As we all crawl, exhausted, to the April close of the 2001 research assessment exercise, suggestions for a new exercise may be considered most unwelcome. Nevertheless there is a case for a campaign to resist audit excess.
Surely room can be found in your columns for an RAE competition, perhaps modelled on Signal Failures, Private Eye 's monthly broadside against deeply unpopular rail privatisation, where some of the more bizarre items of audit inquisition can be displayed? I doubt that you would be short of copy.
George Blazyca
Centre for Contemporary European Studies
University of Paisley