhaar to anyone. You see, Aadhaar is supposed to be just a digital number, which can only be used in conjunction with a biometrics machine for authentication purposes in some very specific settings. Yet, the same authority allows people to create these cool-looking cards with the Aadhaar number on them, which are then demanded at every nook and corner of the country by this person or principle, I am opposed to a number becoming a defining identity of a person. Any number. My objections are the same which led Yevgeny Zamyatin to write We, a novel that, in 1921, became one of the first books to be banned by communist Soviet Russia. The novel, which explores a totalitarian society structured on the basis of science and mathematics, assigns every citizen a number. There are no names because names lead to an individual identity, free and unique, whereas 'We' is all about uniformity and conformity. And, of course, a number makes surveillance I also understand this is a utopian idea. In this time of Dataism, which Yuval Noah Harari calls the religion of the 21st century, a national number of residents can have its uses. For example, the Social Security Number in the US. So, we can have a use for something like Aadhaar. India is a big country. It is also rather chaotic, with bureaucracy and paperwork drowning everyone and everything. A national number can help the problem in India is that even the best ideas have a habit of turning into a nightmare here. There are a number of reasons for that, but in the case of Aadhaar, it is due to plain avariciousness of the government as well as private companies that want a unique identifier to link all the data of being a tool for a specific purpose, Aadhaar, by design, has been turned into a digital monster, a sort of Cthulhu that has tentacles in everything. And because it is supposed to exist and be used everywhere, in 2025, it no longer has any sanctity to serve any purpose. This is the reason why it is accepted everywhere now but is not considered a serious document anywhere. This is also the reason behind the flip-flop on Aadhaar. One day it gets accepted, the next day it might not.(Javed Anwer is Technology Editor, India Today Group Digital. Latent Space is a weekly column on tech, world, and everything in between. The name comes from the science of AI and to reflect it, Latent Space functions in the same way: by simplifying the world of tech and giving it a context)- Ends(Views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author)Must Watch
Yahoo
03-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
MS initiates coverage on AI Biotechs, flags key pipeline catalysts
-- Morgan Stanley initiated coverage on three AI-integrated biotechnology firms, Absci, Schrodinger (NASDAQ:SDGR), and Recursion Pharmaceuticals, flagging divergent business models and upcoming catalysts in a sector under pressure. The brokerage rated Absci 'overweight' with a $7 price target, and assigned 'equal weight' ratings to Schrodinger and Recursion with price targets of $28 and $5, respectively. Absci combines generative AI with lab validation through its Integrated Drug Creation Platform. Its lead candidate, ABS-101, is a TL1A monoclonal antibody in Phase I for inflammatory bowel disease. Interim data from this trial, expected in 2H25, is being closely watched for indicators of safety, pharmacokinetics, and immunogenicity. Absci is in discussions with three biopharma firms for potential partnerships and aims to use any resulting non-dilutive funding to extend its cash runway, currently guided through 1H27. A second candidate, ABS-201, targets androgenetic alopecia and could address a U.S. population of 80 million, representing a $7B–$14B market opportunity. A Phase I trial is planned for 2026, with a proof-of-concept readout expected in 2H26. Morgan Stanley does not yet assign financial value to this program due to its early stage. Schrodinger's model includes a software licensing segment that contributed $180 million in 2024 revenue, up 13% year-over-year, and showed 98-100% customer retention for contracts over $500K. FY25 guidance indicates expected software revenue growth of 10–15%, or about $203 million. Peak modeled contribution from the software business is $404 million by 2035, though consensus projects up to $497 million. The company's proprietary pipeline includes SGR-1505, which posted early efficacy in B-cell malignancies with 18% response in CLL/SLL and 100% in WM in a Phase I trial. No dose-limiting toxicities were reported. Additional data for SGR-1505 and two other oncology programs (SGR-2921 and SGR-3515) are expected in 2H25. Schrodinger's price target was lowered from $31 to $28 due to increasing competitive pressure in CLL. Recursion has refocused its pipeline following the discontinuation of three programs. Its lead drug, REC-4881, is in a Phase Ib/II trial for familial adenomatous polyposis. Early data showed a median 43% reduction in polyps across six patients. Further efficacy and safety results are expected later this year. Additional programs include REC-617 and REC-1245, both in early-stage trials. Recursion maintains partnerships with Bayer (OTC:BAYRY), Roche/Genentech, and Sanofi (NASDAQ:SNY), with potential economics totaling ~$20 billion. The brokerage models $840 million in risk-adjusted peak U.S. sales for REC-4881, with Street consensus at $409 million. Despite $85B+ in AI-biotech deal flow from 2019 to mid-2025, these stocks have underperformed broader biotech indices since 2023. Morgan Stanley cites valuation overhangs, volatile clinical results, and lack of near-term revenue visibility but maintains that platform innovation and partnerships may unlock longer-term value. Related articles MS initiates coverage on AI Biotechs, flags key pipeline catalysts U.S., Europe push to build critical minerals supply chains as China dominates Citi names DuPont top chemicals pick, sees earnings support from electronics, FX Sign in to access your portfolio
Business Times
23-05-2025
- Business
- Business Times
Issue 149: Funds take lion's share of global blended finance volumes; Singapore upgrades sustainability reporting training syllabus
This week in ESG: Blended finance at critical crossroads, says Convergence; accounting regulator publishes guide for sustainability reporting trainers Sustainable finance Funds spark hope for scaling blended finance Fund structures have steadily become one of the most promising vehicles for scaling up blended finance, with Asia a key market for capital raising, according to the latest data by blended finance development group Convergence. Blended finance refers to funding structures that use concessional capital to improve the risk or return of a deal so that commercial capital is willing to take part. It's an approach that's especially impactful in mobilising capital for hard-to-finance needs in developing and emerging geographies. Like Schrodinger's cat, which is simultaneously alive and dead, the blended finance industry currently exists both in a state of strength and weakness. The total volume of blended finance deals worldwide stood at US$18.3 billion in 2024, Convergence data shows. Although this is down 21 per cent from a record US$23.1 billion financed in 2023, year-on-year numbers can be volatile due to the timing of large deals known as 'whales'. The broad five-year trend remains positive. A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU Friday, 12.30 pm ESG Insights An exclusive weekly report on the latest environmental, social and governance issues. Sign Up Sign Up However, the multi-year momentum is threatened with dimmer prospects for official development assistance (ODA) funding around the world, including cuts in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the US. ODA is the largest source of concessional capital in blended deals – in 2024 ODA accounted for US$3 billion of financing in blended deals – and the US Agency for International Development is one of the largest providers of development capital. Because concessional capital is critical to mobilising commercial funding, every dollar decline in ODA could be magnified in private money that cannot be mobilised. In a note, Convergence chief executive Joan M Larrea said: 'What we've seen is that despite the market growing in size, and more people than ever talking about the promise of blended finance, it remains plagued by its most intractable issues. In light of the ODA drop, it's more important than ever for those of us invested in and investing in blended finance to ensure change happens.' One of the promising changes happening in blended finance is the growth of blended funds. In 2024, blended funds accounted for US$5.1 billion of financing. This was more than any other vehicle type: bonds or notes, companies, facilities, financial institutions and projects. Blended funds are typically anchored by concessional investors who can help to limit losses or enhance returns for other investors in the fund. The TPG Global South Initiative, which aims to raise US$2.5 billion, taps the United Arab Emirates' US$30 billion Alterra climate investment fund to enhance returns for other shareholders. The TPG Global South Initiative is giving a boost to the East Asia and Pacific region, where blended finance volumes almost quadrupled to US$4 billion in 2024 from US$1.1 billion the year before. The other major blended fund in 2024 – Brookfield's Catalytic Transition Fund, with a fundraising target of US$5 billion – also had Asia connections; Singapore's GIC and Temasek are among the fund's investment partners. Convergence describes blended funds as 'the most scalable and replicable blended finance vehicle'. One of the reasons that blended funds have been successful in raising private capital is that the funds are managed by reputable firms with strong track records. This helps to unlock interest from institutional investors, which have to ensure that their investments meet their risk and compliance requirements. Convergence finds that institutional investors account for half of private-sector commitments in blended funds. Median deal size for funds has also increased to US$135 million in 2024 from US$48 million in 2022. Almost two-thirds of the blended funds focus on either, or both, climate mitigation and adaptation. Since investors' monies are pooled and allocated through the fund managers, blended funds also allow smaller projects to access institutional money even if they don't meet the institutional investors' minimum ticket sizes. Finally, funds can also be avenues through which local capital can get involved. Convergence has identified local capital as an important source of financing that needs to be developed. Could we see more blended funds in the years ahead in Asia? The signs are promising. For instance, Vietnam's Mekong Capital is using blended finance on its US$200 million Mekong Earth Regeneration Fund to invest in growth-stage private equity targets in regeneration agriculture and sustainable land use in Vietnam. Green economy A national syllabus for sustainability reporting training Singapore's looming deadlines for compliance with international sustainability reporting accounting standards have fuelled a demand surge for relevant skills training. Before everyone starts heading out into the wild to get that training, the Singapore Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (Acra) is hoping to set some standards for the standards teachers. A new guide on sustainability reporting sets out essential knowledge areas on sustainability reporting that are aligned with the IFRS S1 and S2 standards, which apply to sustainability and climate reporting. Structured like a school syllabus, the guide is aimed at training providers to help them design specialised courses. To validate the guide, Acra ran it by more than 50 key stakeholders, including company preparers, assurance providers, professional bodies and training providers. The move comes as sustainability reporting-related skills are a growing need. SkillsFuture Singapore, the nation's lifelong learning agency, tracks historical jobs postings to assess priority skills based on how much demand they face and how transferable they are. On such a two-axis matrix, a recent SkillsFuture report observed that sustainability assurance, while still a low-demand skill, has steadily moved from moderate transferability to high transferability. That shift reflects Singapore's requirement for IFRS-aligned climate reporting from listed companies beginning this year and from 2027 onwards for large non-listed companies, SkillsFuture says. Beyond the data, SkillsFuture has also identified greenhouse gas accounting and carbon footprint management as skills that it expects to capture greater demand and transferability in the future. Other ESG reads
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
The academics incensed by the woke overhaul of Oxford's 800-year-old graduation ceremony
For centuries, Oxford students have graduated inside the sandstone walls of the Sheldonian Theatre. But this year, students have been sent scrambling back to their blossom-filled quads for their Latin textbooks, to see if they ought to be offended by the ceremonial language used in their upcoming graduations. Late last month, it was revealed that Oxford plans to make the Latin gender-neutral, to cater to those who identify as non-binary. The proposed changes, which will be voted on by Congregation, the university's governing body, on April 29, involve stripping out the grammatically gendered masculine or feminine words. Instead of referring to masters students as 'magistri' (masters) – a masculine word – the new text uses the term 'vos', which is the neutral term for 'you'. The word 'doctores' (doctors), which is also masculine, may also be changed. Congregation has a little more than 5,000 members, and a simple majority vote settles most matters. It is expected that these latest proposed changes will be passed with little fanfare, much to the annoyance of a number of esteemed Latin experts, Oxford students and university staff. 'It really is Schrodinger's Latin,' says David Butterfield, a professor of Latin, who officiated University of Cambridge graduation ceremonies in the ancient language for eight years. 'You cannot hide the fact that grammatical gender is baked into the language. If you want to be non-binary, you have to retreat to the neuter gender, which Latin uses for the subhuman and inanimate. But nobody wants to be an 'it', so Oxford has fudged things by removing any word that explicitly differs in form between the masculine and feminine genders. The result is incredible and weird Latin.' Prof Butterfield describes the new Latin as 'tortuous abstractions' that 'go against the simple spirit' of the ceremony. 'It reads more like legalese jargon than ceremonial celebration,' he says, adding: 'I regret that striking and beautiful phrases, such as Domini doctores, are being replaced with the empty, and rather abrupt, vos.' For many students, graduating in Latin is a great hallmark of Oxford tradition. Dressed in black and white, they line up in rows of four, bow to the vice-chancellor, and solemnly reply 'do fidem', meaning 'I agree', to the conditions of their degree. In the graduation ceremony, an official known as the dean of degrees takes the hand of a student and presents them to the vice-chancellor in Latin. Before, he would say: 'Praesento vobis hunc baccalaureum in artibus', which, for those of us who didn't study declensions hard enough at school, loosely translates as: 'I present to you this scholar of mine'. The proposed change removes the word 'hunc', a masculine word, and instead adds on 'hic adstantem', meaning 'standing here'. 'Hic is an adverb and has no gender, and the gender of ad stantem is not revealed, so it can sort of hedge as non-binary,' explains Prof Butterfield. The University of Oxford argues that 'the proposed changes before Congregation create a single text for each ceremony, covering all options students now have for registering genders in line with legal reporting requirements for higher education'. But for some academics who know their Catullus from their Pliny, the language change places tradition at risk. 'Oxford and Cambridge are not only elite in the academic sense, but elite and renowned in a historical sense. Whether you're a class-A Latinist or not, the fact that this change has been made shows that, little by little, the foundations of tradition are going to be eroded,' says one lecturer, who does not wish to be named. 'It's the start of a slippery slope, which once you've gone down, you're not going to go back.' Another senior fellow of an Oxford college likens the Latin used to the wording of the Book of Common Prayer, arguing that it should be 'protected' from any change. 'The language is set apart from modern colloquial English, and this protects it from the problems that can arise from the ways in which modern English is constantly changing in its nuances and implications,' he says. 'The university administrators are just pointlessly importing modern problems where they don't belong.' Nigel Biggar, a professor of theology at Oxford, also opposes the changes. ''Gendered' pronouns refer to objective biological sex, not subjective identities that endorse stereotypes or transcend them,' he says. Latin is the language of classical scholarship, dating back to the fall of the Western Roman Empire, around AD 476, when it served as the primary language of higher education and scholarship in Europe. And as such, it 'transcended normal bonds of kinship and belonging', explains Douglas Hedley, a professor of philosophy of religion at Clare College, Cambridge. 'It's a tradition grounded in the European idea for university, when the modern nation state was embryonic or, in some cases, non-existent, and Latin was the common language.' For him, the changes at Oxford are an 'attempt to address the latest fad and to try to impose it on an ancient tradition', which he describes as 'incongruous' and 'virtue signalling'. Oxford doesn't publicly release specific numbers of non-binary students, but according to a Times Higher Education survey in 2022, around 0.2 per cent of UK university students identify as 'other gender', which translates to roughly 14 students out of Oxford's 7,000 annual admissions. This was a 42 per cent increase compared with the number the year before, and more than double that in 2018-19. Henry Morris, a 20-year-old studying ancient and modern history at Somerville, is one of the 0.2 per cent identifying as non-binary at Oxford. 'It makes it a bit more personal,' says Morris, who has identified as non-binary since the age of 14. 'It's very nice to have tradition and celebrations, but Oxford is already an elitist institution which is fundamentally unwelcoming. Knowing that the language has changed makes it that bit more welcoming for me.' Though most Oxford students admit that they do not understand the Latin being spoken to them during the ceremony, Morris argues that 'most students would welcome inclusive language.' Other Latin dons at Oxford agree with Morris and say that despite being 'dead', the language should be allowed to evolve. 'There's absolutely no reason why the use of Latin shouldn't move with the times if one wants it to,' declares Armand D'Angour, a professor of classical languages at Jesus College, Oxford. 'After all, classical Latin had no use for the word 'universitas' other than to mean 'totality', but it became the standard word for a university in the 13th century, and now it's clearly indispensable.' He describes getting rid of the masculine and feminine genders in the ceremony as 'a neat solution'. Chris Pelling, a professor of Greek at Christ Church college, agrees: 'The proposed form is perfectly good Latin, and is arguably less clumsy than the form that has been used up till now,' he says. 'There have often been changes made before, most obviously when women were first awarded degrees, and the roof of the Sheldonian Theatre has not fallen in.' But to many students, being denied the privilege of partaking in tradition is a dismaying prospect, as they will be graduating in a different way to previous generations of Oxford students. 'It draws a line between us and them, rather than uniting us under one universal tradition,' says Lydia Dicicco, a 22-year-old student studying Spanish and Italian at St Catherine's College. She describes the changes as 'splitting hairs' in the language. 'When I hear words like 'guys', I never expect it to just refer to men, as it is just one of those words that includes everyone,' she says. 'Similarly, with 'magistri', it is obviously not just talking about men. Women have been graduating from Oxford for 100 years.' 'It feels like change for change's sake,' says Mitchell Palmer, 23, a history and economics student at New College. 'I don't particularly understand why this change needs to be made, seeing as most European languages are gendered. There's no need to throw millennia of linguistic evolution out the window due to a current political problem.' Over at 'the other place', Cambridge academics, while not quaking in their boots, are wary of a similar directive taking shape. 'It would be a travesty if this happened at Cambridge after 800 years of doing it a particular way,' says David Abulafia, a professor of Mediterranean history. He points out that Girton College has a male vice-mistress because it was originally founded as a female-only college in the late 1800s. 'Nobody is offended by those words, which signify legitimation.' According to Prof Hedley, if Cambridge were to initiate the change, there would be more at stake than some altered text: 'It would be a lamentable index of the decay of our civilisation.' Additional reporting by Flora Prideaux Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
