Waterboarding allegations denied

Claims that a Poppleton University lecturer was subjected to "waterboarding" after his recent submission to the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee inquiry into higher education standards have been dismissed as "misleading".

Although our Director of Corporate Affairs, Jamie Targett, conceded that Dr G.W. Hancock of Geography for Business had been subjected by the university disciplinary committee to a series of interrogation techniques designed to establish the source of his allegations about "grade inflation" at Poppleton University, he insisted that these methods were "within university guidelines". "All universities", he said, "have an obligation to check sources of misinformation and it is therefore only appropriate to establish the truth or otherwise of Dr Hancock's allegations by the use of tried and trusted techniques for establishing informational validity."

Targett also claimed that it was merely "a temporal coincidence" that after his submission, Dr Hancock had been removed from the three committees on which he served, offered involuntary redundancy and been subject to a hit-and-run incident involving the vice-chancellor's limousine.

Dr Hancock was unable to comment.

Stand by your brand

Our Head of Branding, Mike Edsel, has warned all university departments about the dangers of "sub-branding".

Speaking to our reporter, Keith Ponting (30), Mr Edsel said that the university's current logo featuring two large meaningless curved arrows imprinted on an equally meaningless black triangle was an instantly recognisable visual representation of the university's brand identity going forward.

Unfortunately, this brand was being undermined by the decisions of some departments to go in for "self-branding". He instanced the Department of Philosophy's recent decision to adopt a letterhead with a logo depicting a severed head and the decision by the Department of Media and Cultural Studies to "badge" its new postgraduate course in the Semiotics of Soap Opera with a blurred photograph of the Mitchell brothers.

Mr Edsel denied rumours that he intended to consolidate and promote the brand image of the university by asking all academics to wear clothes featuring the brand's readily identifiable arrows.

Tweet, Tweet

Proof that Poppleton academics are "techno-savvy" is provided by the news that Professor Lapping of our Department of Media and Cultural Studies has signed up to the micro-blogging service, Twitter.

From now on, Lapping will be able to issue updates indicating exactly where he is and what he is doing. Departmental secretary Maureen has, however, declined to become one of Lapping's first "followers". She welcomed the idea of his knowing where he was and what he was doing, but said his current incapacity to know either of these things did not suggest that the technology to report instantly on such matters would constitute a "significant contribution to knowledge".

Thought for the Week

(contributed by Jennifer Doubleday, Head of Personal Development)

Sad news. This week's nude encounter group in the Sports Centre has been cancelled because of inclement weather. Here's an amusing little piece of consolation:

If we were meant to be nude, we would have been born that way.

lolsoc@dircon.co.uk.