Physics of the EU – Revised Syllabus
Yesterday, Tory MP Christopher Heaton-Harris wrote to all Vice-Chancellors of UK universities asking them to send him the names of professors teaching about “European affairs” together with links to relevant syllabuses and course materials. There has been an overwhelmingly negative response to this sinister request, which comes from an arch-Brexiteer apparently intent on thought control.
Not wishing to fall foul of the Brexit Police, I have updated my syllabus for next term and include it here so Mr McCarthy Heaton-Harris can read it:
I’m afraid that, for any further information and/or course materials relating to this module, Mr Heaton-Harris will have to register and pay the requisite fee which, thanks to his government is £9250.
P.S. I posted this slide on Twitter yesterday, and it got as close as any of my tweets have ever done to going viral (with over 800 retweets).
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In the Dark 
October 25, 2017 at 2:04 pm
The correct reply:
“Dear Mr Heaton-Harris: Thank you for your letter. Why do you want to know?”
October 25, 2017 at 2:10 pm
Apparently he now claims he is researching a book.
If that is the case then he shouldn’t be using House of Commons letterhead, which is restricted for official communications.
October 25, 2017 at 2:38 pm
Agreed.
October 25, 2017 at 2:54 pm
During my postdoc at the University of Sydney in the late 1980s we noticed that the subtitle of volume I of the Theoretical Physics Department Head Don Melrose’s work on Plasma Astrophysics, Nonthermal Processes in Diffuse Magnetized Plasmas, had incorrectly appeared in one place as National Processes in Diffuse Magnetized Plasmas. One of the wittier research students then suggested “some other books by Prof. Melrose you may enjoy”:
* Langmuir Turbulence in post-war Germany.
* The Life and Times of Queen Victoria – a Plasma Physics perspective.
* Type II Solar Radio Bursts and Reactive Instabilities in pre-Marxist Russia.
* Gyromagnetic Emission as a Cause of the Peloponnesian War.
* Non-Linear Three Wave Interactions and the Life of Peasant Farmers in Norman England.
* The Effect of British Colonial Policy Upon Bernstein Mode Cutoffs.
* King Arthur and the Search for Turbulent Bremsstrahlung.