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Our thrusting Director of Corporate Affairs, Jamie Targett, gave an enthusiastic welcome to last week's declaration by Deian Hopkins, Vice-Chancellor of London South Bank University, that universities and academics should become more "business facing".

He pointed out that Poppleton University itself was already more business facing than most other universities.

Targett did, however, still have some concerns about individual members of staff. He told our reporter Keith Ponting (29) that he would shortly be visiting selected departments and turning disoriented academics in the correct direction. "Sometimes all they need is a little tilt to the right," he explained.

ABUSED LECTURERS FIGHT BACK

Our Vice-Chancellor has condemned the reaction of History of Business academics to a new student network website that referred to one of their colleagues as "a dim-witted pedant" and went on to describe the History of Business department as "two clowns short of a circus".

Speaking by mobile phone to Mrs Dilworth, the V-C declared that the decision by the academics to set up their own site on which they described one second-year student as "two brain cells short of a cortex" and another as "a pimply faced hysteric" was counterproductive. He urged all sides to desist from "gratuitous mudslinging" and compared the overreaction with the calm manner in which he had responded to his own depiction on the site as "a power-mad dictator".