TOPIC PANEL INDEX (IN ORDER): Black Day in Bluesville (Guardian, 15/4/09), Charities' public benefit consultation, Ultra vires poise volte-face (OUP's tax), OUP's ACCOUNTS 2008, Occupied territories (Jordan Hill, Webb's Close), The Gristmiller's Grind, The Gatekeeper's creep-out, UPs' 1940s failed claims & 1970s tax-exemptions, OXFORD COLLEGE ACCOUNTS 2005/6, Borders on the Insane, Bodleyworld, King Gnome's deprivation, 2006: V-C shot, The Brownmail begins, AKME STUDENT LAW LIBRARY, Oxford's contract & rent rackets, Maglen's Ignoble Road, OUP's tax & accounts index, Oxford IS racist (Versi case etc.), The worst ever science textbooks?, Akme's Oxford poets, Medicine a basket case, ODNB farrago, Oxford Tanks, Let me count the ways..., Publishing news, OXFORD CUTTINGS LIBRARY, LITERARY LAW LIBRARY, Akme history & books, Malcolm vs. Oxford I & II, Akme Expression, Malcolm for Chancellor.

quick welcome graphic

October 2009: Are You Going to Frideswide Square? MP3

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Following the failure of Oxford's richest college Christ Church to build an underwater housing project in the flood plain hamlet of Binsey, its latest plan to transform the traffic intersection it owns, arguably Britain's ugliest, in front of Oxford railway station, has also collapsed due to the bankruptcy of its development partner Castlemore/Spring. In 2002 this famous bottleneck, formerly known as the Jam Factory, was renamed Frideswide Square after the pious seventh-century abbess who is said to have founded a priory where Christ Church cathedral presently stands, and who is honoured as the patron saint of the city's property speculators. In celebration of the scheme's postponement, and to launch his campaign to be appointed to the newly-vacated chair of Oxford Professor of Poetry, OUP author Andrew Malcolm has penned his own personal prayer:

ARE YOU GOING TO FRIDESWIDE SQUARE?

October 2009: Akme is delighted to report that this has now been recorded by fine English singer Alex Chapman. To hear more of his work, or to obtain a copy of the MP3, visit www.alexchapman.co.uk

October 2009: The Cheesiest Adverts in Publishing History

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I can't find any textbooks... I am a textbook

While Oxford University continues to sink in the world rankings, OUP USA has lately issued a series of YouTube videos which are surely the cheapest, creepiest, nastiest, most risble efforts ever conceived by a publisher. Watch OUP scraping the very bottom of its mouldy, 532-year-old barrel, but be warned: these are not spoofs.

* The Wanky Labels * The Nagging Cough * The Aunt Cillaries * The Cardboard Calculator *
* The Phoney Cuddle * The Freudian Slip * and for finale: The Trailer Travesty *

THE LAVASA TAMASHA

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Oxford's Indian land-grab in mire: Sunday Times, 30/8/09

OXBRIDGE AND THE CLASS WAR:
SEVEN CENTURIES OF SNOBBERY

John Hood The Grinner Nigel Portwood
The XVC... The Grinner... and the new CEOUP: Plans for Nigel

Oxford's controversial V-C John Hood is bid farewell and on yer bike and has been replaced by grinning, acquiescent biochemist Professor Andrew Hamilton, while fresher Nigel Portwood has taken over at OUP. Simultaneously, The Brownmail sparked in 2006 by Oxford's Congregation showing two fingers to the HEFCE continues unabated, notably in a series of recent Daily Telegraph articles, in which Government Universities Secretary John Denham accuses Oxford and its Chancellor of being outmoded. Also, in a daring pre-tax raid in August, robbers wearing prosthetic rubber masks and made up to look like academics stole £100 million from under the noses of the Inland Revenue. The heist, which was caught on CC (Charity Commission) TV, was committed in Broad Street daylight, and claimed to be an attempt to disguise the 1930s New Bodleian Library as a lucrative 'visitor center'.

Hood-byes: Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, Independent
Hamiltons: Guardian + links, Oxford Times + links, Pursued by bear
The Heist: Sunday Times, Oxford Times
Recent Oxford beggary: I can't believe it's not Bata and Money Shouting
Class war: So begins the Brownmail (first file in linked series).

15th April 2009: BLACK DAY IN BLUESVILLE

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Akme Skewers Draw Blood Guardian Response article by Andrew Malcolm

AKMEFLASH: On the morning of 15th April, OUP Communications Director Rachel Goode rushed a circular out to all OUP employees ordering them not to respond to this article - possibly an infringement of their human rights under EU law.

Also Lord Xenu and the Delegates Private Eye review of OUP scientology shocker

THE CHARITY COMMISSION'S 'PUBLIC BENEFIT' CONSULTATION: AKME SCORES PALPABLE HIT

In October 2007 the Charity Commission issued its Report on the first round of its consultations on the new 'public benefit' requirement of the 2006 Charities Act, which came into force in 2008. This is the clause whereby all charities must now demonstrate purposes which benefit the public, a condition which brings special focus (Bookseller 16th March and Guardian 17th April) to bear upon the tax position, anomalous since the 1970s, of the university presses, most notably OUP and CUP. There will follow a series of further consultations on four specific types of charity: charities for the relief of poverty, charities for the advancement of religion, charities for the advancement of education, and fee-charging charities, with university presses (along with private schools, the Oxbridge colleges and, indeed, universities) falling into the latter two categories. The Charity Commission's Report devotes a whole paragraph (no. 52 of 55) to this website. Note its wording carefully:
"There were a significant number of responses regarding the charitable status (or more specifically, the tax exempt status) of Oxford University and Cambridge University Presses, by virtue of their link to those Universities, and concerns about unfair competition by non-charitable publishing companies. This issue received some publicity through national press following a High Court action against OUP over the non-publication of an individual's text. The individual concerned subsequently published an account of his lawsuit and encouraged publishers (& members of the public) via his internet site to respond to our consultation. As a result we received several responses from commercial publishers objecting to OUP's & CUP's tax benefits."

October 2008: Public Benefit Akmeflashes: Private schools test case Guardian 7/10/08, Dame Leather stropped Private Eye 17/10/08, 4 Scots schools shopped Newsvine 28/10/08
Latest: Sunday Times 5/7/09 The Fictional 16% Rule, Guardian 14/7/09 Mission Drift + links, Guardian 11/8/09 Our man in Bratislava, Guardian 14/9/09 Leo the Lion QC, Guardian 6/10/09 Crackpot Central.

Also click for the 2006 Charities Act Implementation Plan pdf, updated September 2009 by the HMG Office of the [Charities] Third Sector (exits www.akme).

March 2009: THE ULTRA VIRES POISE VOLTE-FACE

NEW REVELATIONS ABOUT OUP's & CUP's TAX-EXEMPTION

Following the JIG UP? posting of 2007, Akme has just obtained (some of) the Inland Revenue papers on CUP and OUP from the 1970s, released last month into the National Archive under the 30-year rule, and featuring numerous mysterious omissions, censored redactions, unexplained contradictions and a host of Freudian asides, non sequiturs and puzzles.

"It was felt it might be unpatriotic in 1940... CUP are trying it on, trying to railroad us... I recommend that we resist... Possibly OUP is acting ultra vires in its trading... OUP is almost a case of "the tail wagging the dog"... I would not think it necessary to carry out reviews at all frequently to test for any movement in OUP's poise." sample quotes from IR officials

Click for CUP/OUP's 1970s Charity Status Update Press Release and Revised Index

September 2008: EDUCATIONAL CHARITY TO PROGRESS THE FURTHERING OF REACH

cover scan Susan Froud

Click for OUP'S REPORT AND ACCOUNTS 2007/8

featuring the Akme Exhibitions, the Millions not Thousands, and Reach beyond the Dreams of Avarice

Also Bookseller summary report, 18/9/08
OUP Report & Accounts 2006/7 featuring The Bitch of the Baskervilles (right)
OUP Report & Accounts 2005/6 featuring Where is the University?
OUP Report & Accounts 1977/8 the year of 'Done Quietly'
Background below * OUP Accounts Index

NEW! OUP'S REPORT AND ACCOUNTS 2008/9

June 2008: OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

While the peoples of the Middle East continue to re-enact their ancient, bloodthirsty, biblical wars, the first public shots have just been fired in a parallel battle for enfranchisement being conducted in their namesake areas of north Oxford.

The future ownership of two estates of houses built by OUP at Jordan Hill and Webb's Close in the 1950s and '60s for its print and paper mill workers hangs on the question of whether or not OUP was then a charity. Regular visitors to www.akme will by now know the truth on this question, but with so much at stake will Oxford University and its lawyers?

Click for Oxford Times 'No right to buy', published letter and Akme chronology

April 2008: THE GRISTMILLER'S GRIND

The Gristmiller 25/1/08 The Gristmiller 8/2/08
On 25th January 2008 The Bookseller magazine bravely raised the contentious question of the university presses' tax-exemption, most notably OUP's and CUP's, quoting Andrew Malcolm on the subject. On 8th February, after consulting its lawyers (and with their slight modifications), it then published on its leader page Malcolm's response letter, airing for the first time some of the hitherto suppressed revelations posted on this website. It also widened the 'public benefit' discussion attending the new Charities Act to include the commercial activities not just of Oxbridge's university presses, but of the two universities themselves, and of their 76 "totally separate" colleges. Then on 24th April The Bookseller published attacks by rival, tax-liable academic publishers on the two UPs' manifestly unfair privilege.
The Gristmiller's straws are in the wind...

Click now for Enter The Gristmiller (25/1 article + 8/2 letter), The Gristmiller's Grind (rivals' attack, 24/4), Locals' Grind (Oxford rivals, 16/5)
For recent background, go to Touch me minky and Please touch me minky.

Late-breaking Reece shock: "tax unimportant, we'd simply covenant our profits."

THE GATEKEEPER'S CREEP-OUT

OUP CEO Reece Lord Ganesha On 13th February 2007 extracts from a probing interview by Mukund Padmanabhan of OUP's Chief Executive Henry Reece were published in The Hindu newspaper, of Chennai (Madras), India. When quizzed about OUP's infamous poetry-axing of 1998, Reece stated: "We really don't have the people qualified to make judgments about contemporary poetry." (So much then for Oxford's Eng. Lit. Fac. - again). When tested on OUP's tax-exemption, he claimed: "It's not particularly financially important. It is more important as a statement of who we are (sic)." (In which case, who they are will presumably find no difficulty in paying all the back-tax they owe since 1978, renegotiating the numerous takeover deals they have concluded in the interim, and then handing over whatever's left of their £200+ million illegal reserves to a genuine charity - Oxfam perhaps). And when asked what will happen if/when OUP loses its tax-exemption, he asserted: "We would simply covenant our profits to the university." (Following the suggestion first mooted in the Fifth Appendix of The Remedy, but thirty years too late and totally blind, as always, to the fair trading issue.) As for Reece's fantastic "gatekeeper" guff (qv), I am reminded of an acquaintance who won a place to study at Oxford, but after a day-trip to the city turned it down. "Too many old gates," he explained.

But apart from noting that the uncharitable writing is now clearly on the Walton Street wall, what Akme really wants to know is why did all these extraordinary admissions, risible suggestions and ill-considered whims creep out on the quiet in an Indian newspaper published five thousand miles away? Was Reece shyly, slyly kite-flying, by any chance, retro-active pre-emptive like? Kite-flying, of course, is a sub-continental speciality, but in 2001 OUP came down to earth there with a bang. - A. M.

Click now for the Akme version or the Hindu version (exits www.akme)

August 2007: JIG UP FOR DIFFERENT TOTAL ANIMALS?

At last obtained and published by Akme:
In all their glory, the granted applications by CUP (1975) and OUP (1977) for exemption from UK tax, including the Inland Revenue correspondence and featuring Papa Crass's fuzzy logic, Ooh we are so antiente and so verie spetiall, the Underliner's Case, Blessed be the Biblebaggers, Lord Trumpington Todd's CV, Oxford's Glowing Beams, Shining Torches and Great Latin Pœnis, and many other classic comedy hits, but not featuring their previous rejected applications (CUP 1940, OUP 1952), which they have, er, "recently lost".

Click for CUP/OUP's 1970s Charity Status Press Release and Index

December 2007: THE WHEEDLERS' WAR

At last obtained and published by Akme:
In all their shame, the failed applications by CUP (1940, 1941) and OUP (1944, 1950) for exemption from wartime taxes, featuring the Inland Revenue's rigorous investigations, the Special Commissioners' judgment (1940), the Oxford Vice-Chancellor's exaggeration, and both universities' unpatriotism.

Click for CUP/OUP's 1940s Charity Status Press Release, Explanation and Index

THE OXFORD COLLEGE ACCOUNTS 2005/06

THE OXBRIDGE COLLEGE ACCOUNTS INDEX REVAMPED AND UPDATED
Endowment analyses dating back to 1973, league tables, post-SORP performance comparisons 2002-2006, anomalies, scandals, puzzles, newspaper articles, AKMEDIA CD-Roms, e-mailing service etc.

Click for Akme's OXBRIDGE ACCOUNTS INDEX and HISTORY

Shock file of the month (MSExcel): 32-year endowment income multipliers
Jesus over 27-fold, Pembroke under 5-fold. Why?

February 2009, by popular request...

BORDERS ON THE INSANE The YouTube Movie

video of the book-bust of 4th October 2002 - Police State Oxford glimpsed

Background: OXFORD SUMMONS THOUGHT POLICE

Borders protesting prof
Daily Telegraph + photos, Oxford Times, Oxford Mail, Brighton Argus, Oxford Student 10/10.

30th January 2003: POLICE HOLD BACK

Borders, London: Malcolm finally delivers talk
Independent, Oxford Times & Mail, Brighton Argus, Cherwell. Text: Where is the university?


New for 2008: WELCOME TO BODLEYWORLD
Click for special Akme Sub-Index of reports about Oxford's exciting plan to build Academe's first underwater library

"The floors carrying the stacks under Broad St and the Radcliffe Camera penetrate up to four levels below street level. The water table in the alluvial gravels approaches street level during the wet season and rests only a few metres below it at other times. In effect, these storage facilities are like large tanks sitting in a surrounding lake." - John Hood, 3/5/05
Artist's impression of New Bod Shed Radcliffe Square, 28/11/06
left: Artist's impression of the New Bod, to be called HMS Shedloanian
right: November 2006: the Aquabook scheme underway in Radcliffe Square: "water pouring in, money pouring out."

July 2008: KING GNOME'S DEPRIVATION - the truth

Pinkys and Perkys first! In November 2007 it was quietly announced that Alan Ryan was quitting as Warden of New College, Oxford. Akme has since learnt that on account of his disreputable roles in the Malcolm case (click for his ultimate degradation, with links) and the Aylesbury land scandal, aka King Gnome's Cream Tea in breach of the New College statutes (first aired on this website), not to mention his numerous other disgraces, the College Fellows presented Lord Yada with the choice of being formally and messily deprived of his post or voluntarily taking "early retirement", and he opted for the latter. Akme result! In September 2009 he is to be replaced by Sir Curtis "Thanks a lot, Purcell" Price.

The New Collegers were so anxious to get Ryan off their premises, they have agreed to continue paying his Warden's salary during an absent sabbatical year (2009/10) to be spent at Princeton, while his pals there have stumped up for a further two years of his yada yada. His promised masterwork From Plato to Nato is awaited with baited (sic) breath. Poor Kate, losing all that retro bling. Still, she's always welcome at Akme Expression...

Quietly runs the bathwater*: Alan Ryan's affirmative action

Oxford's leading exact thinker is famously a past master of mind-changing. Indeed this great intellectual gymnast seems to think of U-turns as the very marks of sophistication, but to spin 180 degrees within seven days is surely a record, even for him? Compare Cherwell 10/2/06 and The Times Higher 17/2/06. For further medal-winning Ryanastics, click Disobey, Money, Umbrage, Oxford blues, Circle squarer, Stalin, Football mad, Wicked, Malcolm versus, Exit ranting, Abolish state education, Hip prat crit, Drowning fish, Cock up, Metric psycho, Pinky & Perky, Carry on clunking.

Akme Exclusive: In 1998 the wily warden's own affirmative access action favoured Jack Straw's son Will with a backdoor (A2B) Oxford place. Click for Done quietly (pdf), 2004 footnote and 2005 MAN OF STRAWS. For his official short-straw access plan, try THES 19/1/07 Dim, idle, wicked.

* Akmeflash, 7/10/05: The Times Higher reports that "a global sample of research-active science academics", somewhat controversially, voted Cambridge and Oxford the world's two top universities for science, ahead of their American, Asian and European rivals. It also announces that the THES and TES have been sold by Rupert Murdoch's News International to City outfit Exponent Private Equity, which has appointed as the magazines' new chief executive one Bernard Gray, who studied chemistry at, er... Hertford College, Oxford. Also in the same issue Alan Ryan begins his regular comment piece with the paragraph: "I was splashing quietly in my bath when it occurred to me how much easier it would be to move heavy objects if we rolled them on some sort of cylinder rather than having parties of slaves haul them around on skids. When I put this thought to my wife, she mentioned that the wheel had been in use for some time and that it sounded as though my brain had not been." No surprise then, that for two years UK has not won a Nobel prize for science.

China Syndrome Within 24 hours of the above Trough Trouble posting (27/9/06), Akme's extensive links on Google were all erased. What price the Goflood-Ogrex agreement? Two weeks later, after representations to Google (and a headline "Search engine hits buffers"), Akme's links were restored. Official explanation: "We were sending out a newer binary/executable and different data centers had different versions of the binary. Every data center now has the new binary." Well bless my binaries, and only the Akme links got wiped!

OXFORD'S VICE-CHANCELLOR SHOT

19th December 2006: Postal bullet inserted

New V-C
Oxford's new Vice-Chancellor,
holding the ceremonial silver bullet

Eyewitness reports by Akme governance correspondent Ollie Garchy, 14th & 28th November 2006

On 14th November, during the first round of Oxford's historic Congregation debate on governance reform, an American tourist asked one of the proctors manning the busy Sheldonian gates what was going on. The proctor replied: "They are deciding whether or not to shoot their Vice-Chancellor." After two hours it was voted that a ceremonial silver bullet be carried towards him very slowly by a butler flanked by bedels, through a five-year series of committees, amendments, appeals and further debates. Huddam Sossein requested that he be shot like a reformer rather than hanged as a common criminal, while elsewhere on the same day, the entire higher education ministry was taken hostage by a group of militants disguised as academics. Two weeks later at round two of the debate, because of the deteriorating security situation, instead of the usual formal robed procession, Noori Al-Hoodawi was hurriedly whisked into the building surrounded by a posse of nervous minders and wearing a simple camel-hair coat. Once inside, the civil war took a dramatic turn as they were met not with a single silver bullet but by a hail of gunfire which left 456 injured and President John seriously wounded. Some of Hoodawi's supporters tried to restore control by recruiting an army by mail order, but the resulting postal bullet went against the interim government 1540:997, leaving Al-Hoodawi fatally crippled and the Grey Zone buzzing with talk of a succession. According to The Independent, it was rumoured in Sadder City that Huddam Sossein had ordered one of his many 'doubles' to be shot in his place.

Reports, pre-votes: Independent, Guardian (Colin Lucas), Sunday Times, Observer, Times, Times leader, Times (Terence Kealey), Guardian (Chris Patten), Guardian leader, THES, Financial Times, Oxford Student, Cherwell, Varsity. Official OU transcripts of the debates: 14/11 & 28/11. Reports, post-vote 1 (14/11): Times, Telegraph 1, Guardian 1, Guardian 2, Independent, THES, Oxford Times, Oxford Student, Cherwell, BBC online, Vernon Bogdanor + comment links, Telegraph 2, Libby Purves. Post-vote 2 (28/11): Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Garton Ash + comment links, Financial Times, Independent, Times Higher, Al-Anryan, Bringing into the shit. Al-Hoodawi's I won't resign letter (Jpeg). Post-postal-bullet (20/12): Times + letters, Telegraph, Guardian 1, 2 + comments, Financial Times, Independent, THES.

5th October 2007: A billion Big Issues, Sir? Oxford Times
16th November 2007: Postal bullet arrives at destination: Independent & Times
22nd November 2007: King Gnome takes ricochet Guardian

Background: 2005 Hood's horizzzzon + links to V-Cs' orations, January: Oxford in crisis Times, Telegraph, Price of Europe, THES + leader, February Business Week on Hood and interview, Patten humming, Guardian, Varsity, Cherwell, Colleges to lose autonomy or not; March Mutiny, riots, rebellion, Hood's foreign horizzzzon; Simon Jenkins' Over the brink, Two appointments with Mammon, Needn't pay, won't pay!; Learning environments plurality, April: Staff bullied with bad syntax THES, Guardian, Independent, Guardian 2. May Appointment of Julie Maxton, disappointment of Anthony Howard, mitherings of Alan Ryan. Cong votes 351-153: Guardian, Independent, Times, Oxford Times, Boston Globe. V-C's letter on Indian post-doctorals and He don't resign. Autumn: President John in Far East, Enough Saïd, Times, Financial Times, Hood hunted, Oxford Student, Cherwell, Lord Butler, Indy leaders, Hood's boost, Curb your Vice-Chancellor, Scheming spires. 2006: Family matters. Basket case in pinky-yellow gives FT interview and turns Beggar Sahib. Dons plan protest + letters, $420,000, No confidence vote and New turmoil + Victor Blank items (see also next panel below), Pinky and Perky, Shackled, Boil lancing, Hood under fire, then Dismembered (An al-Ryan holding knife + Akme's proposal), Hood under fire again, but gets Whacking rise. The College Game, OXIP & Prospectus, JRAM raid, A World-Class Mess, Bam!, Forth!, Flying Sheets, Blank off! King Gnome's Cream Tea, Luscious Liora Lazarus, Julie Maxton interviewed. The anti-Hood Blue Paper. Hood & Dellandrea caught in bed with Al Qaeda oil suspect: Times, Times Higher, Oxford Student, Cherwell. Wafic Saïd exposed in BAE bungs scandal: Oxford's Al-YamahYamahYamah and Oxford, Arms Trader.

Sir Victor 'Trusty Savings' Blank

8th March 2009: BLANK CHECKED

Oxford's leading financier (and member of the University Council) takes it up the Isis from The Sunday Times

Gordon Brown

following the Hood's near-fatal shooting...

SO BEGINS THE BROWNMAIL

Linked series on Oxbridge's class war: 16/11/06 By the balls, 21/11/06 Hefce's response (twixt votes), 23/11/06 Oxford to be taxed, 29/11/06 Targeting poor, 22/12/06 Messiah summoned, 10/1/07 Hefce's Dear John letter, 15/5/07 Sanctions ahoy, 8/8/07 No surprise, 13/6/08 Oxford failing, 17/9/08 Oxford flailing, 19/9/08 Oxford's low sights, 1/10/08 Social Insecurity, 16/10/08 Get fee, just go!, 9/6/09 Barrier cream, 12/7/09 Hood's shake-up, 12/7/09 Oxford could reject State, 7/10/09 Enter V-C, pursued by bear.

JANUARY 2006: OXFORD DRAFTS STUDENT CONTRACT

MAY 2006: AKME LAUNCHES STUDENT LAW LIBRARY

scan scan A unique resource on the web, providing a free archive of UK cases, news reports and other materials relating to university-student and college-student contract law. Thanks to increasing top-up fees and student indebtedness, not to mention Oxford's vanguard defensive contract, student litigation has become a subject of rapidly growing importance. With its extensive and successful experience in the field, Akme is pleased to assist in this brave new endeavour.

Click for the AKME STUDENT LAW LIBRARY INDEX, plus press release, glossary and litigation guide.

OXFORD'S CONTRACT: Beloff's draft (pdf) via OUSU introduction. Reports: The Times + letters, Oxford Student, Guardian, Financial Times, Times Higher 1, Times Higher 2, Birmingham Post, Telegraph, Cherwell 1, Oxford Student 1, Howard Jacobson, NUS comment, Oxford Student 2, Cherwell 2, Info denied, Cherwell 3, Johann Hari, Turnup or Godown. See also University of crime, the landmark Wolverhampton case and the Hurstpierpoint case
Akme exclusive: Oxford attacked on 9/11, declares WAR ON ERROR.

Also, OXFORD'S STUDENT RENT RACKETS: Inequality attacked 4/02, Students go home!, Massive rises, Bursars' secret report (pdf), Authorities outraged, Above the odds, Bursars run scared + links, University sellout, highest in country.

OCTOBER 2005: VALE OXFORD'S VALE

"The performance of Oxford colleges' assets in land, property and shares has been described as lamentably poor. The colleges are trying to bail themselves out of investment blunders by building ever-bigger portfolios of lucrative student housing." THES October 2004.
"Many of the colleges appear to be active in the buying and selling of land... but the profits on these sales are omitted from their accounts, figures which normally carry serious tax implications. Perhaps the SORP guidelines for HE institutions do not require such figures, but then perhaps they do not envisage the institutions operating like speculative property developers." Scout (Akme) September 2004

Grenoble Road site Binsey Sunningwell
I know, let's build here at Grenoble Road (Magdalen), here in Binsey (Christ Church), and here in Sunningwell (Worcester)

In the face of the university's financial meltdown (see www.akme, all files), many colleges are resorting to the exploitation of their vast landholdings by wangling a series of insupportable planning permissions, including several, ironically, in their city's own Green Belt. The most ruinous of these is a massive development being urged by Magdalen College on land to the south of Grenoble Road. This was first broached in 2002 with a proposal for 1,000 houses. Note, as the argument has roller-coasted between the City and County and Parish Councils, the political parties, the Regional Assembly (SEERA), the university, the green groups and the Government, how this figure has swelled to 3,000, 5,000 and even 25,000, or "two Abingdons". The 30-mile urban sprawl now envisaged has even been compared to Los Angeles. Praise be to the Lord and to the "eleemosynary chartered charitable corporation aggregate" that is Magdalen College, hereinafter Maglen Corp.

Click to tread Maglen Corp's IGNOBLE ROAD. Also Looney Binsey & Botley Motels (Christ Church), Acland Fiasco (Keble), Clone City (Queen's, Lincoln), King Gnome's Cream Tea (New), Far Pavilions (Exeter). Coming soon: Northfield Brook (Brasenose) and St John's parable of the good landlord

OUP'S TAX: MAD CASH COW DISEASE SPREADS

It is not widely known that OUP's tax-exemption (it does not have charity status) is not automatic and was granted only recently, in 1978, on the conditions that (a) all its surpluses must be ploughed back into non-commercial publishing and (b) it must not finance the university. Since then it has inevitably prospered at the expense of its tax-paying rivals, many of which it has bought up, to become the UK's largest independent publisher. And it is now wildly in breach of both of its 1978 conditions.

Click for THE SURPRISING TRUTH ABOUT OUP'S 'CHARITABLE STATUS', the 5th Appendix to The Remedy, the OUP ACCOUNTS INDEX, OUP's U.S. TAX-EXEMPTION plus facsimiles and brief, CUP'S TAX-EXEMPTION, the WALDOCK REPORT, Oxford's own pre-exempt study, the INDIAN JUDGMENT, A Message from India, the SOUTH AFRICAN SAGA, Mammon's Imprint, OUP fights corner, US tax freedom, £87 million 'donation', £60 million purchase,tax breach denied, books cooked, profit row, chemistry abandoned, ultra unsound, Bookseller mention.

August 2005: CORRECTION: OXFORD IS RACIST - official

Keble pays Asian accountant 'substantial damages' exclusive report

Late in 2004, to celebrate that no legal action alleging racial discrimination had ever successfully been brought against any Oxford college or the university, Akme assembled a special OXFORD IS NOT RACIST INDEX of reported incidents and failed lawsuits. But with the dramatic conclusion in 2005 of Diamond Versi vs Keble College & Roger Boden, in which both the college and its bursar were found guilty of racial discrimination and unfair dismissal, Oxford's blameless record and reputation was irrevocably shattered. For the benefit of scholars Akme has posted the papers in this very Oxford case as a linked series.

Click now for the VERSINDEX or for the first item in the series Dramatis Personae or go straight to The Reading Judgment. Note too Warden Averil Cameron's 'under payment' and extraordinary e-mail.

OVER 25% OF ODNB ENTRIES UNRELIABLE?

Since its vaunted launch in September 2004, there have appeared in the media a growing number of reports of inaccuracies in OUP's long-awaited Oxford Dictionary of National (Notional?) Biography: Sunday Telegraph 24/10/04, various TLS letters and a contributor's detailed TLS letter, 11/2/05, which suggests that more than a quarter of the dictionary's 55,000 entries may contain errors. See also Bookworm 18/2/05, Observer 6/3/05, Library Journal 15/4/05, Oldie, 12/05.
How, one wonders, will Oxford's £7,500-a-go customers react to all this disappointing news?

THE WORST SCIENCE TEXTBOOKS EVER PUBLISHED?

Former secondary-level science teacher Paul Hurt has approached Akme with shocking revelations about OUP's Framework Science course, launched in 2003. His school was conned into spending £30,000 on Oxford's set of teaching materials which, in the name of education, it was then obliged discreetly to ditch. According to Oxford, sodium hydroxide is now classed as an acid, Copernicus was arrested for his solarcentric views, and limestone is of no use as a building material (to pick just three of the books' legion of howlers). Hurt urges that Framework Science, like the RCN's dangerously error-infested Oxford Handbook of General and Adult Nursing (OUP 2007) and Oxford's Concise Dictionary of World Place Names, which confuses Bengal with Bangalore should now be withdrawn and pulped.

Read HURT'S CRITIQUE, then sing: 'Reaction/To cretinous publication/Outsourced trash/Fizz for frothy foam/Crap!'

Dim mask 1 Dim mask 2

AKME'S OXFORD POETRY LIST


Early in 2006 an eminent Oxford academic, who knew nothing of this website or its history, was introduced to Andrew Malcolm's books Making Names and The Remedy. He was very impressed by the former (so impressed that he tried to find a publisher for it abroad - another story), and deeply shocked by the latter (so shocked that he now spits, he says, every time he passes the OUP building). His rage prompted him to fire off a pastiche of Shelley's famous poem of 1819 The Mask of Anarchy. Shelley wrote his blistering attack on the British ruling class upon hearing news when in Italy of the Peterloo massacre, in which local cavalry were ordered to charge a crowd of unarmed, working-class demonstrators in Manchester, killing 11 and wounding 400.

Click for The Masque of Academe

Plus, at last an amusing item in the Oxford Magazine 22/6/2007 by A. W. F. Edwards & Lewis Carroll: Fame's Penny-Trumpet

JANUARY 2006: OXFORD MEDICINE A BASKET CASE?

Spurious tests, six-fingered hands, £50K bungs, £22K fixes, stillborn babies and the John Radcliffe bottom of the league - Oxford medicine looks dead on arrival

Click for Boggis & Bunce & Bane Sunday Times 8/1/06, Zygotes Wild Akme exclusive 23/1/06, Oxnob reek leak Guardian 22/2/05, Degrees of snobbery Oxford Student 24/2/05, University fixes Oxford Mail 6/8/04, Laura Spence notes BBC 26/5/00

April 2004: HS Tank on Oxford's playing fields

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Unsporting university loses patent case

The Times, The Guardian, Oxford Mail, Fashion Capital, the Registrar's decision (pdf), Patent Office's Case summary, Forrester Ketley's lawyers' newsletter, HS Tank's Oxford Blue webpage, and Charles Tyrwhitt's Oxford Blue shirt.

October 2004: Government tanks on Oxford's lawns

Fire! Fire!
Extraordinary valedictory (?) oration by Michael Beloff - for pejorative penumbra of paramountcy, click: The Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, Times Higher. For offtoff spinoff: Oxford private in 5 years?, Hoogstraten's hireling, Will Hutton returns fire , Patten's tank, Tea party on Isis, Government retreat, Apocalypse no, Kim Howells' speech. Offtoffprof appointed: Harris, Manchester, his public statement, Times report, Offtoffprofsoft?, Offa toothless. Beloff heads for bar, Clare Sambrook's Camburgers, Andrew Malcolm's aromatherapeutic letter. click on images to enlarge

LET ME COUNT THE WAYS...

WHERE'S ME JOYSTICK? Following the revelation that Oxford patron Wafic Saïd is running an empty passenger jet every day solely to retain its London runway slot, an even bigger waste scandal is emerging. Akme exclusive, 23/3/07.

19-HOUR BENDERS AT ALL SOULS To Oblivion and beyond: All Hours College, Taking the Piss, Sunstroke too

CORPUS CHRISTI'S BROTHEL Gloucestershire Echo reports on the college's immoral earnings, 2001/2

UNIVERSITY PROSTITUTION DIM babygros, garden tools, croquet sets. Times, Oxford Times, OUP pornography.

SLAVERY, CENSORSHIP, AIRBASES, OIL Explanation and versions 1200 words, 1000, 900 (final), 900 + links.

BULLINGDONS RUN AMOK... AGAIN Oxford Student reports 13/1/05 and 2/3/05.

OXFORD BANS PHOTOGRAPHY, GIRLFRIENDS, E-MAILS University's bizarre animal behaviour, 15/4/05.

NORRINGTON TABLES FRAUDULENT League results exposed 23/7/04, then scrapped 12/11/04.

OXFORD'S NAZI LOOT War crimes link exposed Flick off, 4/97.

ORIEL FLOGS FIRST FOLIO Exit inalienable Shakespeare Bard for Bucks, 3/03.

CARPET COLLEGE'S RUG PULLED Harris Manchester threadbare 1 and threadbare 2.

CRETE CON DIM-squad to sue semiotic shirtmaker?

OXFORD LAUNCHES DIMTANIC Dons rush for lifeboats as iceberg looms, 1/04.

MY WORST TIME Amazing retirement revelation by Margaret Goodall, OUP's Mother of all Secretaries.

THE OXFORD CRIMSON, THE OXFORD WHITE Attacks by Rhodes scholars and State scholars, 4/3/07.

FEELING SICK Oxford Professor of Mars Bars and Tabasco throws up Independent, Daily Mail, 8/3/07.

ACCESS SCANDALS Bourses for Courses, pipe dreams, money talks, poor hit, school ties, Chancellor at odds, fees B4 access, identity crisis, topup showdown, fat chance, wild cards, frighteners, rival revival, Blair for St Anne's, Eliton College, Schwartz free market, class rage, toothless Offa, Oxbridge drops, Oxford static, out of form, the old sofa trick, strong snobbery, rank outsiders, girls and Asians, bias survey, Oxbridge drops, £26K a pop, college lottery, immoral guidelines, ivy envy.

February 2004: CONTROL OF WWW.AKME RESTORED

After the bizarre events at Borders' Oxford bookshop in October 2002 (see above), Akme lost control of this website, with any attempt to edit existing files or upload new ones (text or image) resulting in their erasure. Fortunately, just as this mysterious jamming was beginning, US Akme agent Michael Sayers established a link to a mirror index page which from late 2002 carried all Akme's news bulletins, including the various subsequent Borders developments, Andrew Malcolm's blocked candidacy in March 2003 for the the Oxford University chancellorship, and OUP's illegal donation to the university in August 2003 of £77 million. In February 2004 Akme switched to a new service-provider and recovered apparent control of www.akme, so visitors are now advised to re-bookmark this page, whilst keeping Sayers' mirror bookmarked too, just in case. The previously censored THES articles have also been restored.

January 2005: 'DOWN WITH OXBRIDGE' PROGRAMME CENSORED

On 14th December 2004 Andrew Malcolm was invited by BBC Radio 4 producer Ben Crighton to speak on behalf of proposer Guardian journalist David Walker, who was opposed by the President of Magdalen College Anthony Smith. Malcolm prepared a 5-minute spiel for recording, but on 28th December he was informed without explanation that, after all, he could not participate in or even attend the debate, to be held at Magdalen on 7th January. Crighton told another contributor that "because Mr Malcolm is in litigation against the university (untrue), there are legal issues". Click for transcript of programme

OTHER PUBLISHING NEWS

THE HISTORY OF AKME AND OF THIS WEBSITE

A brief history of the site's life and growth since its inception in September 1997.

THE AKME LITERARY LAW LIBRARY

A unique resource specifically designed for authors (or publishers) contemplating litigation. The library contains all relevant precedents from the English archives, a series of articles by lawyer Nicola Solomon, and other materials.

THE AKME OXFORD CUTTINGS LIBRARY

An archive of published Oxford and OUP scandals, definitions for dollars 1985, the Tehran Book Fair 1989, the poetry-axing fiasco 1998, Oxford's various Indian tamashas and sundry other scandals.

ABOUT MAKING NAMES

The book that started it all, with links to Reviews by Karl Popper, Roy Edgley and others, TES 9/92, Spectator 4/93, Oxford Student 5/02 rave by Arina Patrikova: "One of the most powerful statements of the human condition written in the past century." Opening passage plus mail order information etc.

ABOUT THE REMEDY

Rave review by Henry Hardy in THES, 3/01: "Andrew Malcolm has written two excellent books... in a sane world... etc." also by The AUT (Association of University Teachers), 12/01: "It is of course in the interest of the big academic publishers such as Oxford and Cambridge to suppress knowledge of the Malcolm case." Also see Oxford Times and Cherwell. Opening passage plus mail order information etc.

MALCOLM vs. OXFORD ROUND 1: 1986-92

Extracts from the 1990 Judgments, The 1990 Court of Appeal judgment complete, The 1990 Chancery Court judgment complete, The Damages Assessment findings, 1991, McGregor on Royalties, The Case History
THE CASE PAPERS INDEX The fascinating judgments and court files in the original case: evidence, documents, affidavits, statements and courtroom testimony, all scanned, transcribed, indexed, cross-referenced and interlinked for easy navigation. Delight, for example, in the cross-examination of Oxford's six witnesses, Sir Roger Elliott, Ivon Asquith, Richard Charkin, Henry Hardy, Margaret Goodall and Nicola Bion. Newspaper reports: Observer 11/3/90 (first in linked series), Times 19/12/90, Guardian, Telegraph, Argus, Bookseller, Observer, plus an older News Items file.

WARNING: ONLY FOR EXTREME SADIMASOCHISTS

January 2007 posting: The correspondence with Oxford's solicitors Clifford Chance that led to the extraordinary settlement agreement of 1st July 1992. Click for preamble + first item in series or for index.

MALCOLM vs. OXFORD ROUND 2: 2001-02

THE CASE PAPERS INDEX. The fully indexed and documented farce of Oxford's unique 1992 non-denigration agreement and Alan Ryan's breach of it in April 2001, featuring Michael Beloff QC's "Seven Centuries of Mystery Tour". Thanks to this second case, the Vice Chancellor and Pro-Vice-Chancellors are now legally speaking no longer servants or agents of their university. Newspaper report: Times Higher 22/2/02.

AKME EXPRESSION, MAY-JUNE 2002

The Shopfront the Descent
THE LEGAL BACKGROUND and Malcolm's Lectureship offer
THE BROAD STREET SHOP featuring the Gallery of Shame, Akme University, St. Frideswide's grotto, Akmé Ball etc.
Reports: LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS Oxford Times 21/6
THES 26/4, Oxford Times 26/4, Guardian 30/4, Oxford Star 2/5, Oxford Student 2/5, Cherwell 3/5, Publishing News 10/5, Private Eye 17/5, Guardian 25/6, South China Morning Post 11/5, Change (US H.E. journal), Philosophers' Magazine.
Alan Ryan quits, ranting: THES 31/5, Cherwell 7/6, other quotes
Rave review of Making Names in Oxford Student 30/5: "One of the most powerful statements of the human condition written in the past century."

MALCOLM'S FIFTY February - March 2003

Cherwell Cherwell
Arcanery or chicanery, it's the same old Oxford story.
Detail of Andrew Malcolm's blocked candidacy for the University Chancellorship and 54 disenfranchised members of Convocation. Reports: Guardian 11/2, Guardian 25/2 Guardian 26/2, Brighton Argus 8/2, Oxford Times 7/2, Cherwell 7/2 Cherwell 7/3, Oxford Student 6/2 Oxford Student 13/2 "Malcolm the serious contender", Oxford Student 6/3.

e-mail: akme@btinternet.com