No sex please – we’re monetarists

Suggestions that economists at our university might have been among those who, according to an article in the journal Research Policy, offered or accepted sex in order to secure co-authorship credits have been described as “mere gossip” by our Head of Economics, Professor D. B. Ruckgang.

Professor Ruckgang did, however, concede that there might be “superficial grounds for concern” in the news that 18 of his own publications, including his July 2007 article “The Inherent Stability of the Global Economic System” (Economic Myopia, Vol. 16 (22)), had been co-authored by a Ms Voracia Storm.

Professor Ruckgang agreed that although Ms Storm’s research record had now secured her a Readership, her initial aptitude for economics had been evident only in the relative speed with which she calculated customers’ bills at Poppleton’s Cosy Tea Rooms.

(Ms Storm was unavailable for comment because of her G8 commitments, but a former colleague at the Cosy Tea Rooms told Ponting that from what she had heard about academic economics, it was surprising that anyone who could add up a cake bill had not already been awarded at least a personal chair.)

Take me to your leader

Would those elephants have made it across the Alps without the management skills of Hannibal?

Just one of the questions raised by the news that a record number of universities are losing their present vice-chancellor. New, inspiring, overpaid leaders are currently being sought at universities as diverse as Durham, Southampton, Buckingham, Bristol and The Open University.

Only one university appears to have absented itself from this rush to appoint. Plymouth has placed its present vice-chancellor, Wendy Purcell, “on leave” but has consistently declined to announce the length of this leave or the chances of the university’s former leader and chief executive ever returning.

Our Director of Corporate Affairs, Jamie Targett, expressed “profound sympathy” for the “vice-chancellorless staff” at Plymouth. Their sad plight was not helped, he believed, by those “cynics” who had gone so far as to suggest that the university should take full advantage of its administrative predicament and rebrand itself as Plymouth Ho Ho.

Numbing numbers

226 – The number of days that Thomas Docherty, the University of Warwick’s professor of English, has been banned from the campus.

226 – The number of days that have passed without the University of Warwick providing any public account of the reasons for the ban.

Thought for the week

(contributed by Jennifer Doubleday, Head of Personal Development)

Everyone these days leaves an automated email message on their computer saying that they’re on “annual leave”. How very formal. What’s wrong with “On holiday” or “Having fun”? Let’s cut out the euphemisms. “No, stop it, Dr Quintock. Not while my bikini is still wet.”

lolsoc@dircon.co.uk