Stop it!

Fully 80% of page FOUR (4) of today's Times is given over to coverage of a row that has broken out at Oxford University. Of that material about two thirds is a straight reporting piece written jointly by Ruth Guildhall and John O'Leary, while the remaining third is a commentary piece by Ruth Gledhill alone.

The story is not one of politicking in the customary Oxford sense, or any one of the usual fillers always on standby for deployment during slow news weeks: admissions (over-representation of posh kids from Public School among student intake), sexual misadventure, substance abuse, admissions (under-representation of un-posh kids with the same grades as posh kids but emerging from a comprehensive located in one or other inner city slum district), undergraduate hi-jinx, falling academic standards, admissions (the scandal of bias in the interview process which either plays to the advantages of posh kids or results in over compensation for impoverished backgrounds), plagiarism, under-funding, commercialisation, Americanisation and, er, admissions (over reliance on the ability to spell, construct grammatically correct sentences and count as indicators of make the most of a tax payer subsidised stint at university) .

What we get, instead, is column inch after column inch given over a review into the Seven Pillars of Ignorance at Oxford which are its seven christian private halls. Rather puzzlingly the article describes them thus: "two Anglican, one Baptist and three Roman Catholic", though by my calculation St Benet's (benedictine/premonstratensian*), Blackfriars (dominican), Campion Hall (essentially jesuitical) and Greyfriars (capuchin) makes, um, FOUR. What have I missed? Have the Jjesuits given up entirely on God?

The fact that the piece is an opportunity for Gledhill ( who should more accurately be described as the Times Religious Correspondent) to take an arch swipe at those who are concerned by the state of play in these Halls and particularly what is going on at Wycliffe (those who've written a letter of concern about developments have indulged in "an unprecedented breach of normal academic protocol") constitutes aggravating circumstances; the real problem is the grotesque prominence given to hocum, superstition and the intellectualising of fairy tales in the first place.

The piece by Gledhill actually contains the following sentence: "It is an indication that the atheistic creed, preached by dons such as Richard Dawkins, is in the ascendancy." That O'Leary might have been the author of that outrageously sly dig is irrelevant, since Gledhill puts her name to the entire article.

The Nigerians and the Jenson Brothers must be rubbing their hands in glee, given the ability of their type to see advantage in every set back. Now, if they'd only indulge themselves in the privacy of their own homes. The clarion call by Carol Sarler to rid the pages of our print media and the airways of an excessive attention to matters 'religious' was met with a furious response and it seems the Times has taken the views of one side in that debate to heart - 80% of page 4.