But these people have been used to an unfair advantage all their lives, they cannot be expected to play by the same rules as those who have come through the state system.

Do you know for sure none of them came through the state system or are you just making an assumption? 4 members of my family either went to or got places at Cambridge and didn’t take them, they were all state educated.

He didn’t cheat, apparently. He put his course dates on the application form and it was accepted – so perhaps a clerical error? They do happen, unfortunately.

I’m of the opinion that rules are rules. So many people these days try and get away with stuff because they think the rules can be bent. Sometimes, you just need to take it like a grown-up and stop whining. Which incidentally, the people in this particular story aren’t doing. He’s owned up to a mistake, and everyone’s being decent about it. Which is a contrast to the way a lot of ‘adults’ behave 🙂

Universities don’t offer PhDs in ‘a subject’ you choose your research and put forward a proposal

Not strictly correct, you can apply with your own proposal, you can even apply and self fund if you can find a supervisor. But a lot of PhDs, if not the majority, are linked to existing work. A group will be working on a particular project, they need to explore an avenue but cant justify using a post-doc on it, so they offer a PhD in the “area”. Students then apply to work on that project, though the research may stray a little from that initial area during its course. The supervisor will guide the student in the direction he would like the research to find his answers while still allowing the student to find his own interest in the field. Certainly this is the case with technical PhDs – engineering/physical sciences. Funding for projects usually comes under the strict proviso that you provide funding for X PhDs in that area to pass on the knowledge and produce a continuing research team.

Of course Manchester Uni would say “Oh, it doesn’t matter”, the fact that every-one is being all nice and middle class, about it doesn’t change the fact that the Comp has rules, and they were broken, it’s not any one’s fault particularly, no-one’s dead, it’s just a cock up.

It’s not worth getting worried about it.

“rar rar rar, we gonna crush the oinks” classic telly

Weren’t the BBC in the crap a while ago for basically doing just what Stoner suggests over things as important as naming the Blue Peter cat? You can’t have it both ways.

I wasn’t being serious mrsflash, I’ve no idea what education they’ve had. What I will hazard a guess on is that if the situation were reversed and Manchester had broken the rules in this way and had won the majority on here would be saying they should keep the title. But as Monty Python showed all those years ago with Upper Class Twit Of The Year there is nothing funnier than seeing the percieved posh fall on their arse. The real problem with the competition is that the filming schedule bares no relation to the academic year. The final was apparently recorded in November. Bamber was on radio 4 last night saying how absurd the filming was and how it restricted who was elligable to participate.

Anybody else see Starter for Ten when it was on the telly recently. Not a bad film with a great soundtrack and a disqualified team.

I wasn’t being serious mrsflash, I’ve

I’ll let you off then 🙂

ps thought starter for ten was rubbish.

Well I liked the music, perhaps it’s an age thing

Wonderful chip/shoulder moment from the cap’n there.

As one absolutely sick of flash’s chip/shoulder when I’ve been perceived to have a tap at the inbreds, well said that man!

The Guardian, no matter what the right wing press say, is no friend of the BBC, it is a direct competitor.
It is also a business, it’s purpose is to make money, not to reflect the truth.

That really is a load of nonsense.

The Guardian is not ‘a direct competitor’ to the BBC. For a start the Guardian does not produce programmes for broadcast, and the BBC doesn’t produce a daily newspaper. Yes they are both news providers, but most people can handle reading a newspaper and watching TV – although obviously not necessarily at the same time.

The Guardian is very much in the business of ‘telling the truth’ – as it perceives it. In fact that’s why it was set up in the first place – to tell the truth about social conditions after the Peterloo massacre. It’s central objectives are today, the same as they were when it was first founded, and any profit it makes is only solely to further those objectives.

BTW – none of this detracts from the fact that I am not a supporter of the Guardian’s general editorial stances, which I consider to be hopelessly romantic idealism – I don’t buy into the bourgeois liberal concept of a benevolent capitalist society.

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Getting back to the OP, I agree with Stoner that BBC got it wrong. Yes ‘rules are rules’, but the time to worry about that was before the contest, too late worrying about them after the contest. As I said before it’s only a quiz show, and there isn’t even any cash prizes involved. Taking the title from Corpus Christi College was petty imo. Anyway, if everyone now wants to start getting petty, why was Corpus Christi College even allowed to compete ? After all it’s called University Challenge’ not ‘College Challenge’ and I’m pretty sure that Corpus Christi is not the name of a university.

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Unlike Drac, I do see the connection referred to in the Guardian article between this ‘wrong decision’ and previous ‘wrong decisions’. IMO opinion there has been a radical change in the confidence of the BBC in recent years. And the responsibility for this I firmly place with New Labour. Ever since the Director General of the BBC was sacked for offending New Labour, the BBC has imo become neurotic, nervous, and jittery of making decisions which it might be slated for. Now when people become neurotic, nervous, and jittery about making wrong decisions and screwing up, they invariably make the wrong decisions and screw up.

I think it’s of supreme irony that the BBC having survived a decade of Thatcher more or less intact, got shafted by New Labour, for telling the truth about New Labour lies. Unbelievably, the only person who lost their job because an illegal war based on lies, was the head of the BBC 😯

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Incidentally for me, watching University Challenge is only really worthwhile if it results in posh upper-class public school educated toffs, being humiliated by sons and daughters of the common people 8)