February 2012: ADRASTEIA RISINGOUP Hellas indicted for price fixingPublishers fined over 20 million eurosPuzzled prosecutor seeks names: where is the university?Europe-wide investigation underway |
September 2011: NIGEL'S PLANS FOR TOUPSY  Booksellers on Portwood: Appointment 9/3/2009; Toupsy out of control 2010 and 2011; Vulture Culture Interview 9/9/2011 |
March 2011: HEFCE IN CLEFT STICK? 
In April 2009, the Charity Commission (CC) and the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) stated that the Oxbridge universities and their presses would shortly be stripped of their exempt-charity status, would have to register, and would be obliged to provide public benefit (or be taxed). In June 2010 this undertaking was quietly broken and it was instead announced that the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) would become their 'principal regulator'. Now, in a PASC letter to Andrew Malcolm, the question of the presses' status has been tossed back 35 years to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC). Make your mind up please, QVANGOs (Queasy, Vacillating, Ambivalent, Niddering Government Organisations), and 2006 Act. Click for The Great Camford Backslide and for the newly-launched |
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December 2010: Akme vindicated: Click for Guardian front page report and comment article and data link |
August 2010: OUP'S CHARITABLE STATUS LATEST: OED3 GOESWith OUP announcing in late August 2010 that it is unlikely ever to print OED3 (the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, due in about a decade), and will sell it only in digital form, it is surely finally relinquishing any vestigial claim to the exemption of its huge annual profits (over £100m) from UK Corporation Tax. In recent discussions about the revocation of this dubious privilege, enjoyed since 1978, it has been mooted that as a compromise certain projects like the OED and ODNB could be ring-fenced from its other commercial operations. Now, it seems, even this lame suggestion has been abandoned.See reports (exit www.akme): Daily Mail, Guardian, Telegraph, Wired. Meanwhile, in a daring pre-tax raid on the Press in August, robbers wearing prosthetic rubber masks and made up to look like academics stole £100 million from under the noses of the Inland Revenue. The heist, which was caught on CC (Charity Commission) TV, and was committed in Broad Street daylight, also involved disguising the 1930s New Bodleian Library as a lucrative 'visitor center'.
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  Akme books now available via PayPal
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February 2010: FALASHA IN THE PAN  Richard Charkin's 1988 resignation from OUPDid he buy a tenure old trick? Were the Delegates anti-semitic? Do they meet just once a year? Was Malcolm in the middle?Click now for The Akmeopian Reviewalso disinterred: Mockler's War, The Cuban Connection and Robin Denniston's roles: Dogwag & Ratify, I Want Your Job |
15th April 2009: BLACK DAY IN BLUESVILLE |
December 2009: EDUCATIONAL CHARITY FURTHER PROGRESSES FURTHERING OF REACH 
Click for OUP'S REPORT AND ACCOUNTS 2008/9 Also see 2007/8
featuring the Akme Exhibitions, the Millions not Thousands, and Reach beyond the Dreams of Avarice, 2006/7 featuring The Bitch of the Baskervilles, 2005/6 featuring Where is the University? etc., back to... 1977/8 The Year of Done Quietly.
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OXBRIDGE AND THE CLASS WAR: |
Are You Going to Frideswide Square? MP3 ARE YOU GOING TO FRIDESWIDE SQUARE? October 2009: Akme is delighted to report that this has now been recorded by fine English singer Alex Chapman. To hear more of his work, or to obtain a copy of the MP3, visit www.alexchapman.co.uk |
The Cheesiest Adverts in Publishing History  *
The Wanky Labels *
The Nagging Cough *
The Aunt Cillaries *
The Cardboard Calculator * |
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March 2009: THE ULTRA VIRES POISE VOLTE-FACENEW REVELATIONS ABOUT OUP's & CUP's TAX-EXEMPTION"It was felt it might be unpatriotic in 1940... CUP are trying it on, trying to railroad us... I recommend that we resist... Possibly OUP is acting ultra vires in its trading... OUP is almost a case of "the tail wagging the dog"... I would not think it necessary to carry out reviews at all frequently to test for any movement in OUP's poise." sample quotes from IR officials Click for CUP/OUP's 1970s Charity Status Update Press Release and Revised Index |
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Late-breaking Reece shock: "tax unimportant, we'd simply covenant our profits."THE GATEKEEPER'S CREEP-OUT 
On 13th February 2007 extracts from a probing interview by Mukund Padmanabhan of OUP's Chief Executive Henry Reece were published in The Hindu newspaper, of Chennai (Madras), India. When quizzed about OUP's infamous poetry-axing of 1998, Reece stated: "We really don't have the people qualified to make judgments about contemporary poetry." (So much then for Oxford's Eng. Lit. Fac. - again). When tested on OUP's tax-exemption, he claimed: "It's not particularly financially important. It is more important as a statement of who we are (sic)." (In which case, who they are will presumably find no difficulty in paying all the back-tax they owe since 1978, renegotiating the numerous takeover deals they have concluded in the interim, and then handing over whatever's left of their £200+ million illegal reserves to a genuine charity - Oxfam perhaps). And when asked what will happen if/when OUP loses its tax-exemption, he asserted: "We would simply covenant our profits to the university." (Following the suggestion first mooted in the Fifth Appendix of The Remedy, but thirty years too late and totally blind, as always, to the fair trading issue.) As for Reece's fantastic "gatekeeper" guff (qv), I am reminded of an acquaintance who won a place to study at Oxford, but after a day-trip to the city turned it down. "Too many old gates," he explained.But apart from noting that the uncharitable writing is now clearly on the Walton Street wall, what Akme really wants to know is why did all these extraordinary admissions, risible suggestions and ill-considered whims creep out on the quiet in an Indian newspaper published five thousand miles away? Was Reece shyly, slyly kite-flying, by any chance, retro-active pre-emptive like? Kite-flying, of course, is a sub-continental speciality, but in 2001 OUP came down to earth there with a bang. - A. M. Click now for the Akme version or the Hindu version (exits www.akme) |
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August 2007: JIG UP FOR DIFFERENT TOTAL ANIMALS?At last obtained and published by Akme: |
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THE OXFORD COLLEGE ACCOUNTS 2005/06THE OXBRIDGE COLLEGE ACCOUNTS INDEX REVAMPED AND UPDATED
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BORDERS ON THE INSANE The YouTube Movievideo of the book-bust of 4th October 2002 - Police State Oxford glimpsed |
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July 2008: KING GNOME'S DEPRIVATION - the truth In November 2007 it was quietly announced that Alan Ryan was quitting as Warden of New College, Oxford. Akme has since learnt that on account of his disreputable roles in the Malcolm case (click for his ultimate degradation, with links) and the Aylesbury land scandal, aka King Gnome's Cream Tea in breach of the New College statutes (first aired on this website), not to mention his numerous other disgraces, the College Fellows presented Lord Yada with the choice of being formally and messily deprived of his post or voluntarily taking "early retirement", and he opted for the latter. Akme result! In September 2009 he is to be replaced by Sir Curtis "Thanks a lot, Purcell" Price.
The New Collegers were so anxious to get Ryan off their premises, they have agreed to continue paying his Warden's salary during an absent sabbatical year (2009/10) to be spent at Princeton, while his pals there have stumped up for a further two years of his yada yada. His promised masterwork From Plato to Nato is awaited with baited (sic) breath. Poor Kate, losing all that retro bling. Still, she's always welcome at Akme Expression...
Oxford's leading exact thinker is famously a past master of mind-changing. Indeed this great intellectual gymnast seems to think of U-turns as the very marks of sophistication, but to spin 180 degrees within seven days is surely a record, even for him? Compare Cherwell 10/2/06 and The Times Higher 17/2/06. For further medal-winning Ryanastics, click Disobey, Money, Umbrage, Oxford blues, Circle squarer, Stalin, Football mad, Wicked, Malcolm versus, Exit ranting, Abolish state education, Hip prat crit, Drowning fish, Cock up, Metric psycho, Pinky & Perky, Carry on clunking.
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| China Syndrome Within 24 hours of the above Trough Trouble posting (27/9/06), Akme's extensive links on Google were all erased. What price the Goflood-Ogrex agreement? Two weeks later, after protests to Google (and a headline "Search engine hits buffers"), Akme's links were restored. Official explanation: "We were sending out a newer binary/executable and different data centers had different versions of the binary. Every data center now has the new binary." Well bless my binaries, and only Akme's links got wiped! |
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June 2008: OCCUPIED TERRITORIESWhile the peoples of the Middle East continue to re-enact their ancient, bloodthirsty, biblical wars, the first public shots have just been fired in a parallel battle for enfranchisement being conducted in their namesake areas of north Oxford.The future ownership of two estates of houses built by OUP at Jordan Hill and Webb's Close in the 1950s and '60s for its print and paper mill workers hangs on the question of whether or not OUP was then a charity. Regular visitors to www.akme will by now know the truth on this question, but with so much at stake will Oxford University and its lawyers? Click for Oxford Times 'No right to buy', published letter and Akme chronology |
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"The floors carrying the stacks under Broad St and the Radcliffe Camera penetrate up to four levels below street level. The water table in the alluvial gravels approaches street level during the wet season and rests only a few metres below it at other times. In effect, these storage facilities are like large tanks sitting in a surrounding lake." - John Hood, 3/5/05
Click for special Akme Sub-Index of reports about Oxford's exciting plan to build Academe's first underwater library |
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OXFORD'S VICE-CHANCELLOR SHOT19th December 2006: Postal bullet inserted holding the ceremonial silver bullet Eyewitness reports by Akme governance correspondent Ollie Garchy, 14th & 28th November 20065th October 2007: A billion Big Issues, Sir? Oxford Times |
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MAY 2006: AKME LAUNCHES STUDENT LAW LIBRARY Following Oxford's introduction of student contracts, Akme has assembled a unique, free archive of UK cases, news reports and other materials relating to university-student and college-student contract law. Thanks to increasing top-up fees and student indebtedness, student litigation has become a subject of rapidly growing importance. With its extensive and successful experience in the field, Akme is pleased to assist in this brave new endeavour.
Click for the AKME STUDENT LAW LIBRARY INDEX, plus press release, glossary and litigation guide.OXFORD'S CONTRACT: Beloff's draft (pdf) via OUSU introduction. Reports: The Times + letters, Oxford Student, Guardian, Financial Times, Times Higher 1, Times Higher 2, Birmingham Post, Telegraph, Cherwell 1, Oxford Student 1, Howard Jacobson, NUS comment, Oxford Student 2, Cherwell 2, Info denied, Cherwell 3, Johann Hari, Turnup or Godown. See also University of crime, the landmark Wolverhampton case and the Hurstpierpoint caseAkme exclusive: Oxford attacked on 9/11, declares WAR ON ERROR. Also, OXFORD'S STUDENT RENT RACKETS: Inequality attacked 4/02, Students go home!, Massive rises, Bursars' secret report (pdf), Authorities outraged, Above the odds, Bursars run scared + links, University sellout, highest in country. |
OCTOBER 2005: VALE OXFORD'S VALE"The performance of Oxford colleges' assets in land, property and shares has been described as lamentably poor. The colleges are trying to bail themselves out of investment blunders by building ever-bigger portfolios of lucrative student housing." THES October 2004."Many of the colleges appear to be active in the buying and selling of land... but the profits on these sales are omitted from their accounts, figures which normally carry serious tax implications. Perhaps the SORP guidelines for HE institutions do not require such figures, but then perhaps they do not envisage the institutions operating like speculative property developers." Scout (Akme) September 2004
  
In the face of the university's financial meltdown (yeah, right: see www.akme, all files), many colleges are resorting to the exploitation of their vast landholdings by wangling a series of insupportable planning permissions, including several, ironically, in their city's own Green Belt. The most ruinous of these is a massive development being urged by Magdalen College on land to the south of Grenoble Road. This was first broached in 2002 with a proposal for 1,000 houses. Note, as the argument has roller-coasted between the City and County and Parish Councils, the political parties, the Regional Assembly (SEERA), the university, the green groups and the Government, how this figure has swelled to 3,000, 5,000 and even 25,000, or "two Abingdons". The 30-mile urban sprawl now envisaged has even been compared to Los Angeles. Praise be to the Lord and to the "eleemosynary chartered charitable corporation aggregate" that is Magdalen College, hereinafter Maglen Corp.
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THE LAVASA TAMASHA Oxford's Indian land-grab in mire: Sunday Times, 30/8/09 |
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OVER 25% OF ODNB ENTRIES UNRELIABLE?Since its vaunted launch in September 2004, there have appeared in the media a growing number of reports of inaccuracies in OUP's long-awaited Oxford Dictionary of National (Notional?) Biography: Sunday Telegraph 24/10/04, various TLS letters and a contributor's detailed TLS letter, 11/2/05, which suggests that more than a quarter of the dictionary's 55,000 entries may contain errors. See also Bookworm 18/2/05, Observer 6/3/05, Library Journal 15/4/05, Oldie, 12/05.How, one wonders, will Oxford's £7,500-a-go customers react to all this disappointing news?
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THE WORST SCIENCE TEXTBOOKS EVER PUBLISHED?Former secondary-level science teacher Paul Hurt has approached Akme with shocking revelations about OUP's Framework Science course, launched in 2003. His school was conned into spending £30,000 on Oxford's set of teaching materials which, in the name of education, it was then obliged discreetly to ditch. According to Oxford, sodium hydroxide is now classed as an acid, Copernicus was arrested for his solarcentricity, and limestone is of no use as a building material (to pick just three of the books' legion of howlers). Hurt urges that Framework Science, like the RCN's dangerously error-infested Oxford Handbook of General and Adult Nursing (OUP 2007) and Oxford's Concise Dictionary of World Place Names, which confuses Bengal with Bangalore should be withdrawn and pulped.READ THE HURT SCHLOCKER |
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AKME OXFORD POETRY LISTEarly in 2006 an eminent Oxford academic, who knew nothing of this website or its history, was introduced to Andrew Malcolm's books Making Names and The Remedy. He was very impressed by the former (so impressed that he tried to find a publisher for it abroad - another story), and deeply shocked by the latter (so shocked that he now spits, he says, every time he passes the OUP building). His rage prompted him to fire off a pastiche of Shelley's famous poem of 1819 The Mask of Anarchy. Shelley wrote his blistering attack on the British ruling class upon hearing news when in Italy of the Peterloo massacre, in which local cavalry were ordered to charge a crowd of unarmed, working-class demonstrators in Manchester, killing 11 and wounding 400.Click for The Masque of AcademePlus, at last an amusing item in the Oxford Magazine 22/6/2007 by A. W. F. Edwards & Lewis Carroll: Fame's Penny-Trumpet |
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LET ME COUNT THE WAYS...WHERE'S ME JOYSTICK? Following the revelation that Oxford patron Wafic Saïd is running an empty passenger jet every day solely to retain its London runway slot, an even bigger waste scandal is emerging. Akme exclusive, 23/3/07. 19-HOUR BENDERS AT ALL SOULS To Oblivion and beyond: All Hours College, Taking the Piss, Sunstroke too CORPUS CHRISTI'S BROTHEL Gloucestershire Echo reports on the college's immoral earnings, 2001/2 UNIVERSITY PROSTITUTION DIM babygros, garden tools, croquet sets. Times, Oxford Times, OUP pornography. SLAVERY, CENSORSHIP, AIRBASES, OIL Explanation and versions 1200 words, 1000, 900 (final), 900 + links. BULLINGDONS RUN AMOK... AGAIN Oxford Student reports 13/1/05 and 2/3/05. OXFORD BANS PHOTOGRAPHY, GIRLFRIENDS, E-MAILS University's bizarre animal behaviour, 15/4/05. NORRINGTON TABLES FRAUDULENT League results exposed 23/7/04, then scrapped 12/11/04. OXFORD'S NAZI LOOT War crimes link exposed Flick off, 4/97. ORIEL FLOGS FIRST FOLIO Exit inalienable Shakespeare Bard for Bucks, 3/03. CARPET COLLEGE'S RUG PULLED Harris Manchester threadbare 1 and threadbare 2. CRETE CON DIM-squad to sue semiotic shirtmaker? OXFORD LAUNCHES DIMTANIC Dons rush for lifeboats as iceberg looms, 1/04. MY WORST TIME Amazing retirement revelation by Margaret Goodall, OUP's Mother of all Secretaries. THE OXFORD CRIMSON, THE OXFORD WHITE Attacks by Rhodes scholars and State scholars, 4/3/07. FEELING SICK Oxford Professor of Mars Bars and Tabasco throws up Independent, Daily Mail, 8/3/07. ACCESS SCANDALS Bourses for Courses, pipe dreams, money talks, poor hit, school ties, Chancellor at odds, fees B4 access, identity crisis, topup showdown, fat chance, wild cards, frighteners, rival revival, Blair for St Anne's, Eliton College, Schwartz free market, class rage, toothless Offa, Oxbridge drops, Oxford static, out of form, the old sofa trick, strong snobbery, rank outsiders, girls and Asians, bias survey, Oxbridge drops, £26K a pop, college lottery, immoral guidelines, ivy envy.
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After the bizarre events at Borders' Oxford bookshop in October 2002, Akme lost control of this website, with any attempt to edit existing files or upload new ones (text or image) resulting in their erasure. Fortunately, just as this mysterious jamming was began, US Akme agent Michael Sayers established a link to a mirror index page which from late 2002 carried all Akme's news bulletins, including the various subsequent Borders developments, Andrew Malcolm's blocked candidacy in March 2003 for the the Oxford University chancellorship, and OUP's illegal donation to the university in August 2003 of £77 million. In February 2004 Akme switched to a new service-provider and recovered apparent control of www.akme. The previously censored THES articles have also been restored.
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OTHER PUBLISHING NEWS
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THE HISTORY OF AKME AND OF THIS WEBSITEA brief history of the site's life and growth since its inception in September 1997.THE AKME LITERARY LAW LIBRARYA unique resource specifically designed for authors (or publishers) contemplating litigation. The library contains all relevant precedents from the English archives, a series of articles by lawyer Nicola Solomon, and other materials.THE AKME OXFORD CUTTINGS LIBRARYAn archive of published Oxford and OUP scandals, definitions for dollars 1985, the Tehran Book Fair 1989, the poetry-axing fiasco 1998, Oxford's various Indian tamashas and sundry other scandals.ABOUT MAKING NAMESThe book that started it all, with links to Reviews by Karl Popper, Roy Edgley and others, TES 9/92, Spectator 4/93, Oxford Student 5/02 rave by Arina Patrikova: "One of the most powerful statements of the human condition written in the past century." Opening passage plus mail order information etc.ABOUT THE REMEDYRave review by Henry Hardy in THES, 3/01: "Andrew Malcolm has written two excellent books... in a sane world... etc." also by The AUT (Association of University Teachers), 12/01: "It is of course in the interest of the big academic publishers such as Oxford and Cambridge to suppress knowledge of the Malcolm case." Also see Oxford Times and Cherwell. Opening passage plus mail order information etc. |
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