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June 2008: OCCUPIED TERRITORIESWhile 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 |
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December 2007: THE WHEEDLERS' WARAt last obtained and published by Akme: |
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August 2007: JIG UP FOR DIFFERENT TOTAL ANIMALS?At last obtained and published by Akme: |
THE CHARITY COMMISSION'S 'PUBLIC BENEFIT' CONSULTATION: AKME SCORES A PALPABLE HITIn 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 comes into force in 2008. This is the clause whereby all charities must in future 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 now 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 Andrew Malcolm's campaign and 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."
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Late-breaking Reece shock: "tax unimportant, we'd simply covenant our profits."THE GATEKEEPER'S CREEP-OUT
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 on earth 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) |
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"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, 3/5/2005
Click for special Akme Sub-Index of reports about Oxford's exciting plan to build Academe's first underwater library |
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Click for OUP'S REPORT AND ACCOUNTS, 2006/7Featuring: The Bitch of the Baskervilles, Oxford a gas,Surplus-turns-profit, £300 million and taxing
Also: Report & Accounts, 2005/6Featuring: Q: Where is the university? A: Out of its mind - officialAnd: 1974/5, 1976/7, 1977/8, 1978/9, 1979/80The lean, pre-charitable years. Background below. |
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THE OXFORD COLLEGE ACCOUNTS 2005/06THE OXBRIDGE COLLEGE ACCOUNTS INDEX REVAMPED AND UPDATED
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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 no use as a building material (to pick just three of the books' legion of howlers).Click now for A CRITIQUE OF HURTThen have your class sing: 'Reaction/To cretinous publication/Outsourced trash/Fizz for frothy foam/Crap!'Akme would like to hear (in confidence if requested, to akme@btinternet.com) from other science teachers with similar views on OUP's Framework Science. Should it, like the RCN's Oxford Handbook of General and Adult Nursing (OUP 2007) and Oxford's Concise Dictionary of World Place Names, which confuses Bengal with Bangalore now be withdrawn and pulped as being too dangerous and insulting for publication? |
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TOUCH ME MINKY Is OUP at last to lose its tax-exemption? Dim Squad clutches at Hefce straw. Situation "grotesquely unfair," says academic. Dame Leather to crack whip.
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OXFORD'S VICE-CHANCELLOR SHOT19th December 2006: Postal bullet inserted holding the ceremonial silver bullet Eyewitness reports by Akme governance correspondent Ollie Garchy, 14th & 28th November 20065th October 2007: A billion Big Issues, Sir? Oxford Times16th November 2007: Postal bullet arrives at destination: Independent & Times22nd November 2007: King Gnome takes ricochet GuardianBackground: 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, 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. |
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At last, an amusing item in the Oxford Magazine 22/6/2007 by A. W. F. Edwards & Lewis CarrollClick for FAME'S PENNY-TRUMPET |
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THE MASQUE OF ACADEME 
Early in 2006 an eminent Oxford academic, who knew nothing of this website or of the history that generated it, was introduced to Andrew Malcolm's two 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 on 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 now for The Masque of Academe |
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SLAVERY, CENSORSHIP, AIRBASES, OILIn December 2006 Andrew Malcolm was approached by Cherwell reporter Joshua Freedman (sic) and commissioned to write a comment article on Oxford's governance chaos for the new term's first issue. After a set of interesting e-mail exchanges, Malcolm wrote various versions of a piece entitled AIRBASES AND OIL. On 7th January the article was spiked by Freedman's 'superiors'.Click for Explanation (e-mails) and versions of article: 1200 words, 1000 words, 900 words (final), 900 words + links. See also Students are not slaves. |
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MAN OF STRAWSIn April 2005 Alan Ryan (see New trough trouble and below) threatened Andrew Malcolm with a defamation suit over the posting on this website of the celebrated A2B letter of 2/1/98 from Will Straw (son of Jack). Click for MAN OF STRAWS and Done quietly pdf. For Ryan's latest short-straw access plan, try Dim, idle, wicked, THES 19/1/07. |
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MARCH 2007: PINKY AND PERKY
Following last year's "Cream Tea" controversy generated by Oxford's New College Fellows sharing amongst themselves the windfall profits from their £60 million Aylesbury development land sale, in breach both of charity law (the Fellows are trustees) and the College's own Statute XVII.12 (see Sunday Times, letters, Times Higher, Daily Telegraph, Oxford Student and Cherwell), more news is emerging that may further dampen the spirits of its lucky beneficiaries: the houses are being built perilously close to the River Thame flood plain, so close that the scheme has had to include large "balancing ponds" along its southern perimeter. Could it all prove to be New's New Orleans?
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| China Syndrome Within 24 hours of Akme's last Trough Trouble posting (27th September 2006), the site's extensive links on Google were all erased. What price the Goflood-Ogrex agreement? Two weeks later, after representations to Google (and a panel headlined "Search engine hits buffers"), Akme's links were restored. Official Google 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! |
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THE OXFORD CRIMSON, THE OXFORD WHITESunday Times, 4th March 2007: Oxford attacked by Rhodes scholars and for public school bias.8th March: Oxford Professor of Mars Bars and Tabasco throws up: The Independent, Daily Mail + links.
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WARNING: ONLY FOR EXTREME SADIMASOCHISTSIn response to requests from a couple of Oxonian scholars who have been burrowing ever deeper into the grim annals of Malcolm vs. Oxford I, I have posted up the party-party correspondence with solicitors Clifford Chance that led to the extraordinary settlement agreement of 1st July 1992. Gas masks and neurological warfare suits are advised. - A. M.Click for the first item + preamble in the linked series or for the correspondence index.
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New Oxford trademark suit ahoy, polloi...? Semiotic shirtmaker takes on DIM-squad: click for Crete con |
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JANUARY 2006: OXFORD DRAFTS STUDENT CONTRACTMAY 2006: AKME LAUNCHES STUDENT LAW LIBRARY An entirely new resource, unique 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 detailed press release, glossary and litigation guide.OXFORD'S CONTRACT: Beloff's draft (pdf) via OUSU introduction. Reports: The Times 31/1/06 + letters, Oxford Student 26/1, The Guardian 1/2, + comment pieces by Germaine Greer and John Sutherland. Financial Times 1/2. THES 3/2: Students attack and Defensive education. Birmingham Post 1/2: Only at Oxford. Telegraph 3/2: Tom Utley. Cherwell 3/2: Codification. Independent 4/2: Howard Jacobson. Oxford Student: Delay, NUS comment, Charter barter, Unconfidence of Colleges, Students denied info, Univ wide. See also University of crime, the landmark Wolverhampton case and the Hurstpierpoint case.Lawyers ask: "Where's the consideration?"
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OXFORD'S STUDENT RENT RACKETSInequality attacked 4/02, Students go home! 10/03, Massive rises 1/04, Bursars' secret report (pdf), Authorities outraged 1/04, Above the odds 4/04, Bursars run scared 6/04 + links, University sellout 6/05 highest in country 2/07.
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Sentence (and sentiment) of the yearIn the OXFORD MAGAZINE, 13th March 2006, from leading article Whither the Task Force? by editor Gavin Williams, questioning proposed new appraisal criteria for Oxford academics: "Perhaps we should be told now and in the future - in the spirit of transparency - which of are our colleagues are recognised to be more meritorious than the rest of us and by how much." (sic) |
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August 2005: CORRECTION: OXFORD IS RACIST - official Keble pays Asian accountant 'substantial damages' exclusive reportLate in 2004, to celebrate the fact 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. Now with the dramatic conclusion of Diamond Versi vs Keble College & Roger Boden, in which both the college and its bursar have been found guilty of racial discrimination and unfair dismissal, Oxford's blameless record and reputation have been irrevocably shattered. For the benefit of scholars Akme has collated the papers in this important, fascinating, at times comical, and very Oxford case, and posted them in a special new indexed and linked series. Note Warden Averil Cameron's 'under payment'.Click now for the VERSINDEX or for the first item in the series Dramatis Personae or for The Reading Judgment. |
OCTOBER 2005: VALE OXFORD'S VALE"The performance of the 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." Times Higher, October 2004."Many of the colleges appear to be quite 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 these institutions operating like speculative property developers." Scout (Akme), September 2004
  
In the face of the university's financial meltdown (see www.akme, all files), several of the colleges are presently 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 its land to the south of Grenoble Road. This was first broached publicly 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 to 25,000, or "two Abingdons". The 30-mile urban sprawl now envisaged for Oxford 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).
Coming soon: Northfield Brook (Brasenose) and St John's parable of the good landlord |
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Oxford's leading exact thinker is famously a past master of "changing his mind"; 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... |
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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?
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MORE OXFORD ACCESS SCANDALS
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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, Oxford, Anthony Smith. Malcolm prepared a 5-minute spiel for pre-recording, but on 28th December he was informed without explanation (e.g. without anyone asking to read his script) that, after all, he could not participate in (or even attend) the debate, 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". God, as usual, is great. Click for transcript of programme
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After the bizarre events at Borders' Oxford bookshop in October 2002 (see below), 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.
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OTHER PUBLISHING NEWS
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THE HISTORY OF AKME AND OF THIS WEBSITEA brief history of the site's life and growth since its inception in September 1997.THE AKME LITERARY LAW LIBRARYA 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 LIBRARYAn 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 NAMESThe 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 REMEDYRave 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. |
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