Thursday 4 February 2010

Watch out, there's a copper about

This institution has the honour of having taught several Guantanamo Bay inmates, so I think it's safe to assume that MI5, 'Prevent' and other security services are familiar with the city, pork scratchings and Learning Works.

Now the secret police, in the form of Special Branch, will be all over us: the Universities Minister David Lammy has announced that these spooks will be stationed at extremist-friendly universities (by which of course they mean universities with Muslim students). You can bet that we're on the list, alongside London Met and a few others.

This is, of course, the sort of behaviour about which the UK Government complains when it happens elsewhere. You know the kind of report: grainy footage and a portentous voice-over saying something like 'Iranian student leaders were shocked today as the secret police moved in'.

So if you see a man in uncasual casual clothes offering Asian students a pork pie and noting the response, or peeking under burqas during lectures, you know who he works for. Tell him to piss off and investigate all the plagiarism instead. Then again, I'd better be careful - I've some pretty extremist views on medieval poetry myself.

1 comment:

Kate said...

I was hoping you'd post about this.

Agree entirely that the government is being hypocritical (well, who'd have thought it.....)and such practices are ethically and morally dubious to say the very least.

I expect they'll be rushing to my Greater London university too, there's a significant Muslim cohort.