No ultimatum for our Vice-Chancellor

Shock was expressed this week at the news that our Vice-Chancellor was one of the few higher education executives in the country not currently facing an ultimatum from their Board of Governors.

In an exclusive interview with The Poppletonian, our Vice-Chancellor further confirmed that neither had he failed a vote of confidence or been placed on suspension.

A spokesperson for the governors said that he recognised that this state of affairs meant that his board was not in line with accepted standards at other universities. He promised that members of the board would be reviewing the situation in the near future so that they could speedily revert to their normal practice of secretly organising arbitrary dismissals.

Counting our lucky stars

Our Department of Zodiac Studies has responded to the news that the University of Westminster's courses in complementary medicine and homoeopathy will be "overhauled so as to give them a stronger scientific content".

Speaking to our reporter, Keith Ponting (30), Professor Mike Draco, Head of Zodiac Studies, said that his department's predictions for 2009 would be subject to strict empirical testing.

The department is currently making the following predictions:

1. Astral inferior conjunctions suggest unfavourable events will occur in the Middle East

2. The opposition between Saturn and Venus points to several likely major disasters

3. Scorpio in conjunction with Mars indicates that in general things will get worse although one or two things may get better.

Professor Draco said he believed that the new testing procedures would deliver on the department's promise of science-based testing and help to deflect the "scurrilous criticism" that Poppleton would teach any old nonsense "in order to make a quick buck".

Letter to the Editor

From Dr Piercemuller

I am writing in response to the news that a PhD student has suffered the loss of 35kg of lizard excrement that was essential to his research work.

Over the years, I have experienced similar calamities. In 1996, a fire in my office destroyed 5kg of research material on the socio-economic foundations of viniculture, which I had assembled over a five-year period in Tuscany.

As if this were not enough, I was unfortunate enough last March to be mugged by an intruder who made off with the 2kg draft of my three-volume work on the luxury hotel industry.

Matters were compounded when I learnt that my wife had used my 1kg monograph on Ecological Concerns in the Touristic Development of Tropical Islands as wadding for her Christmas parcels.

These events enable me to empathise with the unfortunate student's loss of such a large amount of excrement.

Thought for the Week

(contributed by Jennifer Doubleday, Head of Personal Development)

I see that a lecturer at Northumbria University has proposed placing special letterboxes around the campus to encourage more students to complain. It made me wonder if we might not also have little happiness boxes on campus for all those students who'd like to tell us about the joys of being at Poppleton. Always remember:

Instead of complaining that the rosebush is full of thorns, be happy that the thorn bush has roses.