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I really enjoyed Dave Delpy's piece, in which he sends up RCUK's policy on impact statements by pretending to be a hopelessly ignorant quangocrat with no understanding of the nature and role of pure research. I particularly liked the part where he offers to write all our impact statements; I would love to see his thoughts on the expected social and economic impact of finding, or failing to find, the mass of the Higgs boson.

This article continues a long Times Higher Education tradition. I remember items on running a university as a business, the importance of branding and treating students as consumers. One thing puzzles me: why don't you collect all these spoof articles and publish them on 1 April, leaving the magazine free for serious debate during the rest of the year?

Dave Kimber, St Neots.