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Girls will be girls - boys will be boys. From childhood, girls learn to look pretty, wear lovely dresses and play with Barbies. Football, rugby any other badass sport: that’s boy zone. Crying: off-limits for boys, unless they want to be called sissies for life. Generally speaking, these gender roles are shared across Europe. Sure, Swedish girls aren’t expected to turn into Italian mammas, but there are definitely some general trends. Although the times are changing and progress is underway, it’s still hard to break free from deep-rooted stereotypes. This applies to both boys and girls. Luckily, us journalists here at the Strasbourg Snitcher pride ourselves on being forward-thinking. So today, we gave Ministers Sara Banno Gomes and Giovanna Bertolucci, MEPs Pascal Nohl-Deryk, Ondrej Semeràk and Ma-ria Roberts and lobbyists Maria Roberts and Mario Husillos a chance to challenge their prescribed gender roles.

WOMEN AS HEAVY DRINKERS

Yes, women like drinking. And many of them are big fans of beer. Sara Banno Gomes, Minister of Hungary, Giovanna Bertolucci, Minister of Finland, Maria Roberts, MEP of the Greens left me no shadow of a doubt. Dark beer, Guin-ness, Carlsberg, Heineken…You name it- they’ll down it.

MEN AS WIMPS

General knowledge has it that women are more emotional, sensitive, and delicate. But we have to break it to you Macho men: you too can be real softies. Who hasn’t cried watching a heart-breaking movie? Pascal Nohl-Deryk of ALDE still remembers when, just a 5 year old, he watched the Lion King - a box of tissues close by. Mr Semerak, fac-tion leader of S&D is not shy to admit that he shed tears during the Tribute to Furious 7. Lobbyist Mario Husillos revealed to me that he cried all through

‘Legends of the Fall’.

WOMEN AS BREADWINNERS

Women are not scared to bear the bur-den of financially supporting their fami-lies. Far from it. Many women are ambi-tious, motivated and career-oriented. Minister Sara Banno Gomes is looking forward to working in politics, possi-bly in the EU context. Should her boy-friend/partner/husband wish to stay at home minding the kids, while she’s out there earning a living, well that would be totally fine. Minister Giovanna Ber-tolucci shares the same opinion. She too, is dreaming big; although she’s not too sure whether she wants to have kids, she finds the idea of a stay-at-home dad quite appealing. Ms. Maria Roberts de-clares: ‘If he wants to stay at home, that’s fine. If we need money, I’ll work for it’.

MEN AS VICTIMS OF VANITY

Dressing up, looking fancy… well, that’s definitely something our male MEPs and lobbyists enjoy. MEP Nohl-Deryk boasted of having a whole set of ties in different colours and patterns. ‘That’s just one of my fun things’, he said. Mr Semerak spent a lot of time pondering about what his favourite item of cloth-ing is. In the end he told me: ‘I’m going to say T-shirt, jumper or shirt’ (ehm… anything else?). Lobbyist Mario Husil-los thinks nice watches are a real fashion statement. Oh, and he loves pink shirts.

WOMEN BURPING, SWEARING AND PICKING UP FIGHTS

To be fair, all the ladies I interviewed said they don’t usually burp in public. They argue that it just doesn’t come

Thursday, 16. April 2015

Smashing Stereotypes One Day at a Time

Daily News of Model European Union Strasbourg 2015Issue No 05/15

Follow us: #MEUs2015

IN THIS ISSUE

LAZY CONSUMERS OR COMPANIES’ OBLIGATIONS?

The European Parliament passed two amendments on the consumer’s privacy rights. Criticism of the right parties was directly voiced.

Page 5

FACTION-MOVING-FEVER IN THE EP

Moving-madness in the EP: During the past 48 hours eight MEP’s have changed faction.

Page 3

LOBBYISTS AND S&D: BREAK-UP?

What is going on between the lobbies and the S&D faction- trifling fights or a real break-up?

Page 4

Isotta Rossoni natural. However, I chatted to a pret-ty fierce bunch of girls this morning. Lobbyist Lois McLatchie confessed that she always used to fight with her brother, Ms. Gomes remembers hav-ing an argument with a schoolmate and almost punching him. Ms. Roberts says she once picked a fight and won it - and she’s not the only one. Ms. Bertolucci claims that she was quite a ‘feisty child’; she would hang out with the ‘lads’, start fights and teach the other girls never to mess with her again.

GENDER ROLES RECON-FIRMED: THE STRANGE CASE OF LEO WILKINSON

Leo Wilkinson- totally a lovely guy. Nice, funny, fantabulous really. But damn, he’s a tough cookie. He says he hardly cries and his favourite accesso-ries are cufflinks, which he thinks are ‘funky’. One day left before the Stras-bourg Snitcher closes its doors… we are really keen to see his wild side!

Issue No 05/152 | Thursday, 16. April 2015 — Strasbourg Snitcher . Daily News —

Churches were once a place of worship, where people looked for spiritual solace. To what extent is this still true today? If even the Pope is concerned about churches turning into businesses, and the Data Protection Regulation aims to control how enterprises handle data, it is inevitable that the EU is considering extending the Regulation to places of worship.

Although the European Convention on Human Rights supports freedom of re-ligion, this does not mean that churches ought to merely bow before God and disregard all other authorities. Church-es may soon be required to answer to

an independent supervisory authority. The Minister of Hungary affirms that “Churches have a lot of personal infor-mation, and since they are considered businesses, they should be regulated the same way as others”. This coincides with the overall opinion of the Council on the topic.

Faith is a very profitable business. Just take a look at Fátima, Portugal. The Sanctuary is surrounded by hotels and shops with the windows filled with statues of saints. Some churches, other than just receiving money contributions from believers, also run religious schools and hospitals, nursing homes and banks. There are regulations on capital gains in-come, but information on how they deal with personal data is still unavailable.

This tendency to turn faith into con-sumerism is widespread among several churches, which now follow a business model. For those who are currently un-employed, watch out – soon churches will be posting job openings. This is most probably why there are already universities offering MSCs in Church Management.

There is a minority opposing this view. The Minister of Lithuania, Fabian Lo-riais, is attempting to convince the Council to exclude churches from the Data Protection Regulation. However, since this is rather unrealistic - only a small amount of states signed his pro-posal- Lithuania is thinking of dividing religious entities into separate branches.

Council: the Anti-Christ

Schools, hospitals and other similar in-stitutions would still be under the aus-pices of the Data Protection Regulation. Alternatively, places of worship would be spared from supervision. Why? “We all know that churches will not actu-ally act against their members”, affirms Lorais. Divine inspiration must have provided the Minister with incredible certainty, since he believes places of worship are earnest in such a way that they do not require supervision. How-ever in a quite contradictory manner he also recognises the fact that churches are quite in-transparent’. Therefore, how can people be informed or know the real goals behind the collection of data?

Maria Salomé Fernandes

The creation of a new party, the Pro-gressive Feminists of Europe, made a huge impact yesterday. Generally, many welcomed this choice favourably, although there are still some doubts on certain issues, such as the timing.

For example, Mr. Mehmeti Esad, Minis-ter of the Netherlands, said: “The Dutch government has always been a strong supporter of human rights, especially in relation to women. On the matter of the creation of the feminist faction, I totally respect its members’ decision.” But he then added: “The only thing I do not agree with, is that the decision was

taken after they had been elected for other factions. In this way, they did not respect their voters’ will”. Summing up, “democratically”, he understands and respects the PFE’s rationale, but he is still a bit sceptical about the timing.

The biggest dilemma is about whether this proposal can be really fruitful and can represent a concrete contribution to economics and to discussions on the European Banking Union, especially as regards to the female quota. This is quite a common doubt. Mr. Giacomo Salvadego, S&D MEP representing Poland claimed: “I think the creation of the PFE is a good idea, politically speaking. But to be honest, I still have to understand its concrete contribution re-

garding the European Banking Union.”. Miss Salomé Delay-Goyet, from EPP Luxemburg, remarked “I totally agree with quota equality, but I do not clearly see the relationship between the Euro-pean Banking Union system and more women in the European Parliament, I still do not see the economic link.”

Ms. Aysegül Öztekin thinks that the en-tire matter should be looked at from the opposite angle: so we should ask if the quota equality is economically benefi-cial. Moreover, her colleague, Ms Ruth Billen, added: “the idea of equal quotes is not scandalous, or ridiculous, but just logically reasonable.”

Ms Öztekin seemed to be passionately defending a human value, rather than

Alessandra Sinno

Women and Economics: A Matter of Perspectivea particular political faction. Indeed, she claimed that “more diversity means different solutions, so less dogmatism, more openness for alternative paths, and it can just benefit the European Union, because what we do need now is an al-ternative path to avoid making the same mistakes we made in the past”.

The PFE group is not actually support-ing something completely new. As a member of the same faction remembered yesterday afternoon, important institu-tional voices reiterated that it is a good idea to have women take up positions of power, not only because it is beneficial to have a female perspective, as Ms Bil-len clearly underlined, but for the sake of equality and fairness as well.

Issue No 05/15 Thursday, 16. April 2015 | 3— Strasbourg Snitcher . Daily News —

During the debates on the Data Pro-tection Regulation in the Council this week, several controversial amendments were put forward. Amongst them, is the proposal to initiate a so-called Eu-ropean Project called “Eurodrones” – unmanned, armed aerial vehicles. “I call it the right to strike back”, explains the Minister Of Czech Republic, Daniel Prause. “A station of the Eurodrones should be installed as close to the Rus-sian Federation as possible. Drones are the answer to intentional Cyber attacks! Whenever EU Citizens are in danger, drones could attack with

a hellfire missile”, Prause adds. The amendment – which was rejected for lack of reasonable legal grounds - was also supported by EU member states Croatia, Ireland, Sweden and Denmark. “I feel that security concerns are very valid nowadays – I talk about ISIS and Ukraine. Instability can arise without any prior indication. In the face of recent developments the only choice available is the further militarisation of Europe”, declares Samuli Pekka Silmarinen, Min-ister of Ireland, and stresses the neces-sity of border protection. “The security theatre mandates a further militarization of Europe. And what is a bigger threat: Drones or war?”, asks the Irish minister. Even though she signed the amendment,

the Minister of Sweden, Alba Espino denies supporting it. “It always depends on the purpose of drones”, is her vague answer. Also the Minister of Croatia, David Caballero, at first denied signing and even called such a proposal “absurd” – but finally admitted: “Yes, I think the militarisation of European Union is a good idea. In reality, I supported the Czech Republic’s amendment and we need a unified European army.” Anto-nios Fiala, Minister of Denmark and Council Rapporteur is more open about the topic: “What the Czech Republic proposed was in the interest of many of my colleagues. I think it should at least be discussed. But the legal advisory rejected it and the Council did come

Daniela Pruggerto the conclusion that it was not appro-priate.” Generous public subsidies for technological research have turned into attempts to establish a regulatory envi-ronment - convenient also for the use of drones. But should European member states really support this kind of tech-nical innovation, since at the same time it could also bring a risk to the citizen’s rights and freedom? “All the people who don’t see how armed drones and Data Protection don’t go together are pacifist, constructivist people who don’t have any intellect and don’t see the real issues”, rants Prause whereas Morten Munch Jespersen, the Head of Chairs and Content simply states: “Europe is about peace and not war.”

Who Supports the Militarisation of the European Union?

Two people found new seats before the debate on amendments in the Par-liament Chamber this morning. MEP Theresa Witt left the EFDD to join the six MEP’s who yesterday resigned from ALDE, EPP, GUE/NGL and S&D parties to form the new faction “Pro-gressive Feminists of Europe”. At the same time MEP Maria Glimos waved goodbye to the ECR faction, to be wel-comed by faction leader Donald Vinck de Winnezeele at the EFDD:

“I thought I could achieve something in my party during the Data Regulation”, Glimos explains: “But I think that the ideology of the ECR on the matter of the Banking Union, which we are dis-cussing now, is not in line with what people initially appointed me for”.

With Glimos’ change of faction, a total of eight MEPS have switched party within the past 48 hours. According to Max Frey, President of the European Parliament, it is not usual that so many people move within such a short time.

“It is perfectly in their right to apply for a change”, Max Frey says, while referring to the fact that MEPs have to submit a formal motivation letter to the President who then has the final deci-sion on whether the MEP is allowed to change or not: “That is something we have introduced at the MEU just to avoid the whole thing just being blocked by changes”.

But apparently there are limits to the current EP moving-circus; at least one person was not allowed to participate in the past two days’ game of “musical

chairs”.

“I wasn’t allowed to move. I think this is a clear discrimination against Italy. I am absolutely outraged”, a clearly irate Ivan Stanchev told the Strasbourg Snitcher before just before this morning’s debate. Yesterday, the Italian MEP notified fac-tion leader of the EPP, Francesca Risso, about his departure from the party:

“I felt [by moving] from the EPP to the EFDD [I would] be able to protect the interest of my voters”, he explained. So, along with Witt and Gilmos, he found himself a seat among “his new party colleagues” at Parliament this morning. However, just moments before the de-bate started, Stanchev says, the Chair,

Max Frey, asked him to move back to his old seat at the EPP, while telling him that there “was no sufficient reason” for his change of party.

“Submitting an application doesn’t nec-essarily automatically include automatic approval of the application”, Frey told The Strasbourg Snitcher, “and we found that he could easily advocate for his po-sitions from an EPP background”.

Still, Stanchev is baffled by the Chairs decision not to allow his seat-change:

“The consequence is that I will have to vote against my personal beliefs”, he says. At the same time, he fears that some of his colleagues back in the EPP faction will give him the cold shoulder after his

Rikke Mathiassen

Faction-Moving-Fever in the EP

flirt with the EFDD:

“I think on a personal level I will not be very welcome”, he says.

In the meantime, EPP faction leader Risso assures that there are no hard feel-ings towards the returnee, even if his some of his values should diverge from the party line:

“Mr. Ivan Stanchev is making his own choices, and I trust in his abilities to fol-low as efficiently as he can the policies of the people”, she says: “If such a thing happens that he will have to vote against what we want to vote, then that is okay, as long it is not something that is planned and discussed with the EFDD”.

Issue No 05/154 | Thursday, 16. April 2015 — Strasbourg Snitcher . Daily News —

Editors Sian Morgan Isotta Rossoni

Journalists Francisco Daniel Garcés Maria Salomé Fernandes Anouk Heili Rikke Mathiassen Daniela Prugger Alessandra Sinno Diana Tavares Alexandra van Walraven

Photographers Marlene Stocker Petar Georgiev Santiago de la Presilla

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Hey guys! Welcome to the fifth edi-tion of the Strasbourg Snitcher. We look into the idea of churches as businesses, Eurodrones as well as the Greek protest that happened in the EP today. Take a look at the ar-ticle on the 1920s as inspiration for tonight; make sure you buy some raf-fle tickets, put on your finest pearls and get ready to rock the dance floor. We hope you guys still love us, we love you!

By Sian MorganIsotta Rossoni

A WORD FROM OUR EDITOR...

The European United Left-Nordic Green Left and the far-right voiced their opposition to the project of the Bank-ing Union, which plans to increase the powers of the European Central Bank. GUE-NGL’s secretary, Kate Samu-els, and EFDD’s leader, Donald De Vinch de Winnezeele and other Euro Deputies held banners reading ‘ECB Destroys’ in the European Parliament. The Vice President of the Chamber, Dennis Schleppi, warned them to not disturb the stability of the parliamen-tary session, where they were debating on amendments.

Samuels considers that the “ECB is anti-democratic” and expressed her desire to get a Central Bank that benefits the Eu-ropean economy and society. “It should

be looking at us”, she added. Moreover, the faction secretary also criticized the fact that none of the responsible for the economical crisis has been punished”.

The protest also produced unusual im-ages. GUE-NGL colligated with the far-right to express their rejection. “We feel that the situation in the Parliament is sad”, since “no one is really standing against the European Central Bank. We had to knit for a not really related ideologically”, but it is necessary to “join forces to block off the initiative. In the other bloc, Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy’s leader, Donald De Vinch de Winezeele, also defended their protest. “We are totally against the ECB, as it is a symbol of ‘Super Nation-alism. The GUE-NGL probably some different reasons to be opposed, but our point of view is the same: there is no to the dictatorship in the European Central

Bank: there is no a democratic account-ability, they do not have to tell what they are doing to anyone”, he stated.

Related to the Banking Union, which is being debated in the European Cham-ber, De Vinch de Winezeele thinks that “it gives an amount of power to the European Central Bank and takes away some key policies that really should be-long at the nation states, like supervising banks. The real solution is to transfer the competencies to the Member States”.

From the European People’s Party, Francesca Risso favours the European Central Bank. Risso specifies that “we are going in a very good direction, where small banks are being encouraged and are going to be more trusted. Com-promise is something very important and I strongly disagree with my fellow MPE protesting in general”.

Protests in the European Parliament

Francisco Daniel Garcés

The debates have been tense between the Lob-byists and the Socialists & Democrats faction since the beginning of the week. Everybody is wondering what happened between the two groups and why they don’t want to work to-gether.

“We must create trust, security and sus-tainability for the future of Europe” this statement written by both S&D and the Lobbyists in the European Parliament this week highlights some of their im-portant objectives. Lobbyists and S&D MEPs are supposed to share common ideas and there’s normally been a good relationship between Lobbyists and the S&D, however, it seems like the left fac-tion is not willing to cooperate with the Lobbyists this week in the European parliament.

Emilio Raya Saez works for the Federa-tion of European Direct and Interactive Marketing and really does not agree with the S&D’s manners this week: “I think that the MEPs don’t want to work with us, especially the S&D MEPs” he said. For Mr Raya Saez, companies are as important as political parties; “We

are trying to help them, we are trying to work with them, we are represent-ing companies who actually employ people”.

But what’s most annoying for the Lob-byists is that the S&D do not recognize their expertise: “they cannot tell us how to do our job, we’ve been doing great lately” says Mr Raya Saez. “They don’t collaborate with us, they think we are bad people, stealing data from people, that is not true, our association helped in the 1994 directive, helped researching things for the Commission” Mr Mario Husillos Vidic said. “They are trying to get into our job, they don’t trust self-regulation. I’m annoyed really. They think they have the authority to decide what is moral and what is not, to decide which information is to be banned or not” he also said.

According to Ms Lois Maclatchie, rep-resenting Google on the Data Protec-tion’s proposal “[the Lobbyists] have a lot to offer, we are not there to annoy the S&D MEPs, we would like to offer some information, perhaps they would benefit from listening to the people”.

But what do the S&D MEPs think about the talks of their lack of collabo-

ration? According to Ms Burtscher the MEPs” haven’t been approached by many lobbyists.” “We could say that back to them, we are willing to cooper-ate but there need to be reasonable ap-proaches”. For Mr Terranova the S&D is interested in knowing the lobbyists opinions. However “some lobbyists don’t have the same position as us. Even if we have a chat with them it does not mean that we are going to change our mind”. The S&D MEPs have been un-derlining the fact that their ideas on the EBU and on the Data Protection Regulation are also different to those of the lobbyists. “Let’s be logical they are not the first priority on our list […] so far everything they have proposed was against our point of view, we couldn’t possibly make that through, it was irrel-evant to our propositions” S&D faction leader Ondřej Semerák, told us.

The lobbyists now need to convince the S&D MEPs on the Banking Union is-sue, which would be profitable for both groups, according to Mr Semerák “I hope we can cooperate with them much more now the amendments for the DPR are made, but I hope we actually find some common ground on the EBU”.

Lobbyists and S&D: Break-Up?

Anouk Heili

Issue No 05/15 Thursday, 16. April 2015 | 5— Strasbourg Snitcher . Daily News —

An anonymous source gave the above photo to the Snitcher to show us some of the friendly activities going on in the parliament involving money transaction. According to the Strasbourg Snitcher’s source, the money was exchanged dur-ing the discussions regarding the Bank-ing Union from this morning. They are being passed from Hungarian MEP Hugo Mendes from the Socialists and Democrats, and Felix Feeling, from the European Christian Reformists.

This photo begs the question as to whether corruption is taking place in-side the chamber itself. Apparently the Socialists and Democrats, the European Christian Reformists and the European Nordic Left were looking for a bit of at-tention from the press and we have since found out that the photo was, in fact, staged.

MEP’s Stage Corruption

Diana Tavares

The European Parliament passed two amendments on the consumer’s privacy rights. Criticism of the right parties was directly voiced; Mr. De Vinck de Win-nezeele, faction leader of the EFDD, called the consumers ‘lazy’ for not read-ing the terms and conditions. Instead of this ‘laziness’ to read, perhaps the document is simply too ‘legal’ and not understandable for the consumers. If the consumers do not fully understand the consequences of their agreement, this poses a risk to their safety on the Inter-net. The S&D, therefore, proposed two amendments: firstly a summary of the Terms and Conditions to help clarify things for the consumer and secondly the “Controller should demand from the data subject the renewal of its consent every two years.” The latter poses the obligation of verifying the agreed Terms and Conditions onto the Controller and not the subject who signed it. But is it not up to the consumer to bear this obli-gation? They are after all agreeing to use the services - and with that, conditions are attached.

The renewal of consent is a controver-

sial issue. Why would the provider have to keep confirming that the consumer wants to continue using its services? In this way, the consumers can keep an overview of the services they agreed to. A contract, such as the Terms and Con-ditions, is generally ever-lasting unless a date is provided. Applying this to the digital industry, the danger for people is that their data is never completely gone. The Internet is extremely complicated and who knows what information is out there? Consumers are exposed to risks which could be minimized simply by including amendments. The data regula-tion is after all there to protect citizens.

Users want to be in charge of their own affairs. An example of this involves Fa-cebook. When Facebook wanted to change their policy, users massively started to upload statements in which they denounced Facebook’s right to use their personal data. Obviously such declarations are not legal, but this shows that there is a huge fear amongst the users to lose control over their personal data. From this perspective, the renewal of consent is not such a bad idea. It would allow the user to agree or disagree with the relevant policies of the provider.

On the other hand, this poses a burden

on the companies to remind all users of the continuous use of service, further-more this burden would mean higher administrative costs. Is this fair towards the businesses who informed the us-ers of the conditions of their services? It is essentially something that the user agreed to by him or herself, therefore, companies are working on the basis that their consumers are informed. Perhaps the renewal of consent is, therefore, far-fetched and unnecessary.

What certainly is not far-fetched is that the users need to understand what they agree to. “People need to know what they allow the company to do with their data,” claims Mr. Bignoli of S&D, who proposed the amendment. Although consumers ought to know, there is a gap between what they are expected to understand and what they actually com-prehend. The Terms and Conditions are complicated documents drafted by lawyers. Can consumers, therefore, re-alistically be expected to be perfectly acquainted with the content of these Terms and Conditions?

“Yes”, argues Natalia García, repre-sentative of Facebook. She claims that Facebook sufficiently provides the us-ers with information on its policies and

Alexandra van Walraven

Lazy Consumers or Companies’ Obligations?the usage of data. Mr. Fehling, ERC’s faction leader, sees a problem with sum-marising the Terms and Conditions: “if people only read this, they still do not know the specifics. The information is incomplete which could cause more confusion for the consumer. You should know the obligations in legal contracts,” Mr. Fehling says.

Perhaps there is a middle ground to be found; I think that the consumer has the obligation to keep record of what they have consented to, but the user should be sufficiently informed. I do not see the harm in providing some general informa-tion on what the regulation deals with and what the Terms and Conditions are. It has to be noted, however, that the document is not a complete recital of the Terms and Conditions in simpler terms. The obligation still lies with the consumer to sufficiently inform him or herself, but the company has to provide understandable explanations of what the consumer could consent to or abstain from. It has to be noted, however, that the public wishes to gain more control, something which companies should se-riously consider. The Council will have to reflect on these considerations.

Issue No 05/156 | Thursday, 16. April 2015 — Strasbourg Snitcher . Daily News —

Tonight we have our theme party: 1920’s. Therefore, I thought it would be appropriate to go into tonight with ex-tensive knowledge about what life was like in the 20’s. Commonly referred to the Roaring Twenties or the Jazz Age as well as the Golden Age Twenties (“an-nées folles” if you’re a Frenchie) due to the era’s social, artistic and cultural dy-namism, as well as the economic boom that followed World War One. Having said that the 1920’s were not a time of prosperity for the German Weimar Re-public, the Mark was devalued in 1923 as a result of having to repay debts under the Treaty of Versailles, additionally, the Wall Street Crash of October 1929 signalled the end of 1920s prosperity in North America and Europe.

Now that you have a bit of background knowledge let’s get to the fun bit:

5 examples 1920’s slang so that you’re in the know and not a complete wurp.

1. When we all leave the hotels to-night, instead of ‘Let’s walk!’ we should use the phrase ‘let’s ankle!’

2. Someone is bound to drink too much and become a total ‘booze-hound’ or as we call them ‘drunk-ards’. You might also refer to them as ‘zozzled’.

3. There is bound to be absolutely incredible music tonight and the most confident of us will show off our moves, however, some of us will be a total ‘Oliver Twist’ and impress everyone, while others will look like our dads trying to be ‘hip’.

4. Now we might be calling tonight a party, but back in the 1920s a party with students would be called a ‘rub’.

5. Tonight we shall all be ‘eggs’, as we are all essentially people who live a lives of extravagance.

The Do’s and Don’ts of 1920’s fashion:

For women:

Do:  Accessorize with pearl strands, drop earrings, cloche hats, and Oxford heels or lace-up boots.Don’t: Wear opera gloves or extravagant high heels.

Do: Go for sheer layers, touches of lace, a-line or empire waists, and pencil

skirts.Don’t:  Wear anything above the knee, bright colours.

Do:  Use makeup that looks natural, go for a matte look and red is the only ac-ceptable lipstick colour. Don’t: Use bright coloured eye shadow or pink and orange frosted or glossy lip-stick.

For men:

Do: Wear some braces to finish off your ‘dapper’ 1920’s male look. Don’t: Be lazy and turn up in a T-Shirt,

make an effort boys!

Do: Wear funky socks, this was a trend back in the 1920s and one you can use to stand out! Don’t: Forget to accessorize! Hats were a must back in the 20s.

Do: Tidily comb your hair and either be clean shaven or give your beard/mous-tache a tidy-up. Don’t: Look scraggly and remember a gentleman does not remove it, simply loosens it.

However, if you’re in the same position

1920s - How To: Look, Act & Sound the Partas me, only had a small hand luggage to bring all your clothes and therefore don’t have tons of pearls or feathers to wear in your hair, then don’t worry! The 1920s were a time when women in particular became more empowered and started wearing trousers and break-ing convention; so just think of yourself as channelling a true 1920’s woman. At least that’s what I’ll be doing while I’m wearing my Batman pyjamas. The key to truly embodying someone from the 1920s is to remember these three simple things: party hard, drink lots and dance the night away.

Sian Morgan

Color Your Own Frey Tie!