Age concern

So much for new blood schemes. The image of universities dominated by an increasingly ageing workforce still remains, if the latest Royal Commission is anything to go by.

Health secretary Frank Dobson, announcing the new commission on long-term care for the elderly, said its members had been chosen because of their knowledge and experience. And who better to be chairman than the head of an academic institution, Sir Stewart Sutherland, principal of Edinburgh University. Born in 1941, he will be in no need of such care for some decades.