(see earlier, on the prospect of being Rather Embarrassingly F***ed)

Egad. Zounds.

It’s got to be bad, when even midst the bleak midwinter that is the current North American job market in language and literature—see the Chronicle, Job Slump Worsens for Language and Literature Scholars; and Leiter Reports: MLA on the Decline in Jobs in English and other Language Specialties—British shenanigans still make the world academic news.

From the Chronicle ticker, December 16, 2009, 09:37 PM ET:

Thousands of British academics, including six Nobel laureates, have signed a petition opposing a proposal that would require 25 percent of government-financed academic research to be assessed on its societal and economic impact. Protesters carrying a giant poster of Albert Einstein also marched on Parliament on Wednesday in a demonstration organized by Britain’s main faculty union. Opponents of the proposal, first aired in September, say the measure would hinder the kind of blue-sky research that has been at the heart of many scientific and technological advances.

From which, see also:

• the BBC News link
• the UCU statement on the funding councils’ proposal: Stand up for Research

In more cheery news, that great source of reliable and up-to-date news that is the Daily Mail reports:

… and so on. I do like a mysterious unidentified scientist. And knowledge must be going up in the world: note the more-or-less accurate job description, albeit in quotation marks. A step up from “boffins.” That’s truly good news.